On September 5, 1972, 50 years to the day, Israelis are suspended from their only black and white television or radio. These Munich Olympics, also called “Games of Joy”, were supposed to make people forget those organized by the Nazi regime in Berlin in 1936; but eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage in the middle of the night by a Palestinian commando, “ Black September”then all will be slaughtered.
>> Munich 1972: 50 years later, the memory of “images that cannot be forgotten”
Israel experienced this massacre live, hoping for a happy ending: Charles Enderlin, future correspondent for France 2, 26 years old at the time, remembers these jagged hours. “I was a journalist for Israeli radio. Everything ends well, the hostages have been taken to the airport, they will be releasedhe says. Just in case, I look at the AFP feed and I see a dispatch which indicates that, on the contrary, things are not going well at all!
Charles Enderlin then warns his colleagues who were not aware: “I tell them that according to AFP, things are going badly. Colleagues rarely looked at the dispatches in French. And then, during the night, the news from AFP was confirmed: the hostages are dead. We will learn then how it went.”
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir decides to retaliate. From 1972 to 1992, in Europe, Tunisia and Lebanon, a dozen Palestinians were assassinated – the definitive number is not certain: the operation “Wrath of God” was launched. The Mossad is taking revenge and sending a message, says Israeli diplomat Ygal Palmor: “This is a communication to the enemies of Israel and they should think twice, thrice.”
“The Mossad could, if it wanted to, reach any official, in any Palestinian organization, in any place in the world. It would be blow for blow and the blows it would strike would be much more strong and much more painful.”
Ygal Palmor, Israeli diplomatat franceinfo
According to Charles Enderlin, this doctrine is still in force today: “An armed Palestinian, who commits an attack on civilians or an attack on Israeli soldiers, will be found captured and if he resists, he can be shot. This is what is happening now.”
But the operation “Wrath of God” had a terrible blunder: the assassination of a Moroccan restaurant waiter in Norway when he had nothing to do with the terrorists. But Golda Meir had set the line: “I prefer condemnations to condolences”.