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The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response
Random House
December 2005
272 pages ISBN: 1400064279 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The first full account, based on access to key players who
have never before spoken, of the Munich Massacre and the
Israeli response--a lethal, top secret, thirty-year-long
antiterrorism campaign to track down the killers. 1972. The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black
September group murder eleven Israeli athletes. Nine
hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on
television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the
modern age of terror and remains a scar on the collective
conscience of the world. Back in Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir vows to track
down those responsible and, in Menachem Begin’s words, "run
these criminals and murderers off the face of the earth." A
secret Mossad unit, code named Caesarea, is mobilized, a
list of targets drawn up. Thus begins the Israeli response--
a mission that unfolds not over months but over decades.
The Mossad has never spoken about this operation. No one
has known the real story. Until now. Award-winning journalist Aaron Klein’s incisive and
riveting account tells for the first time the full story of
Munich and the Israeli counterterrorism operation it
spawned. With unprecedented access to Mossad agents and an
unparalleled knowledge of Israeli intelligence, Klein peels
back the layers of myth and misinformation that have
permeated previous books, films, and magazine articles
about the "shadow war" against Black September and other
terrorist groups. Spycraft, secret diplomacy, and fierce detective work
abound in a story with more drama than any fictional
thriller. Burning questions are at last answered, including
who was killed and who was not, how it was done, which
targets were hit and which were missed. Truths are
revealed: the degree to which the Mossad targeted
nonaffiliated Black September terrorists for assassination,
the length and full scope of the operation (far greater
than previously suspected), retributive acts against
Israel, and much more. Finally, Klein shows that the Israeli response to Munich
was not simply about revenge, as is popularly believed. By
illuminating the tactical and strategic purposes of the
Israeli operation, Striking Back allows us to draw
profoundly relevant lessons from one of the most important
counterterrorism campaigns in history.
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