By Way of Deception; The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer by Victor Ostrovsky

Author:Victor Ostrovsky [Ostrovsky, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART III--By Way of Deception

9 Strella

IN NOVEMBER 28, 1971, four terrorists brazenly assassinated Jordanian Premier Wasfi Tell as he entered the Cairo-Sheraton Hotel. Tell, a pro-Western Arab intent on negotiating with Israel, thus became the first target of a murderous band of Palestinians called Black September, or A ilul al Aswad in Arabic, which took its name from the month in 1970 when Jordan's King Hussein crushed the Palestinian guerrillas in his country.

Easily the bloodiest and most extreme of the fedayeen — an Arabic word for guerrilla fighter — Black September quickly followed up Tell's assassination by murdering five Jordanians living in West Germany whom they accused of spying for Israel. They attempted to assassinate Jordan's ambassador to London and they set off damaging explosives in a Hamburg plant making electronic components for sale to Israel, and in a refinery in Trieste that they claimed was processing oil for "pro-Zionist interests" in Germany and Austria.

On May 8, 1972, a team of two men and two women seized a Sabena jet with 90 passengers and 10 crewmen at Tel Aviv's Lod International Airport, trying to force the release of 117 fedayeen imprisoned in Israel. Next day, the two male terrorists were shot dead by Israeli commandos, the women captured and sentenced to life in prison. On May 30, three machine-gun-toting Japanese radicals, paid by the fedayeen, opened fire in Lod Airport, killing 26 tourists and wounding another 85.

Then on September 5, 1972, at the height of the XX Olympiad in Munich, a Black September team stormed the Israeli compound in the Olympic Village, murdering 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

The resulting standoff with German police was televised live around the world. The group already had members working in Germany, and the week before the Olympics began, several Black September members had headed for Munich, traveling separately, bringing with them an arsenal of Russian-built Kalashnikov assault rifles, pistols, and hand grenades.

Three days later, Israel had reacted to the atrocity by ordering about 75 planes — the heaviest raids since the 1967 war — to bomb what Israel said were guerrilla bases in Syria and Lebanon, leaving 66 dead and scores wounded. Israeli jets even shot down three Syrian planes over the Golan Heights, while Syria downed two Israeli jets. Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon to fight Palestinian terrorists who had been mining Israeli roads, and the Syrian army massed on that country's borders in case the hostilities turned into all-out war.

Israelis, already deeply disturbed by outside actions against them, were literally dumbfounded when on December 7 the country's internal intelligence agency, Shin Bet, arrested 46 people for either spying for Syria's Deuxieme Bureau (G-2) or knowing about the spy ring and not reporting it. What really shocked them was that four of those arrested were Jews and two of them, including the leader, were sabras, native-born Israelis, caught spying for an Arab country.

Right after Munich, Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered retribution. Then a grandmother in her mid-70s, Meir had mourned the Munich

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