Next month will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the kidnapping and massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Munich. The Israelis were taken hostage and murdered by Palestinian terrorists of “Black September”, most of whom were also eventually killed.
The two articles below concern controversy over the commemoration of the massacre, and were translated by Gary Fouse.
Official recognition of the anniversary has been clouded by two recent issues in Germany. First, remarks by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have caused consternation. Mind you, Mr. Abbas was also one of the masterminds of the Black September massacre, but we’re supposed to forget about that niggling little detail.
From the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle :
Middle East conflict
Palestinian president Abbas causes anger in Berlin with Holocaust comparison
After a meeting with Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of a “Holocaust” and with that, unleashed heavy criticism. The term “apartheid” was also mentioned at the press conference.
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz sees no “apartheid” in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. After a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Berlin, Scholz said he didn’t want to use this term. Abbas had previously spoken about “apartheid” and raised serious accusations against Israel. Abbas demanded that the EU and UN fully recognize the Palestinian state.
Currently the Palestinians only have observer status at the UN. However, Scholz rejected Abbas’ demand. Germany continues to support a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, he said. This is “not the time to change anything.”
Abbas expressed disappointment that after the visit of US President Joe Biden, the US had also made no steps towards a new Middle East initiative. “We are still awaiting today the practical steps that follow words,” he said with a view toward Biden, who had also spoken in favor of a two-state solution.
Abbas accuses Israel of “Holocaust”
Abbas caused serious irritation when he accused Israel of a “Holocaust” against the Palestinians. Israel has “committed 50 massacres, 50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians. Scholz followed the statements visibly angered and with a stony expression, and he was prepared to reply. His spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit declared the press conference over immediately after Abbas’ answer. The question to the Palestinian president had already been announced as the last. Hebestreit later reported that Scholz was angered by the Abbas statement.
Deutsche Welle correspondent Nina Haase, who was present at the press conference, analyzed the incident this way: “Scholz didn’t look good here. But it is also unclear whether Abbas did his cause any good by knowingly provoking the German Chancellor in this manner. It could affect the future support readiness of Scholz.”
Scholz: Unbearable and unacceptable
Later, Chancellor Scholz rejected the Holocaust accusation against Israel by the Palestinian president in clear words. “Especially for us Germans, any comparison to the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable,” Scholz told Bild-Zeitung. He expressed similar words in a tweet:
Tweet from federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz:
“I am deeply outraged by the unspeakable words of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Especially for us Germans, any comparison to the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable. I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.”
Criticism also came from the Federal Government’s commissioner for anti-Semitism, Felix Klein. “Through his Holocaust comparison, President Abbas has shown a lack of sensitivity towards us, his German hosts,” Klein said to the Germany Editorial Network: “That especially applies in view of the question posed about the Olympics attack that was carried out by PLO-terrorists.”
The new German ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, criticized the Holocaust comparison by Abbas as false and unacceptable. “Germany will never tolerate any attempt to deny the uniqueness of the crimes of the Holocaust,” the former government spokesman wrote on Twitter.
Sharp criticism from the International Auschwitz Committee
The International Auschwitz Committee accused Abbas of deliberately using Berlin’s political stage to defame “German remembrance culture and relations with Israel.” Executive Vice President Christoph Heubner made a corresponding statement: “With his shameful and inappropriate Holocaust comparison, Abbas has again tried to serve anti-Semitic aggression in Germany and Europe.” Heubner also directed criticism at the federal government: “It is astounding and strange that the German side was not prepared, and Abbas’ provocations and statements about the Holocaust in the press conference remained uncontradicted.”
Angry reactions in Israel
Meanwhile, the Israeli government also sharply rejected the Holocaust comparison. That Abbas accused Israel of “committing 50 Holocausts while he was on German soil is not only a moral shame but also a monstrous lie,” explained the Israeli government head Jair Lapid. “History will never forgive him.”
