The Muslim News

London, The Daily Telegraph:
1972 Cabinet papers:

Senior diplomats mounted a vigorous defence of the Palestinian cause after the Black September terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes died.

Two were killed at the Games village and the others were held hostage and died, along with five of the kidnappers, in a bungled German rescue attempt at Furstenfeldbruch airfield after Israel refused to release 200 Palestinian prisoners.

There was international outrage but, with the exception of King Hussein of Jordan, a muted response in the Arab world.

Seeking to explain it, Gayford Woodrow, the consul general in Jerusalem, sent a dispatch to the Foreign Office on Sept 12, six days after the attack, saying: "Before we reproach the Arabs too much, perhaps we might try to put ourselves in their shoes.

"They are, after all, human beings with normal human failings. The Palestinians in particular have seen their land taken away from them by a group of mainly European invaders equipped with superior armed force and modern technology.

"Whatever one's moral criticism, it must be agreed that the Munich operation was well planned and that the Arabs there carried it out to the bitter end. It is said that lives were really lost because of Israel and West German bungling incompetence."

Mr Woodrow's head of department, James Craig, wrote on his letter: "Not bad but he goes just a little too far."

A month later Black September hijackers took over a Lufthansa jet en route from Beirut to Frankfurt and forced Germany to hand over three guerrillas captured during the Munich raid. David Gore-Booth, a first secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "Before we shed too many tears about the Lufthansa hijacking, decide to boycott airlines like the trade unionists at Heathrow or feel obliged to express our concern to the German government, it would be as well to ask ourselves what the implications are so far as the Arab/Israel dispute is concerned.

"It is self-evident that the hijacking is a manifestation of the Palestine problem. This is a problem which the Israelis are trying to solve in two main ways: one by pretending it does not exist (hence their claim that Amman is the capital of the Palestinians), the other by hitting the Palestinians so hard that they cease to exist, militarily if not physically.

"What the hijacking does is to remind the international community that the Palestine problem exists: in one sense this is unwelcome to the Israelis as it shows their pretence for what it is, but in another it provides them with an excellent opportunity to enlist the aid of the international community in erasing the problem.

"Hence their apoplectic reaction to the hijacking, which is of course calculated to produce the desired attitude in airline workers at Heathrow. It also provides them with an excellent opportunity to slip into Syria, bomb a few more bases and kill a few more innocent people with impunity. Deplorable though the hijacking may be it caused the loss of no lives whereas . . . casualties in Syria may be as many as 45 or even more."

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