Operation Wrath of God was Israel’s response to the Munich Massacre. In 1972, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Munich, Germany (then West Germany). Eleven, Israeli Olympians and coaches were held hostage and eventually murdered by members of the Black September terrorist group which is part of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Furthermore, five of the eight terrorists were killed in a failed hostage recovery attempt by the Germans. The three remaining terrorists were released in exchange for a hijacked plane (Rosenberg, 2010). Israel’s response was Operation Wrath of God.
In a swift response to the Munich Massacre the “Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir gave instructions for Israeli agents to hunt down and kill those behind it” (Palestine, 2010). Israel planned a covert action against those responsible. According to Lowenthal, the paramilitary operation is the most violent with the least amount of plausible deniability. It involves training and arming a group for direct assault against the enemy (2006, p. 163). Operation Wrath of God is “one of the most ambitious covert counterterrorist campaigns in history” (Palestine, 2010). Israel created the Committee X to organize the operation. They compiled a list of 20-35 Black September and PLO members who were involved with the planning and/or executing the massacre (Palmer, 2010).
A response such as Operation Wrath of God is controversial and difficult to approve. Ordering the killing of more people is morally and ethically challenging. Even though the terrorists attacked innocent athletes is it acceptable to murder more? As the leader of a nation, Prime Minister Meir needed careful examination and good analysis to arrive with the right reaction. O...
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... Was this the first error or just the first one in which the assassins did not escape? Since it was a covert operation it is hard to verify whether or not the continued attacks by Black September were in retaliation to the operation or continuation of the previous attack.
Works Cited
Lowenthal, Mark M. (2006). Intelligence: From secrets to policy [Third Edition]. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
PalestineFacts (2010). Israel 1967 – 1991 Olympic Team Murder. Retrieved from http://www.palestinefacts.org
Palmer, Alun (February 18, 2010). “The Mossad Files; Israel’s Deadly Assassins”. The Mirror. Pgs. 16,17. Retrieved from http://www. LexisNexis.com
Rosenberg, Jennifer (2010). “Munich Massacre”. About.com: 20th Century History. Retrieved from http://history1900s.about.com
Wikipedia (2010). “Operation Wrath of God”. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org
The controversy in the Munich Olympic games was that there was a terrorist attack.During the Munich Games,security guards ignored what they thought were maintance works, but the eight men in warm-up suits were members of Black September, a terrorist group linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization. They entered the suite of the Israeli quarters in the Olympic Village and killed a coach and weight lifter and then took nine other Israelis hostage.The terrorists demanded the release of 200 Arabs from Israeli prisons and a
Prados, John. Safe for Democracy The Secret Wars of the CIA. Chicago, IL: Ivan R Dee, Publisher, 2006.
Richelson, Jeffrey T. The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001.
In this paper, I will do a case study on the Bay of Pigs and why the United States tried to conduct this attack. I will find out what intelligence led to this invasion attempt as well as what intelligence failures were made which resulted in the failure of the invasion. I will discuss what impact the Bay of Pigs had on the United States Intelligence community and what changes was made. I will end this paper with any findings I have concluded to if the failure has any affect on how the U.S. conducts intelligence in today’s world.
In mid-November of last year amidst rising tensions in the Middle East, Israel launched a major offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza on Wednesday, killing the military commander, Ahmed Al-Jabari of Hamas in an air strike. This strike on a car carrying the commander stemmed the beginning to what is known by the Israeli’s as operation “Pillar of Defense”. Following this “surgical” assassination, the Israeli air force struck over 20 underground rocket launch sites belonging to Hamas (governing terrorist organization in Gaza) and the Islamic Jihad. According to Palestinian sources these strikes killed an additional six Palestinians.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
"Lessons Learnt." What Israel's Experience of Dealing with Terrorism Can Teach the Western World? N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of a widespread, profound, unquestioned, and virulent anti-Semitism that led them to regard the Jews as a demonic enemy whose extermination was not only necessary but also just.”1 The author proposes to show that the phenomenon of German anti-Semitism was already deep-rooted and pervasive in German society before Hitler came to power, and that there was a widely shared view that the Jews ought to be eliminated in some way from German society. When Hitler chose mass extermination as the only final solution, he was easily able to enlist vast numbers of Germans to carry it out.
In April of 1980, U.S. military forces comprised of elements from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines attempted, a now infamous operation, to rescue fifty-three hostages in Tehran, Iran – Operation Eagle Claw.2 Unlike Operation Acid Gambit, Eagle Claws failures in intelligence, rehearsals, integration, and Command and Control proved catastrophic. The failures in intelligence caused an increase in the required personnel and aircraft. Although branch specific rehearsals were conducted well above standard, there was little to no joint training that occurred. Moreover, there was no clear chain of command. A participant who remains unnamed, but was involved in this operation is credited with the following remarks, “Even when the best opinions are put together, the page is littered with dotted lines of coordinati...
“No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas” (Advertising, Demonstrations, Propaganda* 98). This rule shows just what the Germans were hoping for, a peaceful, passive, war-free environment in which countries can get together and compete. Although we all know that quite the antithesis was upon the 1972 Olympics in Munich between September the fifth and September the sixth. The Munich Massacre, one of the worst massacres of all time, was driven by the vengefulness of the Palestinian group known as Black September, towards the people of Israel, or more relevantly, towards their Olympic team (Rosenberg). Since this confrontation between Palestine and Israel has been going on for such a long time, the conflict was ultimately inevitable. Or was it? The tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics stunned the world by the murders of the Israeli Olympic team, but the fact that it could have been prevented is completely unacceptable.
"9 Israelis on Olympic Team Killed With 4 Arab Captors As Police Fight Band That Disrupted Munich Games," screamed the headline of the front page of The New York Times. The attack occurred during the wee hours of September 5, 1972, but news of the crisis, although widespread on television sets across the world, would not reach The New York Times until September 6. When it did reach the papers, it was clear that something had gone wrong. Very wrong. The New York Times first reported this event as a mind-boggling screw-up, and in the days that followed, reported on the manner in which the international community retaliated. In other words, news coverage shifted from the pointing of fingers to an eventual call for arms.
The Munich Massacre (5th – 6th September 1972), a planned terrorist attack happening against the backdrop of the Summer Olympics, was a key statement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that carries on to this day. The attack began when eight Palestinian terrorists killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team before taking a further nine hostage. All of the captives were killed along with five Black September members during a large fire fight. Following the massacre, the Israeli government organized retaliation, codename: Operation Wrath of God. The legacy is reflected by the large number of retaliatory deaths, overall effect upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the significant development of Counter terrorist agencies around the world.
It is hard to say that the Jewish Holocaust is that much different from other mass murders throughout history. During this time, the technology and planning were much more complicated and advanced, but the general purpose is consistently similar. German task forces bear a striking resemblance to many other death squads that have targeted and
Tidd, J. M. (2008). From revolution to reform: A brief history of U.S. intelligence. The SAIS
...ed on defending the from any and all threats. The variance in personnel and amount of crime present can be accounted for by the population difference between the United States and Israel while still observing that both countries acknowledge a need for a diversely equipped force shall the moment arise. Despite Israel’s and the United States drastically different approaches to the structure and operations of the law enforcement aspect of the criminal justice system both countries agree on keeping the people safe from criminals and the even more dangerous terrorists. In fact law enforcement from the United States visit Israel and attend training seminars and conferences to learn and pool resources in regards to new techniques on dealing with terrorism, drugs, policing strategies, hand to hand combat, and any topic that can aid the other country (FIND ONE OF THE MANY).