Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Munich Olympic massacre when eight terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Black September group infiltrated the Olympic Village in Munich, broke into an apartment housing Israeli athletes, and took 11 of them hostage.
Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and wrestler Yousef Romano, who attempted to resist, were murdered immediately, with Romano castrated after he was shot. while the others were tortured and abused by their Palestinian captors.
Just after midnight the next day a botched rescue attempt resulted in the deaths of wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund, track and field coach Amitzur Shapira, fencing master Andre Spitzer, shooting coach Kehat Shorr, weightlifting judge Yakov Springer, wrestlers Eliezer Halfin and Mark Slavin, and weightlifters David Berger and Ze'ev Friedman. A West German policeman was also killed.
Five of the terrorists were killed, while the three others spent just a month in prison before being released in a hostage exchange following a plane hijacking bu Palestinian terrorists.
Last month the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, was invited to Germany where he refused to apologise for the massacre. His party, Fatah, not regarded as a terrorist organisation and thought by many as the best hope for peace partners with Israel, issued a statement commemorating the massacre as, 'A heroic operation that was carried out by the Fatah Movement’s foreign special operations branch.' The Palestine Authority has since named four schools after two of the terrorists involved in the massacre.
At the behest of Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage the games, having been suspended for 24 hours, continued the next day. I doubt that would happen today.