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Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response

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Aaron Klein's book "Striking Back" and Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" chonicle
the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches by the Black September Palestinian organization at the 1972 Munich Olympic games and tell the story of the Israeli's' government's response, which included a covert campaign to assasinate the terrorists responsible for planning the massacre.

"Munich" is a decent spy movie. "Striking Back" is exciting to read. But the book seems more balanced and credible to me, and it provides a real life case study that is probably worth understanding in the context of today's ongoing war on terror, while the movie appears to bend the facts to fit the story that Spielberg wants to tell.

Both the book and the movie do an excellent job recounting the events in Munich. They both capture many of the same details, like the scene where the Palestinian terrorists force their way into the Israeli dorm rooms using the barrel of an AK-47 as a lever to push open the door while an Israeli athlete tries to hold it shut. Evidently both the filmaker and author have studied the primary sources.

Where the two diverge is in the story of the Israeli government's response. While I have no insight into clandestine operations, I found the book's account much more believable and interesting and note that the author has respectable credentials (including a stint in the Israeli army) and claims to have interviewed numerous sources with firsthand experience of the events.

For example, in the movie, the entire responsbility for assasinating 11 Palestinian terrorists is placed on the shoulders of a single agent, who goes so deeply underground that he ostensibly no longer works for the Mossad. In contrast, the book explains how logistics, surveillance, and combatant teams from the Mossad worked in close coordination, while the cabinet and the prime minister made final go/no-go decisions. In reading the book, one learns something about the Mossad's tactics (for example, shooters always work in pairs) and comes to appreciate the organization's' efficacy and also its limitations -- for example, weak human intelligence and virtually no ability to operate in Arab or communist countries.

In the movie, the agent assasinates his terrorist targets. According to the book, the Israeli's were not quite so successful. Apparently they never got the chief architects of the Munich massacre. Moreover, several of the Palestinian terrorists that the Mossad did eliminate turned out, with hindsight, to have been low-level operatives (and thus "soft targets,") whose connections to the Munich massacre were tangential or non-existent. In one case of mistaken identity, over-eager Israeli agents tailed a suspected terrorist sympathizer to Norway and ended up killing an innocent man. Then several team members were arrested and convicted by the Norwegian courts. Certainly a low point in the history of the Mossad.

The movie wraps up with a focus on the pyschological trauma the Mossad agent suffers in pulling off his dangerous mission. Klein does not attempt to pass moral judgement on the Mossad's actions, but he ends the book with a brief but intelligent assessment of the efficacy of the assasination campagin and raises important questions about whether there was any real deterrent effect.

This excellent book is by an Israeli journalist who was able to get remarkable access to Mossad. One might think this would result in a one-sided presentation, but Klein has done an excellent job of being extremely objective and analyzing the twin motivations of revenge and deterrence that underlay the strike-back assassinations after Munich. The only point on which he isn't objective (and with good reason) is in his unreserved condemnation of the action, inaction, negligence, and callousness (not to mention stupidity) of the German officials during the 21 hours or so of the hostage crisis. The book is worth reading for his thorough account of that one day in September.

Klein's analysis of the Mossad reaction is unsparing, especially in the disaster and tragedy at Lilliehammer, when Mossad agents killed an innocent man whom they should have realized was not Ali Hassan Salameh ("The Red Prince"). Six Mossad operatives were actual imprisoned in Norway for this crime, and the fact that "Munich" never makes mention of this incident is sufficient refutation to those who ridiculously claim that Spielberg and Tony Kushner were insufficiently sympathetic to Israel. While he wrote the book in Hebrew, Klein makes it clear this is not an apologia for Mossad. He sternly questions the rightness of the process in which Palestinian terrorists were identified and "prosecuted" in "show trials" before Israeli Prime Ministers who issued death sentences. People identified as "architects" of Munich often had little if any direct connection to the tragedy. He also carefully analyses the deterrence claim. While Black September terror largely faded after the strike-back assassinations, this appears to have had much to do with the PLO's attempt for legitimacy (Arafat addressing the U.S. in 1974, etc.) and reluctance to incur the wrath of potentially friendly European governments by continuing to execute terror strikes in their countries. Klein also explodes the myth of Mossad invincibility, pointing out with great irony that two of the actual Munich terrorists are still alive, and neither of the actual planners of the mission (Abu Daoud and Abu Ehyad) died at Mossad's hands. Abu Daoud is, in fact, still alive, and Abu Ehyad was assassinated by an extremist Abu Nidal follower because Abu Ehyad had become "soft" on the destruction of Israel.

