From the archives: Dark days in the history of sports

Munich Massacre, 1972

Munich Massacre

There has probably never been a sporting disaster more outrageous and notorious than the massacre of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. They were initially taken hostage and later shot in cold blood both before and during the subsequent futile rescue attempt by German border police, which also killed one of their officers.

The attack was perpetrated by eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group “Black September”. They demanded the release of 234 Palestinians and non-Arabs lodged in Israel’s jails along with two German terrorists. The attack could have been averted if, as claimed by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, Germany had acted on a tip-off regarding the attack instead of carrying on with their goal of hosting a “Carefree Games”.

Even the media was in part responsible for the tragedy: in an act of sheer stupidity and nonchalance, they broadcast live images of the police preparing to lodge an attack on the fidayeen, because of which the first attempt at an ambush had to be deserted. The only silver lining of the massacre was that it started a global wave of preparations for counter-terrorism to avert such a scenario, where the German police were clearly incompetent to match the fidayeen in any way, in the future.