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz condemned the statements of the Palestinian president as well. Whoever wants peace “should not distort the truth and re-write history,” the minister warned. The president of the Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem, Dani Dayan, condemned Abbas’s statements as “terrifying”. “The German government, in the Federal Chancellery, must directly react in appropriate ways to this inexcusable behavior,” Dayna demanded.
The second article, from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, concerns the withdrawal from the event by relatives of the victims, due to what they consider an inadequate level of proposed reparations to be paid by the German government:
Debate over commemoration for the victims of the 1972 terror attack
Cancel or not?
by Anna Hoben
August 18, 2022Charlotte Knobloch and the city leaders let it be known that they consider it important to hold a memorial event for the Palestinian terror attacks at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, even without the relatives of the victims. From the CSU (Christian Social Union party) come other voices.
In the anniversary year, there will be much to remember about the happy 1972 games — but the Summer Games in Munich half a century ago also had a horrible side. It was then that Palestinian terrorists carried out an attack on the Israeli team; 11 members of the team and a policeman died. On September 5 there is to be a central commemoration in Fürstenfeldbruck for the victims. But the relatives of the victims have canceled their participation because they consider the promised formal compensation payment from the German government in the amount of €5.4 million euros. The spokesperson for victims’ families described the offer as an “insult” and as a “tip”. Now a discussion has broken out as to whether, and if so, how commemoration can still go forward with dignity.
The Bavarian governmental Commissioner for Anti-Semitism, Ludwig Spaenle (CSU), has put the event in question. “We must seriously question if the commemoration can still be held after the cancellation of the relatives of the victims,” he told the Germany Editorial Network. “It must not degenerate into the grotesque.” The development has not surprised him, and he has warned for weeks that the complaints of the relatives of the victims be taken seriously and must be discussed on an equal footing.
Three months ago, he wrote to Federal Chancellor Scholz (SPD), Spaenle explains in response to an inquiry by Süddeutsche Zeitung, and points out that the situation is “delicate and serious”. To date, he has not even received an acknowledgment of receipt of his letter. In Munich, the memory of the crime was completely suppressed until a few years ago, and the victims’ families have been “unwanted supplicants on the back stairs.” Now the climate, after the uproar over Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Scholz’s subsequent reaction to his Holocaust-relativization at a joint press conference, has become even harsher. He therefore sticks to the suggestion that “in light of the events” a cancelation must be considered.
Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Israeli Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, let it be known that she doesn’t think much of Spaenle’s idea. Her greatest wish would be, “in the end, that the event can take place in a dignified and meaningful form,” she said when asked. She greatly hopes that the federal government and the victims’ families, together and in a timely manner, can find a good solution “in the interest of the memory of the victims and our two nations”.
Mayor Verena Dietl (SPD) thinks it shouldn’t fail due to the money
After several years in which the memory of the Olympic attack played no great role in Germany, September 5, 1972 is today more in the public spotlight. “The task to keep alive the memory of this day concerns all of us.” Visible public commemorations remain, “extremely important,” especially for the younger generations who have no personal connections with Munich 1972.
The position of Munich’s city leaders is similar. Mayor Verena Dietl (SPD) finds the developments “very regrettable”. She hopes that the ongoing negotiations will end well, a consensus with the victims’ families will be reached, and the recriminations will end. “It shouldn’t fail based on the payments”. The memorial event is an “important sign”. The memory of the victims of the terror attack is now part of that. “People cannot act as if it never happened.”
The Parliamentary leader of the Green Party, Dominik Krause, says that cancellation of the commemoration would help nobody. In his view, a cancellation should only be if the victim’s relatives demanded it — otherwise, it is important that the city commemorate the event. He can understand the continuing displeasure of the victims’ families, according to Krause, after the “completely unworthy and inappropriate” way they were treated for decades. He also believes, however, that the Federal Government is trying to make amends-and hopes that there will be a good solution. Basically, the Federal Government must find a new way to deal with the victims of right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic violence, including payments for damages.
The CSU party chairman in the city council, Manuel Pretzl, sees it differently. In this “bad atmosphere”, we cannot be responsible for going through with the commemoration. “I would cancel it.”