Don't confuse this book with the movie "Munich," however. "Munich" is based on a different book, George Jonas's "Vengeance," based on the recollections of a Mossad agent. There have been some criticisms and questions of "Avner"'s story in "Vengeance." Klein's account, however, shows that the initial 3 assassinations and the Spring of Youth assassinations in Beiruit were generally very accurately portrayed in "Munich." I see "Munich" as more of a philosophical question about the human cost of the eye-for-an-eye approach, and the ultimate futility of translating ideology into direct and violent action, especially when it means undertaking violent action that is dangerously similar to the type of action undertaken by your enemy. Klein's book is more of a thoughtful policy analysis of what Mossad did, and whether it was effective. While Klein claims that moral judgments are far beyond the scope of his book, they are an inevitable consequence of evaluating the remarkable research that he has compiled.

Klein's Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response reads like the latest bestseller from the pen of a major author.

Having lived through the events of 1972, I found Kleins account of the events succeeding the Olympic massacre to be terribly interesting and somehow very much on target in today's world. I only wish a certain major movie director had read this book before filming his version of the aftermath of the terrorist attack on defenseless athletes.

Klein's story is fast paced, well written, well researched, and jumps off the page at the reader. Striking Back is unapologetic which makes it unusual. The events and the principle characters are presented in a manner that makes sense. As I read Striking Back, I had the feeling that I was at last being let in on inside information. Truly a wonderful read.

Aaron Klein is perhaps one of only a handfull of individuals capable of writing of the events related to Munich. I'm so glad that he did.

When it comes to the story of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre and its aftermath there is fact and there is fiction. The fictional element was illustrated by filmmaker Steven Spielberg's Munich. He claimed the film was `inspired by real events' but it 's plot lines was implausible, not to mention the subjective political posturing and sanctimonious moralising. Funnily enough, left-wing Israeli journalist Aaron Klein has produced a thoughtful and balanced factual account of the Olympic slaughter and the Mossad counter-terrorist campaign that decimated the PLO's `Black September' unit that perpetrated the attack. Klein is an IDF reservist intelligence officer, and he has obviously put his spooky connections to good use.

Spielberg based his film on a widely discredited book relating the Walter Mitty fantasies of a Mossad-wannabe. By contrast, Klein interviewed most of the major Israeli players who planned and executed the operations against Black September. And just as in the craft of intelligence itself, excellent sources provide excellent information. While Munich-the-movie is a case of garbage-in-garbage-out, Klein provides us with an accurate portrayal of precisely what the Israelis did, how they did it, and for what purposes it was done. The angst and disillusionment that afflict Spielberg's fictional Israeli undercover agents are nowhere to be seen in Striking Back. During an interview with the 7:30 Report, Klein explained that the Mossadniks, in fact, were firmly imbued with a sense of the righteousness of their cause: I spoke with more than 50 veterans of Mossad and military intelligence. There was no remorse, no second thoughts. They were proud; most of them were proud of what they did and they are still proud of what they did. And in my personal opinion, rightly so!

