Munich: fact and fantasy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1687815,00.html
Steven Spielberg's new film is based on the Walter Mitty tales of a
former El Al gate guard
Yossi Melman and Steven Hartov
Tuesday January 17, 2006
The Guardian
In 1984 the blood of the Israeli intelligence operatives and the
Palestinian terrorists they hunted in "the war of the spooks" was still
congealing in the back alleys of Europe when a young Israeli named
Yuval Aviv teamed up with the Canadian George Jonas, a budding
journalist. Aviv claimed to be a freshly defrocked Mossad assassin with
a true tale to tell, and the game began.
Their resulting bestseller, Vengeance, was a detailed account of
Israel's response to the Munich massacre. In September 1972, PLO
terrorists introducing themselves as the hitherto unknown group Black
September stormed the Israeli dormitories at the Olympic village and
took hostage a dozen members of the Israeli team. They demanded the
release of their comrades from Israeli prisons. After two days of
negotiation, a failed rescue attempt by German police left 11 Israelis
and five terrorists dead. Israel's prime minister, Golda Meir, summoned
General Zvi Zamir, the head of Mossad, and instructed him to kill all
the PLO operatives directly and indirectly involved.
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