Original subtitles

On most days, this stadium holds 80,000 eager track and field fans.

Today, instead, they came to a memorial service.

An hour of memory for 11 fellow athletes from Israel,

slain yesterday during an abortive attempt by Palestinian guerrillas

to gain the release of Arabs held prisoner in Israel.

This was executed by Black September.

We have to put an end to this organization.

The operation was a combination of revenge, deterrence,

an attempt to demonstrate to the international community,

this is not going to go unpunished.

The Mossad made a list and said, "Okay." And they started to look for them.

After they succeeded to kill many leaders of Black September,

they focused on Ali Hassan Salameh.

He was target number one.

Mossad had almost inconceivable and unthinkable achievements.

The Lillehammer operation was launched,

and this one was an operational failure.

They killed the wrong target.

EXECUTED

Six years later, Menachem Begin, the new prime minister,

felt that it was an unfinished business.

Salameh was a terrorist.

He was an assassin.

Begin gives the order.

"Find him, and kill him."

Over the last 18 months, a series of Arabs had mysteriously been

blown up or shot dead in several European capitals.

But when they came to Lillehammer,

unaccountably, the Israelis left a trail of evidence behind them.

Two men, unmasked, used .22 pistols with silencers,

the same type of weapon used in the assassination of Arabs in Rome and Paris.

Four days earlier, the Israeli assassination squad

had come to Lillehammer on the trail of Salameh,

the Arab behind the Munich Olympics attack.

At the time, I was in Saint-Tropez.

We played in restaurants.

We made music.

We were in the street. A policeman comes and says to me,

"You should contact your family, because there was a problem at home."

"There was a problem in Norway, a problem with Ahmed."

"But we don't know what's going on." They told us he was dead.

But we thought it was a car accident or some natural cause, unfortunately.

He was assassinated by the secret service, by Mossad.

He was my big brother. He was a bit of a guide for us.

He traveled so much that one day,

he found himself in the Scandinavian countries.

He made his life there. He met his wife, Torill.

He worked in Lillehammer, and he lived in Lillehammer.

He was a karate teacher.

He was a waiter.

He had no ties with the Palestinians at all.

At all.

That's why for us, it was, beyond the tragedy,

a total misunderstanding.

When Ahmed Bouchikhi was shot, he was shot close to a park.

In the park, there was a young couple making love,

and they saw the car that left.

The car was a white car, and they saw the number of the car.

Golden rule, you don't use that car anymore.

But... Dan Arbel had bought some instruments for himself,

and they had left them in the trunk of the car.

So, the following day, he goes and he takes the car.

And with him is Marianne Gladnikoff.

And instead of taking the train to Oslo, as they were supposed to,

they go with the car.

And not only they go with the car,

but Dan Arbel goes to return the car to the rental agency,

which you don't do ever.

The police arrest Dan Arbel and Marianne Gladnikoff.

They speak immediately.

The problem with Arbel, he was claustrophobic.

He couldn't stand being in a confined, closed space.

He was ready to talk if they just opened the door.

So, they opened the door, and he spoke.

And he gave a lot of information about missions

and names of Mossad, uh, leaders in Europe.

He gives them the address of the apartment

where Sylvia Raphael and few other members are still waiting.

And the police succeeds to arrest them.

It was painful because the more we progressed in the story,

the more we did not understand, because Mossad is a service

that is known throughout the world.

But in the end,

not immune to blunders like that.

Fortunately, some of them have been arrested and convicted.

As a result, it became an incredible state affair.

Um, the Minister of Foreign Affairs

has, uh, informed, uh, the Israel Embassy in Oslo

that, um, there will be no, um...

That it will not be possible to, uh, release, uh, the prisoners,

uh, neither to, uh... uh, permit anybody to visit-visit them. Um...

Dan Arbel, Sylvia Raphael, and Marianne Gladnikoff are in prison,

and there is, uh, a trial.

The same scenes of security have been repeated every day

as the six accused are rushed to court under a heavily-armed escort today,

for their last journey before the adjournment.

The public prosecutor, Mr. Hakan Vika,

said that at least one of the operation's leaders had been caught,

and he called for sentences ranging between six and nine years

for complicity in the killing.

The prosecution maintained

that the Israeli intelligence organization, Mossad,

was in effect setting up its own court of law to deal with Arab terrorism.

