Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team

385 Pages·2016·1.76 MB·English

by  George Jonas

GEORGE JONAS
VENGEANCE
For Barbara Amiel,
and for Assi, David, Kathy, Kopi,
Milt, Tony, Smadar and Yasir,
and for those who died
from the ones who lived.
Thus saith the Lord God; Because the
Philistines have dealt by revenge,
and have taken vengeance with a
despiteful heart, to destroy it for
the old hatred;
Therefore thus saith the Lord God;
Behold I will stretch out my hand
upon the Philistines;
And they shall know that I am the
Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance
upon them.
Ezekiel 25:15–16–17
They won’t believe the world they
haven’t noticed is like that.
Graham Greene, Ways of Escape
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Foreword to the 2005 Edition
Preface
Introduction
PROLOGUE Munich
The Making of the Agent
PART I
Avner
CHAPTER 1
Andreas
CHAPTER 2
Changing Jewish History
PART II
Golda Meir
CHAPTER 3
Ephraim
CHAPTER 4
The Mission
PART III
Wael Zwaiter
CHAPTER 5
Le Group
CHAPTER 6
Mahmoud Hamshari
CHAPTER 7
Abad al-Chir
CHAPTER 8
Basil al-Kubaisi
CHAPTER 9
Beirut and Athens
CHAPTER 10
Mohammed Boudia
CHAPTER 11
The Yom Kippur War
CHAPTER 12
Ali Hassan Salameh
CHAPTER 13
London
CHAPTER 14
Hoorn
CHAPTER 15
Tarifa
CHAPTER 16
Frankfurt
CHAPTER 17
Coming in from the Cold
PART IV
America
CHAPTER 18
Epilogue
Notes on a Controversy
Appendix
Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
Foreword to the 2005 Edition
I been a little more than thirty-three years since Palestinian terrorists slipped
T HAS
into the Olympic Village and, in what later became known as the Munich
Massacre, killed eleven innocent Israeli athletes competing in the 1972 Games.
In the decades since that awful event, I have often reflected on whether Israel’s
response—dispatching me and four others on a mission to Europe to hunt down
and kill the eleven individuals who we were told had planned the massacre—was
the right one. Unfortunately, like our mission, this is a knotty problem with no
easy answers.
So much of what consumes us today in the Middle East is rooted not just in
history but in ancient history. In the case of our mission, that history goes back
nearly four thousand years, to the Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known
expression of what the Romans later called the ex talionis or law of retribution.
The Code of Hammurabi doesn’t actually use the phrase “an eye for an eye” (the
closest it gets is the rather straightforward prescription “If a man put out the eye
of another man, his eye shall be put out”), but it is imbued with the spirit of what
the philosophers call equal retaliation—the idea that the proper way to punish
evildoers is to visit on them the very evil they’ve done to others.
Moses imposed such a law in Israel, and the phrase “an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth” is repeated three times in the Torah. In a very real sense, this is the
flip side of the Golden Rule. Rather than “Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you,” we have “If you do it to me, I’ll do it right back to you.”
In modern times, Israel has embraced, implemented and perfected this
principle—not merely for the sake of vengeance, but as a means of survival. “An
eye for an eye” has been Israel’s guiding strategy in response to terrorism, and
an unbroken succession of Israeli governments has endorsed the notion that it is
the only sensible response. Indeed, in recent years, under Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, the ex talionis has become a guiding principle and tool of the Israeli
army.
Yet is it really a solution? Or should I say, is it really a good solution?
This question has taken on a special urgency since the events of September
11, 2001. Although terrorism had seeped outside of the Middle East prior to
9/11, never before had it involved Americans to the extent it did on that day.
And ever since then, the U.S. government has been consumed with avenging
9/11—to the point where it has prosecuted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and
rattled its rhetorical sabres at every other nation that refused to join in (or at least
endorse) its War on Terrorism.
I am often reminded of my old team’s mission as I follow the news about the
efforts of the United States and its allies to hunt down Osama bin Laden and his
Al Qaeda colleagues. I think about the long hours and dangerous conditions we
endured in the name of seeking vengeance for Israel. The world has changed
greatly over the past thirty-three years, but the mechanics of revenge remain the
same.
And so do its shortcomings. As Gandhi is said to have remarked, “An eye for
an eye makes the whole world blind.” One would be hard-pressed to find a more
devastating—or pithier—critique of retributive justice. But what kind of
guidance does this critique provide in the face of terrorism? While Gandhi’s
revolutionary pacifism might have made sense when employed against a
“civilized” opponent like the British Empire, how can we possibly consider
merely turning the other cheek to adversaries who are willing to commit crimes
