GUYS. GUYS.

I FINISHED MY DISSERTATION. IT'S ON ITS WAY TO MY DEPARTMENT AS WE SPEAK.

I made the mistake of rereading it for an eighth time after having sent it over, and of course I found a typo. BUT HEY IT'S DONE SO FUCK IT.

So, I wrote up an answer intending to talk about how the Munich Massacre (the killing of Israeli members of the Olympic delegation in 1972 during the Olympic Games) affected world opinion of the Palestinian cause, but it ballooned into a discussion of what happened in the Massacre, what followed, and how all of that affected the issue.

So I'm just going to post it here, and hope someone bothers to read it. Or not. At least it'll be somewhere!

Sorry, I was going to get to this yesterday but never got the chance. I would like to get to it today, though!

Table of contents for those who wish to ctrl+f, please just ctrl+f any of the bolded or italicized phrases and you should be taken directly to where you want to go:

The Munich Massacre: Background

• Who committed the Munich Massacre?

• How was the Munich Massacre planned?

The Munich Massacre: The Operation

• Hostage Taking

• Negotiations Commence

• Botched Attempt During Transport

• The Airfield Massacre

The Munich Massacre: The Aftermath

• Media Reaction

• The International Arena

The Munich Massacre: Israeli Response

• Immediate Response

• Operation Wrath of God

Anywho, without further ado!

The Munich Massacre: Background

For those who are unaware, the Munich Massacre is commonly used to refer to the hostage-taking and killing of 11 Israeli athletes set to compete in the Olympics.

Who committed the Munich Massacre?

The Munich Massacre was perpetrated by a group called "Black September". Named after the Jordanian affair which occurred in September 1970, during which Jordan forcibly fought the Palestinians in a bloody civil war of sorts. Starting on September 16, 1970, refugee camps were shelled by Jordanian forces who also engaged Palestinian groups, leading to over three thousand dead and eleven thousand wounded, most of them Palestinian civilians. The conflict ended on September 25, 1970, and while the PLO retained its presence in Jordan and the right to operate against Israel, it was severely battered, mentioning it had lost 900 fighters to Jordan's 200. By November 7, 1970, much of the Palestinian fighting force left Amman for other areas in Jordan (north, to the Irbid-Jerash-Aljun triangle), and they remained there until July 1971. After some skirmishes, in July 1971 King Husayn of Jordan ordered his forces to wipe out the Palestinian guerrillas once and for all. Starting on July 13, 1971, by July 19 Jordan claimed to have captured 2,300 guerrillas, with the rest fleeing to Syria mostly, before moving on to Lebanon, where they would stay until 1982. Other Arab states refused to intervene.

In light of this, one might think "Black September" was more interested in fighting the Jordanians. They are not known for this, but they definitely did conduct many anti-Jordanian operations, including gunning down Jordan's prime minister, Wafsi Tal (some reports claim they "symbolically" drank the blood on the sidewalk), until they moved to Israeli targets around December of 1971. At a Fatah Congress in Damascus (Fatah being the group essentially controlling the PLO by now) in August-September 1971, Black September was formed. They carried out operations with both Fatah and PFLP guerrilla forces, including a Lufthansa aircraft hijacking in October 1972 known as the Lufthansa Flight 615 hijacking (which was done by sympathizers and reportedly the PFLP, but meant to free Black September and Fatah prisoners in exchange for the hostages).

Black September is often attributed with the marked increase in terrorist operations against Israeli targets between 1971-1973, and it's clear what their goals were:

Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), the Fatah leader who secretly headed Black September, described his organization's purpose: "to make the world feel that the [Palestinian] people exists."

Attention was the goal, and hijackings definitely grabbed attention. They also tried to establish more support among youth, inspiring and radicalizing them, as well as undermine relations between Arab governments and Western ones, to ensure unity against Israel. Israel had retaliated against the PFLP and Black September principally, and mostly done so within the Arab world. Ghassan Kanafani, one of the PFLP's spokesman, was killed on July 8, 1972 by an agent who placed a car bomb in Beirut. On July 11 rockets hit the Beirut rooms of the PFLP's foreign head of operations, Wadi'a Haddad, injuring but not killing him. Bassam Abu Sharif, Haddad's successor was injured in his Beirut office by a parcel bomb on July 25th. Black September and the PFLP were engaged in a back and forth shadow war of sorts, and the Israeli patience had not yet worn thin, but it would after the Munich Massacre. Black September succeeded in many ways with their objectives, but at great cost. I'll get to that later.

How was the Munich Massacre planned?

The Munich Massacre is an infamous event in Israeli history, and indeed in counterterrorism history. It exemplifies many things, including how not to attempt a hostage rescue, how to retaliate with counterterrorism operations worldwide, and is commonly cited as one of the biggest ways the Palestinian cause continued to get media attention (even if it wasn't all too favorable). So how was it planned?