But a murder was a murder and had to be treated as such,

whoever did it, and from whatever motives.

They were sentenced, and it took quite some time

for Israel to negotiate their release and to get them back.

Almost all the guys on the operation level get some time in prison in Norway.

But within 22 months, they were all out.

Israel never took a formal kind of responsibility for it,

but it was clear between us and the Norwegians that we did it.

Basically, that the Mossad did it.

As a professional, I am still confused today

by this Israeli operation against a Moroccan national

who was a waiter in Lillehammer in Norway, whose only fault

was to have a physical resemblance with Ali Hassan Salameh.

I knew Ali Hassan Salameh a little bit.

It was totally inconceivable that this young and wealthy man,

who drove beautiful cars,

who had an extremely important public life in Beirut,

by some strange twist of fate,

he would have ended up as a waiter near the Arctic Circle, riding his bicycle

and leading a quiet life among the Norwegians.

A lot of operational mistakes were done,

some of them out of the very short timetable,

because the head of the operation was the same Mike Harari,

who ran, personally, many, many dozen,

probably hundreds of different operations very successfully.

But this one failed, basically, and create a mistake and...

injustice to this innocent Moroccan citizen.

So, the incredible thing is that Israel never apologized.

Come on.

You bump into someone in the street, you say sorry.

So, if you kill someone by mistake, where are the apologies? That's huge.

My sister-in-law never got her life back together.

She lived with this tragedy.

They made her sign a paper that she wouldn't talk about that story.

Years after, finally,

Israel agreed to pay the indemnities to his families.

Immediately, the Operation Wrath of God was stopped. Immediately.

And everybody was brought back. And finished.

After the Lillehammer incident, Zamir offered Golda his resignation.

Golda rejected it right away.

She said, "It's a war."

"It's a war to protect Israeli lives."

"And in a war, mistake can be... happen."

In the eyes of Golda Meir,

we were attacked only because we're Jewish.

We're being attacked only because of an ongoing refusal

to accept our right to have our own independent state in our ancient homeland.

Part of the Palestinian terrorist organization strategy

was to attack Israeli targets in Israel,

Israeli targets overseas.

Therefore, Israel had to send a message to world Jewry.

"We are going to help protect you and protect your interests."

That's part of the raison d'être for the existence of Israel.

The killings of the heads of Black September

were an extremely successful mission.

For a very long period of years,

there was not any more terror on the scale we saw before in Europe

against Jews and Israelis.

These activities caused a delay in operations,

caused the leaders of terror to never sleep in the same bed at night,

because they knew that each one of them could be touched personally,

and it disrupted the work.

By killing ten or eleven Arabs in Europe,

Black September in April of 1973

ceased to exist.

But the only one who survived,

Ali Hassan Salameh.

Very strangely, he had escaped every attack

we had on the leaders of Black September.

Abu Hassan, he is one of the leaders of Black September.

I mean, he is one of the leaders, but he was not the senior leader.

I, personally, started in the '60s

as president of the student organization of the Lebanese Kataeb Party.

After that, I was the first member of the Kataeb Party who met Yasser Arafat.

And that started communication and a friendship

between us and Abu Hassan Salameh.

His character is unusual.

Firstly, he was the first person to invent parcel bombs.

He used to send these parcels to members of the Mossad.

Many of them were injured, and I think some ended up dead.

The second thing, which he deeply invested in and worked hard on,

was related to airplanes, hijacking airplanes.

He was able to operate inside Europe with the use of pipelines

by striking the oil lines in Trieste, Italy.

Black September did not have an address.

I don't know how big the Black September was.

Let's say, uh, 50 people, and, uh, the leadership was changing.

I read most of the reports of intelligence services,

and of police organizations, about, uh, the PLO, about the Black September.

I don't find Ali Hassan Salameh in it. The names are all different.

Maybe he was so clever that he never showed up.

He was, uh, a diplomat. He was a...

He was in the... in the committees. He was one of the visible people,

but not so visible that the whole world knew him.

The whole world knew a guy with a... with a... a scarf.

Uh, his name was Arafat. That was how the whole world

was identifying with the Palestinian cause.

And-And Ali Hassan Salameh didn't look like, uh, bloodthirsty.

