Rambling ...

I'm an Irish Girl, A Dubliner, with the 'Gift of the Gab' ... I like to talk & to tell you things. In Celtic times news, views and comment were carried from place to place by wandering Seanachaí ~ Storytellers ~ who relied on their host's hospitality and appreciation. I will need that from you too, as I venture to share Politics, Poetry, Laughter, Love, Life & everything in-between ... from Bog to Blog!!


Friday, September 24, 2010

Another Anniversary !!




"When I was a kid, my father used to say 'Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.'  Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They’ve now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone!"
~  Jim McKay, ABC journalist covering the Olympic Games, Munich, Germany, September 1972.

September holds an array of 'Anniversaries' for me ..... Both my Parents (of  Blessed Memory) died in this month.  Their anniversaries fall on 18th & 22nd of September, respectively.  It has thus become a Month of Mourning for Me.  September 11th will be a day forever etched in my mind,  as I recall the searing Images impressed there by Islam.  And September also holds the seeds of yet another Massacre, in Munich, Germany on  5th/6th September, 1972.
 
The 1972 Olympics in Münich were the second occasion Germany hosted the event. The first time, in 1936, was deeply political, as Hitler and the Nazi party used the event for a stage-managed propaganda display of their supposedly 'Model' society. After the horrors of war, Germany was not initially allowed to compete in the Games, and when it did so it was eventually to be as a team split between the Westernised Federal Republic of Germany, and the Soviet-dominated German Democratic Republic of East Germany.

1972 was an opportunity for the Germans to erase from memory the 'Nazi' Games, and instead replace them with a Games held in a carefree spirit. Security was light, and spending was concentrated on having fun, reflected in an abstract 'happy' logo for the games.





That isn't to say that there were not security preparations. Famously, Dr. Georg Sieber prepared a set of worst-case scenarios for the Games, which included an eerily accurate prediction of exactly what transpired. One of his scenarios was of a highjacked plane being crashed into the stadium,  (echoes of another September morning here),  but it was scenario 21 ~ terrorists with sympathies for the Palestinian cause breaking into the Olympic Village and kidnapping members of the Israeli Olympic squad ~ that actually happened!

Although it was still a few years before rolling 24 hour news channels were developed, the fact that the attack happened at the Olympic Village meant there was plenty of media around.  The 1936 Games had been relayed on big screens within Berlin, and the 1948 Games had been the first shown live on TV.  Since then, media coverage had increased exponentially, with the 1964 Games from Tokyo being the first time live pictures were broadcast over the Pacific from Japan to the USA.

The 1972 hostage crisis unfolded live on television screens around the globe. The Münich Massacre was one of the first "made for television" terrorist atrocities designed to bring attention to the Palestinian cause. On several occasions during the crisis it seemed that the kidnappers were able to follow police preparations to tackle them by simply turing on their television sets.  Images of the murderers from the world's TV screens became one of the defining images of international terrorism.

Moshe Weinberg and Yossef Romano were murdered prior to the scene of the hostage crisis being shifted to a military airport at Fürstenfeldbruck. It was there that a totally inept failed rescue attempt ended up with the 9 remaining Israeli hostages being murdered.  

At first the Games continued during the crisis, but eventually they were halted for a few hours. When they were re-started, it was with a memorial service held in the Olympic Stadium, attended by many of the competing athletes.   Ten nations opposed to the existence of the State of Israel requested that their flags not be flown at half-mast during the ceremony. As disrespectful as this was to the spirit of Olympic competition, the IOC acquiesced and granted this request. The massacre of 11 Israeli athletes was not considered sufficiently serious to merit cancelling or postponing of the Olympics.   Truly, the world cares nothing for Jewish Blood!

  “Incredibly, they're going on with it,” Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times wrote at the time. “It's almost like having a dance at Dachau.” ...... WWII Death Camp, less than 10 miles away!

Not all the athletes stayed however, and the Israeli team did not continue to compete in the Games. The entire Egyptian team withdrew as well. The destination the terrorists had asked to be flown to was Cairo, and the Egyptian team felt there would be bad feeling directed towards them.