The story, well...the story of Munich and what followed is my second-favorite story about terrorism and counter-terrorism operations (yes, I am aware terrorism is a charged phrase to some, I am still going to use it because I don't think it's a big deal, sorry if that bothers anyone!). It's second only to the Operation Entebbe rescue, which I've also written about in the past. So I apologize if this comes off as too long: I've really wanted to write about this operation for quite some time, and I'm excited to have the opportunity!

Back to the planning itself. The security measures of the dorms for athletes in the Olympic Village put the Israelis at ease. There were no warning bells. There were some who felt uncomfortable. The Israeli delegation, housed at 31 Connollystrasse, was led by a man named Shmuel Lalkin. Attentive but ultimately not responsible for any counterterror operation in his lifetime, he still felt concerned by the security precautions. As a former IDF major, he was attentive indeed, and so he expressed his concerns about being on the ground floor after touring the new Olympic Village for 7 days. He felt that placing the Israelis at street level was silly, insecure, and so he asked to meet with a West German security official, and an officer named Ruprecht was sent to meet with him. Ruprecht tried to alleviate the concerns of Lalkin, telling him he would increase security and surveillance around the Israelis, but Lalkin was having none of it. He wanted to be moved to a more secure building, one where they'd be housed on higher floors, and where entrances could be more easily secured. Ruprecht told him it was not any of his business to make that choice, and that the Israeli government had coordinated and agreed to the measures.

So Lalkin went to Arie Shumar, the Education, Culture and Sports Ministry’s chief security officer. Still, no luck. The Kopel Report, top secret until relatively recently, noted that Israeli officials had the opportunity to move the athletes but no one made the effort or the contact necessary. Lalkin's letter expressing concerns to Shumar was effectively ignored, with the response saying:

Dear Mr. Lalkin: As Manager of the Israeli Olympic team it would be advisable for you to concentrate on sports. Leave security to the security personnel. Yours Truly, Arie Shumar, Chief Security Officer, Education, Culture and Sports Ministry

That was the end of that. Israeli forces were more concerned with plane hijackings, targetting of Israeli officials (a diplomat was killed in 1972 in London by a letter bomb, for example), and such things. Israel's Shabak, also known as Shin-Bet, had not connected any dots or seen anything necessary to step up security for the Olympic athletes, it seems, focusing instead on things like the Black September hijacking of Sabena Flight 571 on May 8, 1972.

In the meantime, the Black September group was preparing. Abu-Iyad, the Fatah leader coordinating Black September that I mentioned earlier, chose the Munich games for a very specific reason. As he wrote in his book (Stateless), there were three operational goals:

• "...to present the existence of the Palestinian People to the whole world, whether they like it or not..."

• "...to secure the release of 200 Palestinian fighters locked in Israeli jails."

• "...to use the unprecedented number of media outlets in one city to display the Palestinian struggle—for better or worse!"

Despite the secrecy around Black September, I want to mention, and Arafat's denial of any connection between Fatah and Black September, it still was unofficially (he has never confirmed it) by Abu Iyad. Fatah would quietly take the credit for Black September's operation among its supporters, but publicly disavow any connection, for the rest of the world.

Mohammed Oudeh, an operations officer known as Abu-Daoud, was the architect responsible for the Munich Massacre. Fakhri Al-Omri was a skilled operations chief who participated in the Massacre planning, followed it through the stages, and Amin Al-Hindi, who later ran an intelligence wing in the Palestinian Authority, and Atef Bseiso, later Fatah’s liaison with European intelligence organizations, were both involved in the inner circle that knew about the complete picture of Black September. Because the organization was intentionally kept fragmented (no address, no offices, information on a need-to-know-basis, etc.), this inner circle were the real core of Black September planning. Then there were the accomplices: the people who picked up rented cars, smuggled in weapons, concealed documents, etc.

I was pretty amused by the first three comments in this thread over in /r/bestof and I wanted to share that with someone.

Also, the happy birthday post is currently the 5th most popular post ever on this sub. And it has gotten the second most comments ever for a post on this sub, behind only this post.

Hi Historians, thanks for making this sub awesome. That is all.

You don't see many references to Attila the Hun in popular culture anymore.

So I'm at the National Archives reading a recently released file on Bahrain's political situation, 1956. In November, the Suez Crisis was in full swing and Arab nationalist feeling was perhaps at its peak. Bahrain, being a British protectorate and having perhaps the strongest nationalist movement in the Persian Gulf (not including Iraq), witnessed a massive strike which turned into a riot. British homes and companies were attacked and looted, and in response the Charles Belgrave, the British Adviser to the ruler of Bahrain, ordered the arrest of the nationalist leaders.