on the order of the Munich Massacre or 9/11—or, for that matter, the Holocaust?
The fact is, our conceptions of morality have little power over terrorists. After
all, the terrorists who killed the Israeli athletes in Munich (just like the terrorists
who killed the thousands in the World Trade Center) regarded their actions as
being profoundly moral—holy, even. They viewed themselves as freedom
fighters. To them, Israel was the real evildoer, guilty of crimes so heinous and
vast as to justify virtually any kind of retaliation.
Does this mean we are to throw up our hands and resign ourselves to an
unending cycle of attack and reprisal—a continuing, escalating bloodbath in
which the difference between us and the terrorists will eventually become
indistinguishable? Not at all. The fact is that there are real differences between
us and the terrorists. When terrorists attack, they shed blood indiscriminately.
Indeed, killing innocent people is often the point of what they are doing—either
to send a message to those in power or to terrify the population at large. In stark
contrast, when Israel exacts revenge for terrorist attacks—whether by sending
out a team like mine after Munich or by launching an air-to-ground missile in the
occupied territories after a car bombing—she aims to do it surgically, targeting
only those responsible for the incident that triggered the mission. “An eye for an
eye,” after all, is not a licence for unrestrained barbarism. It means giving back
no less than what you received, but no more either.
So it is that if I had to do it all over again, I would make the same choice I
made when Golda Meir approached me more than thirty years ago. At the time
—a time long before the Camp David Accords, a time long before any
meaningful “peace process,” a time when the entire Arab world (including Egypt
and Jordan) was calling daily for the destruction of the Jewish state and Israel’s
continued existence was very much an open question—responding in kind to the
violence that had been visited upon us was the only course that made any sense.
But we must be clear about one thing. Though I make no apologies for the
mission my team and I carried out in the 1970s—and, indeed, am proud that I
was able to serve my country in this way—I am under no illusions that we did
anything to stop terrorism. As we know all too well, terrorism continues to
darken our lives to this day—if anything, on a much grander scale than any of us
could have imagined back then.
What will stop it? Not assassination teams or military incursions. In my view,
terrorism will continue until the political and economic situation shifts
sufficiently to bring equity and balance throughout all of the Middle East. “An
eye for an eye” may seem an appropriate response, but it is not a solution.
Unfortunately, until we find one, we must be prepared to deal with continuing
terrorist attacks and the subsequent acts of revenge that will inevitably follow.
“Avner”
May 2005
Preface
I of 1981 my publishers asked me if I wanted to meet a man who had an
N THE FALL
interesting story to tell. After a series of fairly elaborate arrangements, a meeting
was set up in a North American city. There, in a small office, I met an individual
who gave me his account of a major episode in Israel’s clandestine war against
terrorism: the activities of a counter-terrorist team that was set up following the
massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972.
Even before contacting me, my publishers had satisfied themselves about the
man’s bona fides. After the meeting I made what inquiries I could on my own,
and came to the same conclusion that they had. It was evident to us that we were
talking to an Israeli agent who had “come in from the cold”—to our knowledge,
the first one.
I undertook to do further research and write a book about the agent’s story. In
the course of the following year, I travelled to several countries in Europe and
the Middle East. I spent some time in two cities behind what used to be called
the Iron Curtain. My informant and I continued meeting in different parts of the
world over a period of time. Following his instructions, I interviewed six other
people in Germany, France, Israel and the United States. I also interviewed a
number of my own contacts—experts, officials, bystanders—who could throw
some light on one aspect or another of the events. Many of the latter I feel free to
acknowledge by name. Some, for obvious reasons, I cannot.
For the same reasons, I cannot identify my main source. Indeed, he took
considerable precautions so as not to have to rely solely on my discretion in
protecting himself from unwelcome research. And he allowed me to learn no
more about him than I needed in order to complete the book.
For my better understanding of the scenario, my contacts made arrangements
for me to observe some minor field operations. Accompanied by agents working
in Europe, I saw something of the rudiments of routine surveillance, the
purchase and use of illicit documents, the setting up of safe houses, and the
methods used in contacting and paying informers. Though my studies were far
from exhaustive, my research afforded a first hand glimpse into the world I