"You give a party, and someone is killed at the party, you don't continue the party. I'm going home."  ~ Jos Hermens,  Athlete.

It didn't take long though,  for most the sportsmen and women of the Games to get their usual sense of priorities back.  Just 4 days after the 11 Israelis were murdered, all of the political dissent at the Games was focussed back on the Cold War & the fight for medals.  Why would anyone want a medal from such tainted games??   



A Palestinian guerrilla group, the Black September Organization claimed responsibility for the killing of the eleven Israeli's in Munich. The Fatah originated in 1957 and boasted an estimated membership of over 11,000 by the late 1980's. The United States Department of State's 1988 publication of Terrorist Group Profiles, describes the Fatah as the military arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).  Fatah is an acronym spelled backwards representing Harakat al-Tahrir al Filistini. The phrase translates as Palestine Liberation Movement.  Former Fatah leader Yasir Arafat assumed leadership of the PLO in 1969.  The Fatah utilized the name Black September Organization from approximately 1971 to 1974. Some sources speculate that Arafat utilized the name to distance himself and the PLO from the actions of the BSO,  in a bid to hunt a certain respectability among the International community.   Many terrorist experts speculate that Arafat controlled Black September and utilized it as his primary military force.   

In September 1970, King Hussein's military forced the group out of Jordan and into Lebanon.  The expulsion of Fatah from Jordan and Egypt severely limited the group's ability to launch cross-border operations into Israel.  Thus, the Fatah resorted to increased terrorist activities as a means to attack Israel.  Black September conducted nine major terrorist attacks in 1971 and early 1972 prior to the Munich Olympic incident.  Dedicated to armed struggle, its goal has never changed .... unable to defeat Israel militarily, however, the Arab strategy is to demonize and delegitimize, creating yet another Arab Palestinian state, in addition to Jordan.   In order to accomplish this, it concocted a narrative,  an identity and ethos to compete with Zionism and Jewish history,  Palestinianism!!

It is widely believed that a subsequent Lufthansa 'hijack' in West Germany, where the perpetrators called for the release of the surviving Münich terrorists was rather convenient for the German authorities.  They were able to swiftly hand the suspects over to Libya, and avoid the embarrassment of a trial which might expose their failure to prevent the kidnapping and the deaths of the Israelis.  In scenes that are lamentably,  still depressingly familiar today, those who had murdered unarmed civilians were treated as heroes of war upon their return to their Arab homelands.    It was followed up by a world-wide effort to legitimize the Terrorist Arafat which directly lead to the Oslo Accords, & to negotiations to carve up Eretz Israel in the guise of 'peace negotiations'.   Bassam Abu Sharif, a member of the PFLP at the time, said the motive for the operation in Munich was to attract publicity for the Palestinian cause and to win the release of Palestinian prisoners. It suceeded & Israel has been demonised.


Don't be Deluded .... those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it!!  This is an apt description of the present Israeli Government, as well as most of the terrorist appeasing governments of the world, involved even today in 'peace' talks with those who proclaim the perpetrators of  this murder in Munich as heroes & whose avowed goal is a Judenrein Middle East. The Massacre at Munich  was one of Islam's most gruesome displays of its signature contribution to civilization in the twentieth century. Its cold-blooded brutality is pure Islam,  as surely as it's murderous mayhem forever changed the New York skyline on another September day. 




Let us remember the 11 Israeli team members taken hostage and subsequently murdered in Munich ....
 
1) wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund (inset), age 40;
2) wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg, 33;
3) weightlifter Yossef Romano, 31;
4) weightlifter David Berger, 28;
5) weightlifter Ze'ev Friedman, 28;
6) wrestler Eliezer Halfin, 24;
7) track coach Amitzur Shapira, 40;
8) shooting coach Kehat Shorr, 53;
9) wrestler Mark Slavin, 18;
10) fencing coach Andre Spitzer, 27;
& 11) weightlifting judge Yakov Springer, 51.


2 comments:

  1. Yakov Springer was the uncle of a good friend of mine.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The whole event could have been avoided and that is what is sad.

    ReplyDelete