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

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.

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