The new Germanistan would celebrate them if not for the Semitic connection.
See, it is fun to taunt happy fun ball!
A Zod sighting!
Never again has become “So, next week?”
Re: “Next month will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the kidnapping and massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Munich. The Israelis were taken hostage and murdered by Palestinian terrorists of “Black September”, most of whom were also eventually killed.”
Many people have forgotten, if they knew it in the first place, the significance of the group’s name, “Black September” and its importance not just in human history, but Islamic history. The name is a reference to the Siege and subsequent Battle of Vienna in September 1683.
Beginning in July, 1683, the Islamic armies of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha of the Ottoman Empire, laid siege to the city of Vienna and the forces of the Holy Roman Empire and civilians garrisoned inside it. Despite inflicting heavy casualties upon the invaders, the besieged city was nearly broken by mid-September when a Polish-Lithuanian relief force led by Polish King Jan III Sobieski arrived. On September 11-12th, the Christian forces defeated and ultimately routed the Muslims, who were forced to flee back from whence they came.
September 11th, then, is a black-letter day in Islamic history, one that certain modern-day Muslims remember and know only too well.
The founder of Black September was Ali Hassan Salameh, a jihadist who married the grand-daughter of the famous Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Al Amin al-Husseini, who had been a firebrand in Middle Eastern geopolitics for decades since the 1920s.
A Pan-Arabist and fanatical anti-Semite and hater of Jews, al-Husseini had participated in the Holocaust as a member of the inner circle of the Nazi Party. A wanted man, he had fled to Europe early in the war following his role in the failed Arab revolt in Iraq. After a brief period in Italy, he ultimately found his way to Berlin in Germany, where he found a home for the duration of the Second World War.
Warmly-received by the Nazi Party and some of its highest-ranking members, such as Heinrich Himmler and ultimately Hitler himself, al-Husseini was seen as a key player in helping Germany win support and allies in the Arab world. To this end, the Mufti was provided with a lavish home in the suburbs of Berlin, a staff – including a chauffeured private automobile – and a radio show broadcast in Arabic directed towards listeners in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Islamic world.
Husseini took part in the Wansee Conferences and the formulation of the “Final Solution” for the extermination of Europe’s Jews and other enemies of the Nazi regime.
Indeed, he quickly became known for his frequent inquiries as to its progress and his exhortations that the Jews be exterminated more quickly.
Many historians now believe that al-Husseini should have been charged and tried at Nuremberg, but British and French authorities let him slip through their fingers in the period immediately after the war, perhaps believing that allowing him to escape would benefit them later on in good will within the Arab community.
Amin al-Husseini died in 1974, having lived long-enough to see the Black September terrorist strike against the Munich Olympic Games. In more ways than one, al-Husseini was the ideological fountainhead from which that group arose in the first place.
Georgiaboy61: Thanks for providing more details about the history of Black September. Such groups don’t just appear out of nowhere. There is always a history, and when it comes to Islamic history and the history of relationship between Jews and Muslims, you have to go all the way back to the Bible to understand fully the nature of the ongoing conflict.
Then, throw national politics and geopolitics into the mix, and it’s no wonder the conflict remains intractable and unresolved.
Re: “Such groups don’t just appear out of nowhere. There is always a history, and when it comes to Islamic history and the history of relationship between Jews and Muslims, you have to go all the way back to the Bible to understand fully the nature of the ongoing conflict.”
When most people think about the Holocaust of WWII, they think about the Jews victimized therein, but many forget that Hitler was also implicitly hostile towards Christianity. Evidence of such is in “Mein Kampf,” (in German “My Struggle”) his magnum opus written while imprisoned at Landsberg Prison in the 1920s.
In the book, he expresses the opinion that Christianity was/is a weak and corrupt faith, and the future dictator of Germany goes on to express admiration for Islam, even stating that he wished that the Mohammedans had won at Tours in 832, instead of Charles Martel and his Christian armies. Hitler concludes by saying that Islam is a proper creed for warriors and conquerors.
