By Alan Hart

Evidence that the mainstream media is not prepared to balance Zionism’s propaganda lies with the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel was on display in the BBC’s obituary tribute to David Coleman who died on 21 December at the age of 87. The face and voice of BBC television’s sports coverage for the best part of half a century, he was in Munich for the 1972 Olympics where, according to the commentary of the BBC’s tribute to him, “Arab gunmen held hostages and then killed the Israeli athletes”.

The truth about the killing of the nine Israeli athletes who were taken hostage by Fatah’s Black September terrorists after they had killed one is as summarized in Chapter 8 of Volume Three of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, which is subtitled “Conflict Without End?” Here now is that summary which contains some context and runs to two and a half book pages.

Prevented from directing Palestinian anger and bitterness away from violence and into positive political action in partnership with Jordan, Yasser Arafat, Khalad Hassan and their mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization leadership colleagues lost control of events to those in the rank and file of their liberation movement who favoured the terror option, including a growing number of Fatah’s own supporters – the Black Septemberists for whom use of the terror weapon was a new experience.

The prime purpose of the operation was to draw worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause. It was use of the terror weapon for public relations purposes.

One of Fatah’s junior officers who helped to bring the BSO [Black September Organization] into being from the grassroots up was a young man whose nomme de guerre was Ben Bella. (At the time I talked with him, he was Abu Iyad’s most trusted aide). Ben Bella told me their anger and despair was inflamed by the knowledge that after the PLO’s expulsion from Jordan, many Arab regimes were celebrating the end of the organisation. He said: “We came to the conclusion that it was only by playing the terror card that we could make our voice heard in the world.” (Such a conclusion was entirely logical from a Palestinian prospective, given the mainstream media’s approach to reporting the conflict in those days. It was not interested in the Palestinian claim for justice, but it fed, vulture-like, off Palestinian terrorism. In my opinion the Western media’s indifference to the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle helped greatly to make terrorism inevitable.)

I asked Ben Bella about Arafat’s attitude to the Black Septemberists. He said:

At the time Arafat could not afford to speak against us in public because he knew what we were doing had the support of the majority in the rank and file of our movement. Our way was the popular way. But in our private meetings he took every opportunity to tell us we were wrong. I remember one occasion when he said to some of us, “You are crazy to take our fight to Europe.” I was very angry and I said: “Abu Amar, maybe you are right, maybe we are crazy, but tell me this… Is it also not crazy for us to sit here in Lebanon, just waiting to be hit every day by Israeli fighter planes, and knowing that we will lose some ten or more of our fighters every day without advancing our cause… Is that not crazy, too?” And, of course, he had no answer to that.

Though they denied it for some years (until I engaged them in lengthy conversations for my book on Arafat), all of Fatah’s leaders had prior knowledge of, and, with the exception of Khalad Hassan, effectively sanctioned, one Black September terror operation: the one that was witnessed by the world at the Munich Olympic Games in September 1972.

After shooting dead one Israeli athlete, BSO (Fatah) terrorists took nine others hostage. The prime purpose of the operation was to draw worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause. It was use of the terror weapon for public relations purposes. The demand of the five terrorists – the release of 200 PLO prisoners in Israel for the lives of the hostages – was a negotiating position. An embarrassed West German chancellor, Willy Brandt, favoured a non-violent end to the affair. He wanted to exchange the lives of the Israeli hostages for the lives of the Black September terrorists. So did Fatah’s leadership. Abu Iyad, the Fatah and PLO executive with hands-on responsibility for the operation, made an agreement with [Egypt’s] President [Anwar] Sadat to have the hostages and the terrorists flown to Cairo and for all, hostages and terrorists, to be freed unharmed there. In that event BSO would have failed to get the release of the 200 prisoners in Israel, but it would have been able to claim a victory in the sense that its action had resulted in worldwide publicity for the cause.

[Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan] took the line that they [Israelis] must be prepared to sacrifice the lives of their athletes in order to demonstrate that Israel would never give in to terrorism. He wanted a shoot-out in Germany.

In Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir also favoured the non-violent solution. Her greatest concern was that not one Israeli life be lost. At an emergency cabinet meeting in her official residence, Defence Minister [Moshe] Dayan opposed her. He took the line that they must be prepared to sacrifice the lives of their athletes in order to demonstrate that Israel would never give in to terrorism. He wanted a shoot-out in Germany. The terrorists had to be captured or killed at whatever cost; and he threatened to resign if he did not get his way. Reluctantly, to avoid a government crisis, Golda gave him the license he was demanding.