The nationalist party in released a vicious public statement in response, which descends into this attack on Belgrave:

We are curious to know what the Adviser has to do with this. Is Belgrave the Military Governor? Does this mean that he will remain in Bahrain? The people want to know and the authorities should give them an answer. Where is the Ruler’s authority? Has he handed over all his powers to the tyrant – Belgrave – who does not care for the people, or for the Ruler’s dignity? In every country the Ruler has the privilege of releasing anyone or accepting any sponsor for an arrested person. We would like to know the motives of the Government. Are they trying to support Israel – Britain and France or do they want to antagonize the people so that Belgrave can drink their blood? Is he not satisfied with the blood he has already gorged? Our friend Ebrahim Fakhroo is undaunted and his friends are with him. Again we protest most strongly. The Committee does not support the violent actions carried out by certain persons and feels sympathy for the Catholic Church. We strongly disapprove of this violence and request the people to put an end to it.

I just love the imagery here. I feel it's my duty as a scholar to publish this information, so that one day a 25th century teenager might come across it and take it as evidence that Bahrain was a Catholic Arab nation under the thumb of the British Vampire Empire.

I picked up James Scott's The art of Not Being Governed, and I am struck by his masterful turn of phrase. From just one page:

The size of the pile of rubble you leave behind determines the size of your place in the historical record.

The job of peasants, you might say, is to stay out of the archives.

Wonderful.

I'm currently reading my way through Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music and it's wonderful. Novel, well-written, and often amusing.

Adam Gopik has a short piece in the New Yorker called "Does It Help to Know History?". Gopik's thesis is basically:

Every writer, of every political flavor, has some neat historical analogy, or mini-lesson, with which to preface an argument for why we ought to bomb these guys or side with those guys against the guys we were bombing before. But the best argument for reading history is not that it will show us the right thing to do in one case or the other, but rather that it will show us why even doing the right thing rarely works out. The advantage of having a historical sense is not that it will lead you to some quarry of instructions, the way that Superman can regularly return to the Fortress of Solitude to get instructions from his dad, but that it will teach you that no such crystal cave exists. What history generally “teaches” is how hard it is for anyone to control it, including the people who think they’re making it.

He's a good writer and the piece has plenty of great lines like, "The historical question to which ISIS is the answer is: What could possibly be worse than Saddam Hussein?"

I don't think I agree with his argument, though. He argues, "Studying history doesn’t argue for nothing-ism, but it makes a very good case for minimalism: for doing the least violent thing possible that might help prevent more violence from happening." I'm not sure I agree with him. History goes both ways. Tumbling Saddam led to Isis, good intentions in the Cold War led to the Vietnam War, and the tragic stumble into World War I are three of the main examples he cites, but he misses out on the original sins, of say, propping up dictators. A sort of internationalist minimalism is one of the things that allowed Hitler to thrive. A minimalism slowed U.S. civil rights and moments of dynamism, which many argued were too much too fast, pushed us forward. Of course, this is all a very statist way of looking at history. I see diplomatic history, political history, military history, but where is social history, or cultural history, or even intellectual history? This just comes off as See Like a State, lite (which means everyone not familiar with Scott's arguments should read at least his summary called "The Trouble with the View from Above"). Even within these state‐ly bounds, one wonders what alternative history might have existed in the North of Ireland if the British state had been more active in engaging with peaceful the Northern Ireland civil-rights movement, the one that immediately preceded the violent and long lasting Troubles. The state is a hammer and its strikes can fall unpredictably, often with great force, but, when wielded deftly, these hammer blows can help forge a better shape far more often than they seriously maim. But, of course, as works like Scott emphasize again and again, not every problem is nail.

I've been arguing with my friend, who claimed Christians were the first in history to advance human rights, particularily the abolition of slavery. He claimed slavery were first abolished in Middle Age Europe by Christians. Any truth to that?

I've just started learning about Churchill at school and it seems like he was actually quite a horrible person, supporting eugenics and his views on white superiority. Just seems a bit shocking/weird that someone that is a national hero had such a dark side. Is this as bad as it gets or is there any worse?

This month in cigar history marks the 25th anniversary of the ludicrously expensive Cuban Davidoff bonfire in August 1989. Its estimated that over $7million worth of cigars were publicly disposed of due to Davidoff stopping production with Cubatobaco.

Amusingly, this amount would be nearly triple today since Cuban Davidoffs are ludicrously expensive since they've been out of production since 1991. Just thought someone would find this cool since this is one of the most expensive lightings of cigars in history in terms of value.

Fun fact: Singapore is the only country in history to have gained independence against its own will.

Source: I live in the country which kicked them out. We've been kicking ourselves ever since.

Has anyone here watched James May's Cars of the People? I thought it was fantastic, but was there any bad history?

cough /u/henry_fords_ghost cough

How did places (towns, cities, countries, etc.) handle changing its name? Were citizens usually given the opportunity to voice their opinions on what their city would be called?

Edited because I'm on mobile and this touchy screen caused me to post prematurely.