I don't remember any picture of him with-with a Kalashnikov in his hands.

Abu Hassan Salameh settled in Beirut

and established the so-called "External Operations,"

whose mission was to work outside the Arab lands

and primarily in Europe.

Abu Hassan Salameh became the head of the special unit

that was responsible for the protection of Yasser Arafat,

which was called Force 17.

He would not travel abroad,

I mean, to non-Arab countries,

unless he had Abu Hassan Salameh by his side.

Abu Hassan Salameh became, at this stage,

somehow like Arafat's shadow.

He used to assign him with difficult tasks.

Yasser Arafat assigned him to establish this secret channel with the CIA.

But in 1973, there was a side agreement

between Israel and the United States of America

that every time

the American administration

wanted to contact any Palestinian,

it had to inform Israel in advance.

He talked to me about this for a long time,

and I couldn't find an answer

until a series of kidnappings of Americans in Lebanon,

or attempts to blow up American places.

I noticed this new situation and told him I think

that concerning the idea of the security of the American Embassy

and of every American on Lebanese land,

if you took responsibility for it,

and if we informed the American Embassy

that there is Force 17,

and that Force 17 is at the disposal

of every American who's kidnapped or in danger,

then I believe that the Americans will be affected by it

and will open a secret relationship with you, whether directly or indirectly.

Later on, President Nixon assigned Robert Ames.

He assigned him to establish

a communication channel with the Palestinians.

Robert Ames was the one who told Abu Hassan Salameh in the first meeting,

"Now, you have the opportunity to convey

all your thoughts and demands

to the American administration through this link."

Yasser Arafat and, of course, Abu Hassan Salameh,

both aspired for America to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The American CIA, of course, looked at Salameh.

They decided he can become a potential source,

and a potential connection,

a backdoor to Arafat and to the Fatah.

They succeeded at a point where Salameh was even going up in the ranks.

He was now following and accompanying Arafat everywhere he went.

Salameh married the most beautiful woman in the world.

Georgina Rizk, who became Miss Universe.

Miss Rizk, congratulations on becoming Miss Universe,

and, uh, how does it feel right now to be wearing that crown?

Oh, thank you very much, first of all,

and, uh, really, I'm very happy. I feel, uh, you know, great.

CIA brought him and Georgina to a trip,

to a honeymoon, to America.

The CIA paid everything, and they came to America, the two of them,

and went all over the place, including Los Angeles and Disney World.

Abu Hassan Salameh was the one who organized

Yasser Arafat's trip to New York with the CIA.

The focal point of the PLO's diplomatic advance

has been the United Nations,

where, in 1974, Yasser Arafat was invited to address the General Assembly.

Arafat's presence at the UN enraged the Israelis.

They boycotted the session,

and one Zionist group claimed that Arafat would not leave New York alive.

Arafat not only survived,

but also ensured himself a place in UN history.

I come to you bearing an olive branch in one hand

and a freedom fighter's gun in the other.

Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

News began to arrive in Israel

that there was a series of communications

between Abu Hassan Salameh and the CIA in Beirut.

The principle of forming a communication line between the CIA

and Abu Hassan was absolutely unacceptable.

Now, Israel was extremely angry about that,

because he was one of their worst enemies.

The Israelis wanted to assassinate Abu Hassan Salameh

for two reasons.

They wanted to break the secret Palestinian-American link.

They believed that this secret link

would sabotage the Israeli-American relations,

and would lead to the American recognition

of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Secondly, the Israelis were killing

all the Palestinian leaders who fell under their control.

Six years after, uh, Lillehammer,

six years after the end of... of Black September,

Menachem Begin, the new prime minister,

felt that it was an unfinished business.

That this man could be a danger for,

not only for Israel, but for many other countries.

He was a terrorist.

He was an assassin.

Begin gives the order.

"Find him, and kill him."

There were three agents who were preparing

for the assassination of Ali Hassan Salameh.

It still was Kidon, the Mossad Department.

Agent X was sent to Beirut to follow Salameh.

His mission was purely intelligence.

He was told to try to find Salameh.

They found out that Salameh was going to the sauna

of the Continental Hotel in Beirut.

It's an unexpected hour in the afternoon,

and suddenly, out of all these, you know, these vapors and smoke in the sauna,

suddenly, a man appears completely naked,

and it's Salameh.

