On the 5th of September 1972, Palestinian terrorist group Black September (named after the Jordanian Civil War, where the Palestinian Liberation Organisation attempted to overthrow the Jordanian government) took 11 Israeli Olympic athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics. 2 of these athletes were murdered in the Olympic village before an ensuing hostage crisis.
The West German police, ill-equipped to deal with a terrorist attack, and unwilling to appear like a police state only 27 years after the end of World War 2, blundered repeatedly to save the hostages. Raids on the apartment containing the terrorists and the hostages were blown due to live TV coverage, police chickened out of operations at the last minute, and snipers were not given the right equipment to take down the hostage-takers.
The Israeli government offered to send a special counter-terrorism team to free their own hostages, but the West German government denied the request – sealing the fate of the hostages.
The West German police helped the terrorists acquire a helicopter, which carried them to an airport where a failed firefight resulted in the execution of the remaining 9 hostages, and the death of a West German police officer.
Five of the terrorists were killed, with three more being arrested by West German authorities. The captured terrorists were freed only two months later to fulfil the demands of the terrorist hijackers of the Lufthansa 615.
The rest of the Israeli team were sent back home, ending their Olympic journey. The games were suspended for a mere 34 hours, but many events continued during the hostage crisis. It took mounting criticism for the organisers to finally suspend all events.
Apathy and incompetence
The fact that 11 Jews were killed on German soil, a mere 27 years after the Holocaust, and due to the apathy and incompetence of German law enforcement, was not lost on critics. The events of the Munich massacre have been highlighted in the films Munich (2005) and September 5 (2024).
The reason I remind readers of this dark event is that it highlights how unwilling non-Jewish countries have been throughout history to extend anything but the bare minimum effort to protect Jewish lives. South African critics of Israel need to take note of this.
Threats by PAGAD and the EFF against Jewish schools, museums and synagogues barely make the news, much less garner serious attention from the police. And it is effectively government policy to condemn the only country in the world where the protection of Jewish lives is a matter of principle, not convenience.
This is highlighted by the government’s reluctance to condemn the October 7 massacre, its foolish attempts to condemn Israel at the ICJ, its hosting of a Hamas delegation in December 2024, and its complete lack of progress in investigating the attempted bomb attacks of the South African Jewish community center in January 2025.
Many South African organisations, notably the Media Review Network, fling the word Zionism around like it’s a slur. Yet, Zionism is not a slur. It is a recognition that Jewish people cannot count on non-Jewish states to protect their lives and rights. It is a recognition that 6 million Jews were slaughtered in Europe by the Nazis during the Holocaust, that hundreds of thousands were robbed and expelled from Europe throughout the centuries, that hundreds of thousands were murdered and millions displaced in Russia, and that 850,000 were expelled from their homes throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Holocaust was an afterthought
It is a recognition that while the Nazis were openly committing genocide, marching innocents into gas chambers and mass graves, the world did nothing. The United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, France, Argentina, and many more countries actively restricted Jewish immigration, even as they fled genocide. And it took their own interests being threatened for these countries to finally challenge Nazi Germany. The Holocaust was an afterthought to them.
October 7th should have united the world behind Israel. The killing of 4-year-old Ariel and 9-month-old Kfir, Israel hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th, should have exposed the brutality of Hamas, Gaza’s democratically elected government.
Yet, Israel had not even retaliated after October 7th before hateful anti-Israel protests erupted the world over.
Israel’s justified retaliation, all in an attempt to save its hostages and end repeated terrorist attacks on its civilian population, was met with scorn and condemnation. Misinformation and propaganda flooded social media, deluding impressionable young Westerners into believing that Israel is committing genocide, and that Israel’s native Jewish population are white settlers.
The Holocaust. Munich. Repeated attacks on Israel’s right to exist. October 7th. All of these, and many more, events paint a clear picture. Israel needs to exist − because the world has still not evolved beyond its irrational hatred of Jews.
[Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre#/media/File:Germany_Israel_Olympics_Attack.jpg]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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