The communists love to claim that National Socialism was rooted in Christianity. That’s utterly false. What they’re doing is cherry-picking the historical data.
During the 1930s, Hitler and his advisors consolidated power by appealing to different interest groups. Since there were many Catholics in southern Germany and Bavaria, and a lot of Protestant Lutherans in northern Germany, the Nazis sought support from both groups.
They offered rewards, financial and otherwise, to clerics who joined the party, and some took these blandishments. The reality, however, is that Nazism was anti-Christian. If they can be said to have any real religious faith, it would probably be paganism. Ultimately, had Nazism persisted long-enough, perhaps Islam. But that is of course speculation, since the “Thousand Year Reich” lay in ruins by spring, 1945.
Re: “Then, throw national politics and geopolitics into the mix, and it’s no wonder the conflict remains intractable and unresolved.”
That’s quite correct. The European colonial powers – chiefly Britain and France, but others also – played geopolitics to the hilt when it came to the Middle East and North Africa. The British in particular, were past masters of dividing up their colonial possessions in a way as to maximize tribal and other internal strife to their own benefit.
That’s what happened at the Versailles Peace Talks in 1919 after the Great War; bureaucrats and functionaries of the British and French governments sat down with some maps of the Middle East and North Africa, and drew lines dividing the spoils, heedless of naturally-occurring boundaries and logical divisions which long-predated the conference. Today, more than a century later, the civilized world is still dealing with the fallout of those hastily-taken decisions.
Georgia, the name Black September refers to the massacre by King Hussein of Jordan who the PA tried to over throw the previous year, where ole King Hussein had the sense to wipe out over 50,000 of them by his Bedouin army who ruthlessly hunted them all down and threw out the rest into Lebanon where that action has continued to plague that country to this day.
„ payment for damages“…. hmm, last time I checked it was Palestinians who killed the jewish sportsmen. So sue them .
Whilst I view with distaste the way the Holocaust (and Holodomor and Armenian Massacre) is used to demonstrate the victimhood of Jews and others, I view the Shoua as the inevitable culmination of the eastern European slide into anti-God paganism. Paganism, whether in the form of Nazism, Communism or Islam always ends up murdering innocents; sometimes for their beliefs, other times because of their dissent.
Just a couple of weeks ago we were showered with explosive missiles by the ‘poor’ Palestinians, each missile was a war crime in itself. But because most of us underneath this bombardment were the despised and rejected ‘jooz’ these illegal acts are acceptable and it is Israels self defense which is unacceptable (and supposedly ‘disproportionate’)
Abbas tried to play on the ‘woke’ view of Jews as ‘white supremacist’ acolytes, but European (German) wokism is different to US wokism, after all the ‘first nation’ in Europe is ‘white’. So Abbas put his foot in it.
I do not see Turkey getting the same treatment over its illegal invasion of Cyprus and the continuing occupation thereof.
Islam promotes lies and deception in order to advance Islam, the World needs to understand this, you cannot make a treaty or a contract with Islam, Communism or Nazism, for to these philosophies, the ends always justify the means. It is only Judeo-Christianity that says let your yes be yes and your no be no.
That is the problem right there MC, you think various acts are war crimes, there is no such bloody thing, there is only war, this is why you Israeli’s have taken it on the chin for so long, too afraid of killing people and breaking things, there is only Victor and vanquished, that is it, and how you get to be the Victor is a simple math problem, no more muslims = Victory. There is no substitute for Total Victory, otherwise you Israeli’s continue to do the same thing over and over(limited engagements) expecting different results and emptying the treasury in the process while getting more of your property damaged and people killed and wounded. A bad strategy if there ever was one, and yeah my friend, we ain’t any better in the US.
@ MC
Re: “I do not see Turkey getting the same treatment over its illegal invasion of Cyprus and the continuing occupation thereof.”
