Millions awarded in damages for terror attack at Munich Olympics

On the 5th and 6th of September 50 years ago Black September perpetrated the massacre at the Munich Olympics. Black September was a front organization that the PLO hid behind so that Arafat could distance himself from the Black September terrorist attacks. At the end of August this year, relatives received sizeable compensation.

Members of the grieving families arrive at the memorial service for the victims of the Munich massacre at Lods Airport on September 7, 1972. Photo: Eldan David

Family members of victims of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre recently reached an agreement with the German government over a compensation payment, just days before the 50th anniversary on September 5, which the families had planned to boycott.
“The government welcomes the fact that it was possible to agree with the relatives on an overall concept for the 50th anniversary,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s spokesperson, Steffen Hebestreit at the end of August, The Guardian reports. The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the families would receive 28 million euros.
In connection with the attack during the Munich Olympics 50 years ago, Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer. The members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September were closely linked to Mahmud Abbas and Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party.
On September 5, 1972, eight Palestinians stormed the Olympic Village in Munich, killing two Israeli athletes while taking nine Israelis hostage. Black September demanded that Israel release 234 Palestinian prisoners.
Because of the attack, a curfew was announced in the Olympic city, and the games suspended. Israel refused to give in, and after negotiations with Willy Brandt, the organization was conveyed with hostages to the Fürstenfeldbruck military air base outside the city. When the West German police and military opened fire on Black September, they killed the nine Israeli athletes and coaches they held hostage. In the fighting that followed, five Black September members and a West German policeman were killed.

The three Palestinians who survived were imprisoned in West Germany. Due to the incident, Israel demanded that the world act more decisively and forcefully, and on September 8, carried out bombing raids on Palestinian so-called ‘refugee camps’ in Lebanon and Syria and other places in the Middle East.
The Palestinian terrorist group Black September took its name from the Black September civil war in Jordan 1970. The war was fought between Jordan under the leadership of King Hussein and the terrorist organization PLO led by Yasser Arafat, as a representative of Mahmud Abbas.
The PLO tried to assassinate King Hussein twice which led to violent confrontations in which Hussein resolved to expel PLO from the country.
Jordan’s army forced the PLO and Fatah to leave for Lebanon via Syria. Up until 1982, the PLO then had its base in Lebanon, which plunged the country into a long period of bloody civil war.
The terror group Black September was founded after the war in Jordan to carry out reprisals against Jordanian authorities, the first notable attack being the assassination of Jordan’s Prime Minister Wasfi al Tel in 1971.
After Black September was expelled from Jordan, the organization change to attacking Israeli targets, including the highly publicized Munich massacre of the Israeli athletes.
In his book Stateless, Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), the founder of Black September and co-founder of Fatah, also Arafat’s security chief, wrote: “Black September was not a terrorist organization, but rather an auxiliary unit to the resistance movement… The members of the organization always denied any ties between their organization and Fatah or the PLO.”

The terror attacks at the 1972 Olympics drew renewed attention this August during the European sports championships in, among other things, athletics, canoeing and table tennis that were organized in the city, but above all because of Mahmud Abbas’s visit to Germany which coincided with the sports events.
At a press conference with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Abbas was asked on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian terrorists’ attack on the Munich Olympics in 1972, whether he was prepared to apologize to Israel and Germany for the attacks.
“If we want to go to the past, go ahead,” Abbas replied in Arabic. “I have 50 slaughters committed by Israel… 50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts,” he said, the last word in English.
Abbas’ claims that the Palestinians have been subjected to 50 holocausts created an outcry both in Germany and in Israel: “Inconceivable, Scholz should have thrown Abbas out,” wrote CDU leader Friedrich Merz on Twitter.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid was the first to express his outrage.
“Abba’s accusation against Israel of having committed 50 ‘holocausts’, while standing on German soil, is not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie,” Lapid tweeted in English. “History will not forgive him.”
In a statement to the German newspaper Bild, Scholz was clear in his criticism of Abbas for downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust.
“Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable,” he said.