The Mossad, first of all,

check the possibility of killing Salameh in the sauna,

and then they found out that there are going to be many casualties,

and they canceled it because of that.

And then Salameh started speaking to our agent,

the Agent X, the Israeli agent,

and made him a friend, a close friend, who was going to his apartment.

Going out with Georgina and her sister,

they became quite close,

and this guy had to separate between his friendship with Salameh

and his goal.

And then they decide...

...to send a woman.

Her name was Erika Mary Chambers.

She may have had additional identities or used multiple names,

perhaps a fake name that we are unaware of.

She was the most important person.

She was a British student.

She decided to study in Israel.

And in Israel, she was spotted by the Mossad.

She received two years of Mossad education,

and she fit into the picture, what they needed.

They needed, uh, agents who did not have an Israeli slang,

who did not look like Israelis,

who did not, um, uh... create the impression that they're Jewish.

Her task was to find Ali Hassan Salameh

and to be involved in his killing.

Mike Harari comes to her, and he says,

"You must go to Beirut, and your mission will be...

to kill a man."

And she had a business card which said she's, uh, working for

a children's charity based in Geneva.

And after a while, she met Ali Hassan Salameh,

and, uh, in person, just by-by accident, in a hotel.

Erika rents an apartment,

which is on the corner of two streets, of Madame Curie and another street,

and her window is actually looking to the street,

Madame Curie Street,

where the convoy of Salameh is passing at least twice a day.

She's very strange,

very weird, like some... She's feeding stray cats in the street.

She sits and she paints, and she is waiting.

You can't say he was not protected.

There was, in front of it,

there was a Land Rover filled with Palestinian terrorists

with machine gun and-and Kalashnikovs.

Behind the car, always, was another car,

with Palestinian bodyguards in the car.

There were bodyguards sitting on both sides of Salameh.

But they made the biggest mistake of a secret agent we should never do.

A secret agent who is in danger

should never use the same route

when he goes back and forth from a certain address.

Never the same route.

Always changing.

But he traveled all the time by the Rue Madame Curie,

up to his home and back.

Every day, at lunchtime,

he would take his car and go home for lunch with the delicious Georgina.

Abu Hassan's marriage

to Georgina Rizk caused him a problem.

Abu Hassan was able to become a media star, and the journalists...

especially Lebanese journalists,

followed him everywhere.

I personally arrived at a meeting once.

So, I heard Abu Ammar

with my own ears telling him,

"You should not live with Georgina,

because this is against all security regulations

that you have learned,

and this is extremely dangerous, and it will kill you."

The operation against Ali Hassan Salameh

was greatly facilitated because Ali Hassan Salameh had habits.

So, according to the daily accumulative information

about Abu Hassan Salameh's movements,

the plan was made, which was to place the Volkswagen vehicle

in that location, while it was packed with explosives, of course.

And when they decide to carry out an operation

by which they will blow the car of Ali Hassan Salameh,

one test is to see if the warrior would be able to press a button

at the very millisecond when the car is passing.

So, it must be very, very precise.

They bring her a transistor radio,

which is a radio for everything.

But when you put a pin into a hole of the transistor radio,

it becomes a remote control device.

And then when you press a button, it can carry out, eh, an order.

And they found out that, from all the people who tried to do it,

Erika is the best. She is very good at that.

Uh, the Agent X is sent from Beirut to the South of Jordan,

where the Israeli Mossad people cross the border

and bring him a piece of furniture,

which is full of explosives.

He loads it into his car,

and he drives his car all the way through Jordan,

and then through Syria,

and then to Lebanon, to Beirut.

And he's supposed to leave the car

at a certain garage, which he does.

Israel, in the meantime, has sent to Beirut two other agents,

one of which is a great expert of the explosives.

It's the middle of the night,

and they plant the explosives in the headrest of the driver.

And they park the Volkswagen

exactly under the window of Ali Hassan Salameh.

On January 18, 1979,

I attended a meeting with the Kataeb Party

where Bachir Gemayel was present.

When the meeting was over, Bachir asked me,

"Are you still in contact with Abu Hassan?"

"He is our friend."

I answered him, "Yes, I am in contact with him."

He said, "Ask him to take care of himself these days,

and not to make too many moves."

