Iconic Photos

Although it was still a few years before rolling 24 hour news channels, the 1972 Munich Olympics and the subsequent hostage crisis unfolded live on televisions around the globe. Terrorists with sympathies for the Palestinian cause broke into the Olympic Village and kidnapped members of the Israeli Olympic squad. Although the security service braced itself for a likelihood of such an event (infamous Sieber scenario 21) before the Games, it seemed that the German police were oblivious that the kidnappers were able to follow their preparations to attack by simply turing on their television sets.

The above photo of the hooded terrorist on the balcony outside the Israeli team’s hotel is framed in living memory and was one of the defining images of international terrorism. Clad in a nondescript pull-over, his face hidden by a sinister looking balaclava, with the slits for the eyes cut out, he looked more like a faceless monster than the young man from a Palestinian refugee camp he was. We don’t know for certain who he was—a faceless, unknown individual personified the very image of the modern terrorist: someone who was not like us, did not look like us, and came from some place far distant from our neighborhood or country of which we knew little, someone different, alien and and inherently evil.

Two athletes were already murdered before the scene of the hostage crisis was shifted to a military airport at Fürstenfeldbruck, where a failed rescue attempt ended up with the 9 remaining hostages being killed.The Games continued during the crisis, but eventually they were halted for a few hours. There was a move to cancel the rest of the Games, but they continued, a decision which the Israeli authorities supported. When the Games re-started, it was with a memorial service held in the Olympic Stadium. Although attended by many of the competing athletes, ten nations requested that their flags not be flown at half-mast during the ceremony, in a frightful display of endorsement for terrorism and disdain for the Olympic spirit.

The hostage crisis brought the Palestinian cause to the world’s attention. Indeed, at the time of Munich, the Palestinians were still a forgotten people; Israeli prime minister Golda Meir insisted they did not exist. All the footage from 1972 never used the word “Palestinian”; the gunmen are described simply as “Arab.”