It is to the eternal shame of the West that the recent aggression of the Turks against Cypriots and Greeks, amongst others, has been consigned to obscurity. What “genius” let the fox into the hen-house in the first place, i.e., invited the oldest enemy of western civilization into its foremost alliance, NATO? It is almost certainly because of Turkey’s status as a member that nothing has been done. Brussels probably does not want to risk upsetting Ankara.
Re: “Islam promotes lies and deception in order to advance Islam, the World needs to understand this, you cannot make a treaty or a contract with Islam, Communism or Nazism, for to these philosophies, the ends always justify the means. It is only Judeo-Christianity that says let your yes be yes and your no be no.”
How true! Islamic doctrine – by which I mean the three authoritative sources of Islam, the Koran, the Hadiths and the Sira – command believers to deceive and mislead the infidels, and to form false truces with them when Islamic interests are threatened or when it benefits Muslims. Likewise the communists and the fascists, who are peas from the same ideological pod. Neither can they be trusted.
@Georgiaboy61
Turkey was brought in because of its location bordering the Soviet Union. It offered locations for surveillance of Soviet activities as well as ensuring their Black Sea fleet wouldn’t go very far in wartime.
Truth is, no one expected Turkey, or Greece, Italy, Spain, or Portugal, to be of much use in a NATO – Warsaw Pact conflict other than as locations for air and naval bases.
Abbas finally acknowledges that there was a Holocaust! Perhaps he sees a Nexus of powers because he himself engaged in one.
. His 1982 dissertation, published as “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism,” famously argues that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in order to spur more Jewish immigration to Palestine.
The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism
Abbas has never unreservedly repudiated the document, and has in fact regularly reaffirmed its core argument, saying in 2013 that he had “70 more books that I still haven’t published” proving the Zionist-Nazi partnership.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/mahmoud-abbas-still-a-holocaust-denier
https://www.memri.org/reports/palestinian-authority-tv-lauds-president-abbas-holocaust-denial-phd-thesis-terror-attacks
It is actually worse than that, and there is some truth in the idea of zionist co-operation with the Nazis. The Kastner affair brought much of this to light.
This is the official view of the affair:-
https://www.shabak.gov.il/SiteCollectionImages/english/Moreshet/kastnerAffair_en.pdf
The other side of the coin is here:-
https://www.jewishhistory.org/the-kastner-affair/
“The result was the infamous Kastner trial. All the bad blood came out. Most damning of all were the accusations against the leaders of the Zionist movement, who it was claimed knew about the plight of Hungarian Jewry but did nothing to save it because in their political framework they believed that somehow it would be better if the Jews in Europe perished. The highly acrimonious trial was described in a famous book, Perfidy, by American playwright and Jewish activist, Ben Hecht. Though banned in Israel it quickly became an underground bestseller, especially among anti-Zionist Jews.”
The socialist camp; Herzl Weizmann and Ben Gurion did not want ‘shetl’ Jews coming to Israel, and they considered Hungarian Jews as shetl Jews. So the Ben Gurion block co-operated with their British overlords to keep these Jews out of Palestine, end thus sentenced them to gas of Birkeneau.
It is important to understand that Marxist influences in the Israeli left, Israel was to be a modern ‘Socialist” state where western European Jews could be ‘assimilated’ into the Liberal , socialist establishment.
Shetl Jews fell into the Marxist definition of un-absorbable, backwards tribes, and were thus scheduled for extermination whatever, just like Highland Scots.
Both of these groups are in my ancestry, I wonder why I hate Socialism…..
So Abbas is not totally wrong, but is deceitful in that he is linking the actions of one particular Hungarian Jew in 1944 to the Israeli government of the mid fifties and later.
Along with Arafat, Abbas was an acolyte of Haj Amin (see above) whose pro-Nazi stance was far, far worse than anything to do with Kastner. Abbas is a total Hypocrite.
https://www.amazon.com/Perfidy-Ben-Hecht-ebook/dp/B00F31FSKI/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3PQ9W6B8VEHIM&keywords=Ben+Hecht&qid=1661149789&s=digital-text&sprefix=ben+hecht%2Cdigital-text%2C345&sr=1-3