The opening chapter of Striking Back relates how in August 1992, almost 20 years after the Munich Olympics, a Mossad team shot Atef Bseiso dead on a Paris street. By that time, Bseiso was the PLO's liaison to the French internal security service, but in 1972 he played a key role in the Black September unit that carried out the Munich massacre. And for that he eventually paid the price. Klein's narrative portrayal of Bseiso's death kicks off a fascinating and not uncritical blow-by-blow account of the undercover war that Mossad waged against Black September in the wake of the Olympic massacre. But the real virtue of Striking Back is found in its balanced discussion of the strategic and operational rationales for the campaign. Certainly a natural desire for vengeance contributed to Mossad's relentless pursuit of the Munich killers and their dispatchers. But Klein clearly outlines that conventional military considerations of deterrence and attrition played an even more important role in Israel's decisionmaking process.

By eliminating the Black September command and control network, Israel believed it could deplete the pool of terrorist expertise that was available for future attacks. And let's not forget the ancient principle of good, old fashioned deterrence through intimidation. On 06 April 1973, a Special Forces team from the IDF's elite Sayeret Matkal unit raided PLO facilities in downtown Beirut, killing three senior PLO leaders in their quarters. Combined with the Israeli retribution campaign in Europe this operation terrified the PLO's senior echelons. Every minute that Arafat and company spent worrying about their own safety was a minute that they could not devote to planning offensive operations against Israel. Klein writes: `The numbers show a steep slide in the frequency of terror attacks against Israelis and Israeli institutions abroad from 1974 to the present.' He continues: there is `near unanimous agreement' within the Israeli intelligence community that this decline was largely attributable to the mayhem inflicted upon Palestinian terrorist groups by the post-Munich undercover campaign. IDF Brigadier General Ido Nehushtan recently reiterated this doctrine during a discussion about Israel's counter-terrorism strategy during the current conflict with the Palestinians: A basic lesson we learned is the importance of preemption. We cannot wait until suicide bombers or terrorists make their way to the target, or rockets are launched at our cities. When pursued where commanders and planners are lurking at their hideouts in the cities, we dramatically reduced the number of terror attacks in our population centres.

Don't try telling that to Steven Spielberg. At the end of Munich-the-movie, the filmmaker clumsily attempts to unive rsalise his sanctimonious moralising about the supposed invariable futility of responding to violence with violence. In a kitschy final scene, the camera focuses on a Manhattan skyline in which the twin towers of the World Trade Centre loom large in the background before the camera fades. But when it comes to weighing the Hollywood theorising of Steven Spielberg against the fact-based logic conveyed by Aaron Klein there is no real contest. While the Tinseltown version of events is suitable for an afternoon of mindless entertainment in a vacuum of false moral equivalence, the message of Striking Back resonates with those who
understand that lethal armed force is sometimes the only moral and practical response to evil

This book is not a written counterpart to the movie "Munich". This book goes into much deeper detail on all the parties involved in the Munich Massacre and the subsequent events that followed years and even decades later. It's well put together and easy to read with enough spy/assassin stuff to keep you moving to the next chapter.

Although published under the byline of a journalist, I suspect that this this is the semi-official, mossad-sponsored version of what happened in the Munich attacks and their aftermath. This is clear from what the dust cover coyly describes as the "unprecedented access" to official document that the author has. It's also obvious because the author so clearly states the Israeli "party line." Finally, the author is intimately connected with the Israeli defense establishment. Enough said.

As previous reviewers have stated, the book was published to coincide with the release of Spielberg's film. However, I don't think the reasons were primarily commercial. I believe that the book is a semi-official effort to counter the ideas in the film, which angered the Israeli defense establishment.

Despite its semi-official origins, this is an excellent book and I heartily recommend it. There are inaccuracies and errors, but the book is carefully laid out and argued. The main thesis of the book is that the post-Munich assassinations of PLO and Black September officials was not motivated only by retributive urges, but served the strategic aim of weakening the Palestinian terrorist bodies by "cutting off the head of the snake." You can take this argument or leave it (I am inclined to leave it, personally). However, the author makes a cogent argument in support of this point of view.

