166. What happened in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games?

Not all terrorism is identical: there is the “romantic terrorism” (Narodna Volya); “personalized terrorism” like ETA (they performed some indiscriminate actions); “indiscriminate terrorism”, when the maximum amount of civilians are murdered intentionally; “suicidal terrorism” and, finally, “terrorism with unconventional weaponry” (biological, chemical, atomic). The modus operandi of the PLO in the 70s and the 80s was the indiscriminate terrorism. There are people with an untuned moral compass that praise those who murder civilians intentionally (Leila Khaled or similar characters). The issue seems to exceed the circumstances of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and links the value of violence with an act of heroism, diplomatic and political measures or acts of institutional construction, which tend to be seen by them as “weak and condescending”. This guideline of sanctifying terrorism makes the solution of a conflict more difficult since it can only be solved through compromise. One of the acts of terrorism by the PLO was the kidnapping of Israeli athletes during the Olympic Games in Munich (September 1972) to exchange them for 234 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the liberation of the founders of the Red Army Faction, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, imprisoned in Germany. They entered the athletes’ bedrooms, murdered some of them and took others as hostages. The Israeli government rejected the negotiation with a self-proclaimed group “Black September”, in memory of what happened in Jordan in 1970. What began as a negotiation with the German authorities was followed by the relocation of the athletes to a military base in the outskirts of the city where, after a fire exchange, they were murdered. The Olympic Games were not interrupted despite the murder of eleven Israelis. After Munich 1972, the Mossad formed a special commando group to execute those responsible for the killings.