Program Information

In September 1972, members of the Black September faction of the PLO murdered Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympic Games. It was an elaborate and tragic publicity stunt.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: In September 1972, members of the Black September faction of the PLO murdered Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympic Games. It was an elaborate and tragic publicity stunt.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Beginning in September 1970, Hussein, the Hashemite King of Jordan, moved decisively to take back control of his country by attacking the increasingly aggressive PLO. Within a year thousands of Palestinians had been killed in fighting with regular Jordanian forces, Yassar Arafat and the POL leadership had been forced out of Jordan, and a new faction of extreme terrorists, Black September, had spun off to exact revenge on Hussein and Jordan. During the following months the group hijacked airplanes and assassinated the Jordanian Prime Minister, but its biggest splash would be in Munich at the Olympics.

At Munich in an attempt to demonstrate that the new Germany had turned away from its militaristic past, the government intentionally relaxed its security precautions. The Games of Peace and Joy would have no elaborate measures to keep the athletes under protection. The slightly over six foot chain link fence surrounding the Olympic Village was easily scaled. In the pre-dawn hours of September 5, 1972, members of Black September took advantage of the lax security and mingled with some returning Americans who had been out after curfew. They hopped the fence with gym bags containing hand grenades and Kalashnikovs, donned ski masks, and attacked Israeli athletes and their coaches asleep in their rooms. Some were killed instantly, some escaped out the back, but the remaining nine were held as hostages in a 20-hour extended drama.

Both Germany and Israel refused to negotiate the terrorist demands that “political prisoners” should be released, but the Germans did transport the Palestinians and their hostages to a nearby airport, supposedly to put them on a plane to Cairo. A botched rescue attempt by German police resulted in the deaths of all Israeli hostages and the killing or capturing of all the terrorists.

If its goal was to create a spectacular act of carnage to call attention to its cause, Black September largely succeeded. There is evidence that PLO leader Arafat was at least briefed on the Munich operation in advance, though he supposedly did not intend that the hostages should be killed and publicly he denied vigorously his complicity. Israeli agents went after and killed most of those terrorists involved in the incident, but that could not bring back the murdered ones to their families. Olympic officials suspended the Games for a memorial service for the victims, but determined that the games would go on. Not until the service following the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Olympics did the IOC officially acknowledge and express regret for the tragic murders at Munich.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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