It is important to understand that this thesis is not argued in a vacuum. It may be seen as a veiled arrow aimed at critics of the current assassination policy that the Israeli government is quite openly waging against Hammas and Islamic Jihad leaders in the West Bank and Gaza.

The book is divided into two main parts. The first (and to me most compelling) part deals with the nearly unbelievable errors that led to the disaster of the Munich attacks. The book makes it clear that even discounting hindsight's skewed lens, the events were the result of incredible incompetence and hubris on the part of the Israeli and German governments (more the latter than the former). One particularly irking section deals with the German government's poor treatment of the victims families even decades after the events. In an effort to hide its culpability in the events, the German authorities hid the truth for over twenty years and were forced to finally `fess up and pay only after public uproar.

The rest of the book deals with the assassinations themselves. It's interesting and very well written, but not novel. The topic has been covered previously by other books. Nevertheless, there are some news facts and it's extremely well written. I read it with great interest.

I'll close by saying that the book was well translated into English from the Hebrew original. It is mercifully free of transliterated words (other than "Say'an", which is incorrectly used for a female - oy vey!).

This book gives a new angle to events that I have lived through, but never paused to really think about. It is hard to set the book aside, it flows, but it is really an eye opener, just to see events from a real-life perspective, and not a clichee and laconic description of black-and-white situations. I realize how the reality is much more deep, varied and interesting then I could ever imagine.

Aaron Klein's book, translated by Mitch Ginsburg from the original Hebrew, is the antidote to Spielburg's "Munich." The timing of this book, no doubt, was not a coincidence. Obviously, the point of view is primarily Israeli.

The credit for the excellent writing style goes to Mitch Ginsburg. I doubt that the Hebrew version would be nearly as fun to read (even if I could read Hebrew, which I can't). Translation is tough work, even for fairly straightforward narrative prose. Anyway, this book reads like a Tom Clancy novel.

I was amazed by the incompetence of the Germans as it is portrayed in this book. It seems as though the deaths, or at least some of the deaths, could have been prevented if the kidnapping had been handled differently. That part of the narrative was very disturbing to me, because I remember watching the Munich olympics as a kid of about 8 or 9. I can still feel the shock and pain of the events as they occurred. To think that pride and stupidity contributed to the tragedy only makes things worse.

This book presents the Munich tragedy from the viewpoint of the Israelis and gives the reader a vivid glimpse into the heart of the Mossad. Definitely worth a read.

I just finished, Striking Back, by Aaron Klein. It is the just published, authoritative account of the Munich Olympic massacre by Time Magazine's military and intelligence correspondent base in Jerusalem. Unlike the fictional book Vengence used as the basis for the Spielberg movie, Munich, Klein actually interviewed Mossad agents and researched heretofore classified documents for the real story. As Klein explains, the principles of prevention, deterrance and revenge come to play in any governments' decision in carrying out an assassination, the latter not spoken openly but couched in PC terms. Nevertheless, in most any democracy that has been attacked in war, these principles have been invoked. Yet only Israel has been painted with the perjorative, "eye for an eye". Striking Back is a riveting read complete with action and political historical reality that instructs and frustrates, especially in the case of the Munich Massacre mastermind Abu-Daoud. I finished it in a day and a half. The moral equivalence Spielberg showcases is completely discredited in Klein's book.

This is the second book I bought for my son, and one for myself because my son said that MUNICH was 90% fiction.
VENGEANCE was the story of one Israeli spy team as told to the author by the leader of that one team. This book, STRIKING BACK is more scholarly, and discusses many teams, the theory behind the teams, the results of their wet work, and also tells us about Israeli policy as it changes through the years. Both books help us understand that the facts and stories as presented are 90% fact, and we can learn a gret deal about how Israel survives using an Old Testament technique ("An Eye for an Eye.". Israel's survival depends on how it responds to attacks and we have a clearer understanding of the reason for desperate measures. It's a good book, a more difficult read than VENGEANCE, but worth the effort.