Honoring Terrorists

The mastermind of the Munich Olympics terrorist attack, Mohammed Oudeh, not only gets a heroes burial in Syria where he'd lived for decades, but honorifics from rival terrorist organizations.

Mr. Oudeh oversaw the plans of the raid, in which eight Palestinian militants belonging to the Black September group broke into a dormitory at the Olympic village where Israeli athletes were sleeping and took them hostage in the early morning of Sept. 5, 1972. Two of the athletes, a weightlifter and a wrestling coach, tried to overpower the militants, and were shot and killed.

The militants ended up with nine hostages, whom they said they would release in exchange for 200 Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel.

Israel refused to negotiate and a standoff ensued for 20 hours, while static television images of an empty balcony on a gray, modern dormitory transfixed the world. The Israeli hostages and their Palestinian captors were eventually transported by helicopters to a military airfield, where they had been promised to be flown to Cairo. Instead, West German sharpshooters tried to rescue the Israelis, setting off a gun battle in which five Palestinians, a German police officer and the nine hostages were killed.

“I am proud of my father,” Mr. Oudeh’s daughter, Wafa Oudeh, said in a phone interview from Damascus, shortly after his burial in the section of a cemetery reserved for martyrs to the Palestinian cause. “As a father he was a special person. He was emotional and generous. He was devoted to his family and to Palestine. His death is like a mountain collapsing.”

In addition to Ms. Oudeh, he is survived by his wife, four other daughters, and a son.

Amin Maqboul, secretary general of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, the Palestine Liberation Organization faction to which Mr. Oudeh belonged, praised him as “a fighter of the highest order.”

Hamas, Fatah’s rival, released a statement mourning Mr. Oudeh.

The Islamists and terrorists just love to honor mass murdering terrorists. He was responsible for murdering athletes at the Olympics in images that are an indelible image of those Olympics.



Note too that this was a terrorist associated with Fatah and the PLO as one of its offshoots. Not only does Fatah recognize and memorialize this murderer, but Fatah's rival Hamas also takes time out from their internecine conflict to honor the murderer.

Meanwhile, a CNN reporter in Lebanon not only notes the death of a Hizbullah spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein Fadl-Allah, but mourns the loss. Classy.