Israel then went through the motions of agreeing to Sadat’s proposal for a non-violent solution, and the terrorists and their hostages were transferred in two helicopters to Furstenfeldbruck military airport where a Boeing 727 was waiting with lights out to fly them all to Cairo. Apparently.

When one of the terrorists went to inspect the darkened and empty plane (there was no crew on board, it was going nowhere), the floodlights were turned on and five West German marksmen, supported by police and special forces armed with sub-machine-guns, took aim. And then it all went badly wrong. When the shooting started one of the terrorists threw a grenade into one of the helicopters. When it was all over the five terrorists and the nine Israeli hostages were dead. Dayan had had his way. (It was a great public relations coup for the Zionist state. As embedded in Western public recall long after the horrific event, and still today, Palestinian terrorists had set out to slaughter Israeli Olympic athletes. As the brief summary above indicates, that was Zionist propaganda nonsense, which the mainstream Western media still peddles to this day.)

In associating themselves with the Munich operation Fatah’s leaders had been trying to perform an act of crisis management. Because support for the terror option was pretty much universal in the rank and file of the liberation movement, they had taken the view that in order to beat their own terrorists, they had first of all to be seen to be joining them. Though he personally opposed the Munich operation, Khalad Hassan put it this way:

We had to associate ourselves with what was happening in order to give ourselves the credibility to take control of the situation and then turn off what you call the terror tap. And it is for this act of crisis management that Arafat, myself and others in the leadership who were against the use of the terror weapon are called terrorists.

Fatah’s leaders did eventually succeed in closing down the BSO, but there was nothing they could do to prevent the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] and foreign mercenaries it recruited from continuing to play the terror card. Thus it was, through the 1970s, that Israel had no trouble at all in convincing the Western world that the PLO was one vast terrorist organization and that Yasser Arafat was the terror master. That was not true but it seemed to be so to those whose only source of information was the news on television, radio and in the newspapers.

Partly out of fear of offending Zionism too much and provoking its wrath, the BBC’s news and current affairs chiefs have no desire to put the truth about the making and sustaining of the Israel-Palestine conflict on their agenda.

That’s the end of the short summary as in my book. I would welcome the opportunity to sit with the BBC’s news and current affairs chiefs to outline the need for the truth of history. If such a meeting took place the main point I would stress, fully documented, is that Zionism’s claim that Israel has lived and still lives in danger of annihilation is propaganda nonsense to facilitate the assertion that Israel is the victim (when actually it is the aggressor and oppressor) and, therefore, must be free to act with impunity in any way it thinks fit, even when its actions demonstrate contempt for international law and the human and political rights of the Palestinians. But there will be no such meeting. Partly out of fear of offending Zionism too much and provoking its wrath, the BBC’s news and current affairs chiefs have no desire to put the truth about the making and sustaining of the Israel-Palestine conflict on their agenda.

And the same can be said of virtually all the mainstream media’s editorial executives.

In the Preface of the original, two-volume UK hardback edition of my book I speculated that one of the reasons for the mainstream media’s complicity in Zionism’s suppression of the truth of history might be the unspeakable belief that the truth about the Israel’s criminal behaviour could provoke a second holocaust, shorthand for another great turning against Jews everywhere.

I had, I wrote, a totally opposite belief – that the only way to stop the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again in a foreseeable future if Zionism continued to have its way is by telling the truth of history, to show, among other things, why it is wrong to blame all Jews for what a minority have done and are still doing in the name of Zionism.

I had no doubt, I added, that publishers, editors and politicians who are complicit in the suppression of the truth of history honestly believe they are serving the best interests of the Jews (as well as their own short-term vested interests). But to them all I said: You are wrong. Dangerously wrong. By refusing to come to grips with the truth of history and, in particular the difference between Judaism and Zionism and why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, you are helping to set up all Jews to be blamed for the crimes of the relative few.

In that 2007 Preface I also called on the Jews of the mainly gentile nations of North America and Western Europe to find the will and the courage to end their silence on Israel’s behaviour. Silence, I wrote, is not the way to refute and demolish a charge of complicity in Zionism’s crimes.

Today, as Israel becomes more and more isolated and reviled, one sign of hope that a Zionist-provoked turning against Jews everywhere can be averted is in the fact that a still smallish but growing number of North American and European Jews are beginning to speak out and distance themselves from the Zionist monster.

Hopefully, this means that the enduring power of Zionism’s propaganda lies can be challenged and defeated, even if the mainstream continues to prefer Zionism’s version of history.