Operation Spring of Youth

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The operation Spring of Youth was the targeted killing of PLO -Drahtziehern the Olympic attack in Munich by the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad . The operation, which took place in the Lebanese capital Beirut and the city of Sidon on the night of April 9 to the morning of April 10, 1973 , was mainly carried out by the Sayeret Matkal special unit of the Aman military intelligence service on behalf of the Mossad.

background

When 11 hostages of the Israeli Olympic team were killed by a command of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich , this triggered trauma among the Israeli population. Again, Jews had been murdered in Germany simply because they were Jews. The Meir government then decided to identify, find and kill those responsible, no matter where they were. The legal basis for this was the death sentences of the Israeli judiciary , which were passed in the absence of the accused. Politically, the perpetrators and planners were not seen as combatants but as criminals. The Mossad was tasked with setting up the Caesarea special unit , which was to carry out the "Wrath of God" operation, the liquidation of all those responsible for the Olympic attack.

Planning and preparation

In planning Operation Spring of the Youth , which included an attack in Beirut, the stronghold of the PLO, it was clear that the Mossad needed military aid for this operation. The special unit Sajeret Matkal should bear the brunt of the attack. For the first time, it was used against civilian targets in a civil but hostile environment. This required an unnoticed infiltration and introduction of the emergency services to the target persons, i.e. perfect camouflage and meticulous preparation and practice. It was decided to land the team at sea and disguise them as tourists. To make this camouflage more authentic, it was decided to disguise half of the team as women. Civilian clothing was modified so that the extensive armament and explosives for the doors could all be inconspicuously fixed underneath and carried.

Planning began in February 1973 on the premises of the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv , the Kirya . The Mossad had not only clarified the addresses and the local environment, but also the floor plans of the apartments and the daily routines and movement profiles of the target persons. Since the unit had no experience of moving undercover in a civil urban area, the daily training was held in the half-finished and still uninhabited Tochnid Lamed development area in northern Tel Aviv, which was similar to that of the target area.

What was also new about the mission was that it was the first time to work without a network . There was a police station only three blocks away from the target houses and it was assumed that, even if everything went optimally, there would only be a time window of about 20 minutes before the PLO could bring in reinforcements. Suicide squads have no place in the tradition of the Israeli armed forces, but because of the importance of the target people, the decision was made for this mission, even if the operation threatened to end in disaster if the smallest mistake or it was discovered too early.

The maritime aspects of the operation were practiced together with the command of the Navy , the Shayetet 13 , in Atlit south of Haifa .

The emergency services were only informed immediately before the start of the operation that it was not a kidnapping mission, as it had been trained all along, but an assassination mission. Technically, this was a relief for the emergency team.

The operation

Adwan's apartment after the operation

The emergency services were first brought near the coast aboard missile speedboats and then landed in Beirut by the Shayetet 13 covertly hidden from sea with rubber dinghies, where they were already awaited by Mossad agents who knew the place and with prepared and modified civil vehicles were taken to the homes of the targets in the fashionable A-Sir neighborhood in West Beirut.

The operation succeeded in surprising and liquidating three PLO leaders at home. An uninvolved Italian woman in a neighboring apartment and two Lebanese police officers were also killed in the action. Two soldiers died on the Israeli side.

After the mission, the exfiltration of the entire team succeeded in the same way over the sea as the infiltration.

Primary goals

The main target of the attack was an apartment block in A-Sir in West Beirut on Rue Verdun , an upscale neighborhood where a number of French and Italians lived, specifically the domicile of Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar ( Abu Youssef ). Another destination was a house across the street that housed Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser .

Since PLO boss Yasser Arafat was also a regular guest in these apartments, it was hoped to also meet him there by chance. The order to kill would have been valid for him too, even if a kidnapping had been very useful for Israel politically and propagandistically. However, his presence would also have meant significantly stronger security forces at the destination.

The Sajeret Matkal team was commanded by Ehud Barak , who later became Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and Prime Minister of Israel. Also Yonatan Netanyahu was involved, which in the subsequent Operation Entebbe in 1976 Uganda was killed as an insert commander. The unnoticed approach and penetration into the apartments succeeded and the following leaders of the Black September group were killed:

  • Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar ( Abu Youssef ), commander of the terrorist team in the 1972 Olympic attack in Munich. Abu Youssef was a PLO veteran who already held various management positions, for example he was the head of Fatah and its internal intelligence service. Most recently he was one of the deputies of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, number three in the PLO hierarchy, and headed the political department of this organization. His wife was also killed in the attack.
  • Kamal Adwan, the head responsible for all military terrorist activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip .
  • Kamal Nasser , the spokesman for the PLO and a member of its executive committee.

Secondary goals

A secondary goal was a six-story apartment block that housed the headquarters of George Habasch , General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) , head of what was then “probably the world's best experts in the field of aircraft hijackings ”. The attack against this target was carried out by the Sajeret Tzanchanim , a special unit of Israeli paratroopers under the command of Amnon Lipkin-Shahak , who later became chief of staff during the Barak government. This team encountered heavy resistance and lost two of its soldiers in the firefight. However, a bomb was planted in the building and several PLO fighters were killed.

Other PLO shelters that the Mossad had spotted in advance were attacked and "neutralized".

In addition to their transfer tasks for the teams, the Israeli combat swimmers also carried out command missions on land themselves . They succeeded in blowing up the headquarters of the PLO Gaza section and its weapons depot near Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport , another weapons depot northeast of Beirut and an arms production facility and a PLO tank farm near Sidon .

Effects

The Resolution 332 of the UN Security Council , adopted on 21 April 1973 following a complaint of Lebanon, condemned the tragic loss of civilians as a result of military aggression of Israel. The Council condemns the violation of international law and calls on Israel to stop immediately.

At the same time, this attack was a clear political signal to the PLO and its activists, as well as to all other underground organizations , that Israel was ready and able to locate and kill the terrorists in the supposed strongholds of the terrorists ( targeted killing ).

In connection with the successful exfiltration of the Israeli forces, the theory circulated in the Arab world that the US Embassy in Beirut had helped, but this could not be proven. Nevertheless, these suspected circumstances were ultimately blamed on the Lebanese government, which fell shortly after Operation Spring of Youth .

Film adaptations

  • Gideon's Sword , a film by Michael Anderson , shot and produced in 1985/86 for the US television channel HBO .
  • Munich , a film by Steven Spielberg , released in the USA at the end of 2005, describes (fictitiously) the events after the attack. München ( Munich ) is considered a remake of the film by Michael Anderson '" Gideon's Sword ( Sword Of Gideon ).

References

literature

  • Muki Betser, Robert Rosenberg: In secret order . Heyne, 1998. - ISBN 3-453-14137-7
  • Bregman, Ahron (2002). Israel's Wars: A History Since 1947 . London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28716-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Letter dated April 11, 1973 from the permanent representative of Lebanon to the United Nations addressed to the president of the Security Council ( Memento of December 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Bowyer, Bell, J .: Assassin: Theory and Practice of Political Violence . New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2005. ISBN 1-4128-0509-0 . Page 138
  3. ↑ Quotation from Muki Betser, page 151 in Muki Betser, Robert Rosenberg: In a secret order . Heyne, 1998. - ISBN 3-453-14137-7