Arabs and Terrorists

Almost as appalling as the event itself is the way in which the Olympic massacre has distorted the perspectives of observers throughout what President Nixon called “the entire civilized world.” Headlines proclaim that “Arabs” killed the Israeli athletes. (Headline in Damascus newspaper, September 1948: “Jews Kill Bernadotte.”) Thousands of miles from the scene, various groups in America protest the “deplorable inadequacy of German security precautions”—many of whom were the first to protest our own security precautions surrounding much more vulnerable public gatherings such as national political conventions. (A German diplomat who spent a few days at the Games tells me American and British athletes caught climbing the fences and otherwise circumventing security controls in order to manage nights on the town called German policemen “gestapo pigs.”) Commentators whose knowledge of assault operations derives entirely from watching Mission: Impossible express indignation at the way the police “bungled” the effort to rescue the hostages.

No less a responsible national figure than Senator McGovern hastened to announce that the United States should not reopen diplomatic relations with Egypt because of her “support to Arab guerrillas”—although, as a presidential candidate, he is entitled to State Department, CIA and Defense Department briefings from which he would learn: 1) that since the departure of the Russians the Egyptian government has begun an all-out effort to round up extremist groups that might sabotage American-Egyptian relations and otherwise perpetuate insecurity in the area; 2) that, all along, the Egyptians have kept the few Palestinians in the country under tight control, and have given support only to Palestinian groups engaged in political and propaganda activity against Arab governments, not Israel.

MC

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Miles Copeland

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Almost as appalling as the event itself is the way in which the Olympic massacre has distorted the perspectives of observers throughout what President Nixon called “the entire civilized world.” Headlines proclaim that “Arabs” killed the Israeli athletes. (Headline in Damascus newspaper, September 1948: “Jews Kill Bernadotte.”) Thousands of miles from the scene, various groups in America protest the “deplorable inadequacy of German security precautions”—many of whom were the first to protest our own security precautions surrounding much more vulnerable public gatherings such as national political conventions. (A German diplomat who spent a few days at the Games tells me American and British athletes caught climbing the fences and otherwise circumventing security controls in order to manage nights on the town called German policemen “gestapo pigs.”) Commentators whose knowledge of assault operations derives entirely from watching Mission: Impossible express indignation at the way the police “bungled” the effort to rescue the hostages.

No less a responsible national figure than Senator McGovern hastened to announce that the United States should not reopen diplomatic relations with Egypt because of her “support to Arab guerrillas”—although, as a presidential candidate, he is entitled to State Department, CIA and Defense Department briefings from which he would learn: 1) that since the departure of the Russians the Egyptian government has begun an all-out effort to round up extremist groups that might sabotage American-Egyptian relations and otherwise perpetuate insecurity in the area; 2) that, all along, the Egyptians have kept the few Palestinians in the country under tight control, and have given support only to Palestinian groups engaged in political and propaganda activity against Arab governments, not Israel.