'There We Will Strike Them': The Munich Massacre and Its Aftermath

by Richard Kemp  •  September 4, 2022 at 5:00 am

     

• Prime Minister Golda Meir — who had been a signatory to Israel's declaration of independence in 1948 — refused to bargain with [the terrorists], branding it blackmail. She later said: "We have learnt the bitter lesson. One may save a life immediately only to endanger more lives. Terrorism has to be wiped out."

• Meanwhile Berlin offered safe passage and unlimited cash to the terrorists....

• Libyan president Muammar Gadaffi had funded the attack at the behest of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who subsequently denied any involvement and two years later was feted in a standing ovation at the United Nations General Assembly.

• "We were not engaged in vengeance. What we did was to concretely prevent in the future. We acted against those who thought that they would continue to perpetrate acts of terror". — Mossad Chief Zvi Zamir, in an interview with Yossi Melman, (17 February 2006), Haaretz.

• Too often Western nations, despite earlier rejection, condemnation and sometimes hostility, have eventually been obliged to follow the lead Israel was first forced to take to protect its people. American and European responses to jihadist attacks on their own territory, especially after 9/11, is an example of that. We are at present living through another example: the Iranian nuclear threat. Israeli leaders have repeatedly warned that Tehran's nuclear programme not only represents grave danger to their own country but to the entire region and to the world. As in its response to Munich, Israel is conducting a covert campaign to stop it, including by targeted assassinations. Meanwhile the US and European countries are appeasing the mullahs in Tehran, just as they did with Palestinian terrorists in the 1970s, and are on the verge of striking a deal that will pave the path to an Iranian nuclear capability. This time, ignoring Israeli warnings will have even more dire and far-reaching consequences.

• In memory of: David Berger, Anton Fliegerbauer, Ze'ev Friedman, Yosef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Yosef Romano, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yakov Springer, Moshe Weinberg.

We are at present living through another example: the Iranian nuclear threat... This time, ignoring Israeli warnings will have even more dire and far-reaching consequences. Pictured: A burned-out German Army helicopter photographed on September 7, 1972 at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, after Palestinian terrorists blew it up with hand grenades the day before, murdering nine Israeli Olympic athletes whom they held hostage. (Photo by EPU/AFP via Getty Images)

Fifty years ago this week, 5th and 6th September 1972, the world watched in horror as Jews were again brutally murdered on German soil, at the Olympics in Munich. Eight Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorists, using the cover name "Black September," tortured and murdered 11 Israeli athletes, emasculating one of them as he lay dying in front of his team-mates. They stormed the athletes' accommodation, killed two immediately and held the remainder hostage, demanding the release of 234 terrorist prisoners held by Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir — who had been a signatory to Israel's declaration of independence in 1948 — refused to bargain with them, branding it blackmail. She later said: "We have learnt the bitter lesson. One may save a life immediately only to endanger more lives. Terrorism has to be wiped out."

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Macron's Pessimistic Moment

by Amir Taheri  •  September 4, 2022 at 4:30 am

     

• "Prepare for the end of abundance!" This is the message that French President Emmanuel Macron offered in his first post-holiday pronouncement last month. Though supposedly addressed at the French people, Macron's lamentation seemed to have the entire "Western world" in mind.

• In its current version, the nomos [organizing principle] trying to seize control in almost all Western societies could be described as "victimism".

• In victimism the state is seen as a cash machine distributing money among the victims, while apologizing to them. In the past few years. Western states, both in Europe and North America, have distributed countless trillions...

• Some philosophers, among them the German Jürgen Habermas, have tried to give victimism a Christian varnish. In their reading, the Western world, long after having adopted "secularism", remembers Christianity as a school of frugality, empathy for the downtrodden and atonement of sins symbolized by Christ as the ultimate victim.

• The trouble with that reading is that it is closer to the Greek concept of the scapegoat, than to the Christian concept of redeemer.

"Prepare for the end of abundance!" This is the message that French President Emmanuel Macron offered in his first post-holiday pronouncement last week. (Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

"Prepare for the end of abundance!" This is the message that French President Emmanuel Macron offered in his first post-holiday pronouncement last month. Though supposedly addressed at the French people, Macron's lamentation seemed to have the entire "Western world" in mind.

According to him the era of easily available capital and seemingly endless natural resources, notably oil and natural gas, is already over. The "Western world" must learn to live in a different way.

Though Macron did not use the old cliché about "consumerism" depleting the planet's resources and causing climate change, it was clear that he had half an eye on the ecologist hymn-sheet.

Why would the leader of a democracy encourage pessimism, not to say anguish, exactly at a time that, according to his fanciful analysis, we are heading for dire straits?

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Saving America's Future

by Lawrence Kadish  •  September 4, 2022 at 2:00 am

     

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Standing at a podium in Philadelphia, US President Joseph Biden recently sought to leverage the heritage of a city that gave birth to our American democracy while making such a fiercely partisan speech that its ultimate legacy may be to further divide a divided nation. Had he been more truthful about our nation's current challenges, he might have stood inside a supermarket where prices for basic staples needed by working families are skyrocketing.

He also could have chosen many of our New York neighborhoods where career criminals have essentially been presented with a "get out of jail" card by many in Biden's political party.

Then again, he could have stood next to a gasoline pump and acknowledged that his energy policies have returned us to an era of being energy dependent on foreign nations that are hostile to the very democracy he is sworn to protect.

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