I considered it an important message.

I asked my colleague and friend, who was a friend of Abu Hassan,

to go to Georgina Rizk

to inform Abu Hassan about what I've heard from Bachir.

He did this with his hand and said,

"I receive such news every day, and I am already doing what is necessary."

"And Allah is the protector."

He received a small piece of paper in the morning

by the CIA, saying,

"The Israelis are after you. Be very careful."

He didn't care, but it was too late. He had only a few hours more to live.

Erika Chambers was in her apartment.

And she had a remote control.

That's when she saw the car approaching, and it was a motorcade.

And a few meters before this motorcade reached the Volkswagen,

Erika switched the button.

As soon as he turned the corner, we heard a big explosion.

The car was blown up. Eight or nine people were dead.

Others, bystanders, people who were not involved.

All the five bodyguards survived.

They went crazy.

The maid started shouting and saying, "Abu Hassan."

I rushed to the other balcony

and I saw that there was panic in the streets.

I put something on and went downstairs.

Abu Hassan Salameh was wounded and rushed to the hospital.

A friend came to the house

and nodded his head like this.

I understood that he was gone.

And now, Erika has to escape.

So, she runs down,

she gets into her car,

and she's already scared.

But finally, she has now to drive the car

to the north, to a Christian enclave...

where there is a boat waiting for her.

She arrives to the Port Jounieh in the North.

They take her by a Zodiac to the boat, the Flotilla 13, the naval commando.

And she sits on the boat deck.

It's evening, the sun is setting down,

and she looks, and the sky is so beautiful,

and the mountains are so calm and quiet.

She said, "That's the-the finale of my operation."

Mike Harari was waiting for them. He was there, and he watched it.

For some people in Beirut, it was, "Okay, another bomb,"

but Mike Harari knew what was going on.

And he saw the smoke, and he was so happy.

I will never forget this day,

because I lost a friend.

My first reaction was, "Really? Did the Israeli assassinate Abu Hassan?"

I mean, that's abnormal.

Of course, my first reaction

was to take the phone and call Yasser Arafat.

And I heard him saying,

"You were his friend, and he loved you."

"Rest in peace, my hero."

Yasser Arafat managed to travel to Beirut with great difficulty.

He attended the funeral of Abu Hassan Salameh

and, of course, carried the coffin, and there were thousands of mourners.

In terms of security, the assassination of Abu Hassan Salameh

came as proof that the Mossad is strong and capable of breaking through

the Lebanese situation and executing a prominent figure.

If the Mossad was capable of killing Abu Hassan Salameh,

it is likely that they can also kill others.

As a result, perhaps several Palestinian leaders

will have to increase their security measures out of fear.

The consequences of Salameh's death

were, above all, the rupture of the links that Salameh

had managed to develop with a certain number of foreign powers

in the Middle East and the West.

The Mossad broke a number of links that could become unfavorable to Israel.

After all, that's its job.

Agent X continued to operate in Beirut

and in Damascus, very successfully, for a long time.

It never ended.

I think that every prime minister between Golda and myself had the same.

It's quite a tough decision

to decide to order your operational guys to kill a person.

These guys are dangerous.

One of them who was involved in the Munich assassination

was killed only in '92,

some 20 years later.

Good evening, you will probably not be surprised

that the news of the day is still marked by violence.

Violence in Paris. A Palestinian leader was shot last night.

Atef Bseiso, the number two in the PLO security services,

was returning from a dinner party when one or two men appeared and fired.

The Palestinian leader died instantly.

It was night, in front of the Meridian Hotel

that Atef Bseiso was shot by one or more individuals,

whose weapon was probably equipped with a silencer and who managed to escape.

This afternoon, Yasser Arafat immediately accused Mossad,

the Israeli secret service, of being behind the attack.

This evening, Israeli and Palestinian sources

confirmed that Atef Bseiso had been one of the organizers

of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games bombing,

which had cost the lives of 11 Israeli athletes.

Atef Bseiso was one of the very high officials of the PLO.

The question remains, who had an interest in assassinating him?

So, you're looking at over 20 years of diligence,

20 years of precision,

20 years of determination.

This is a very clear message

to every person out there

who is planning to inflict harm on Israeli targets.

And that's the importance of the Israeli reaction

to the Munich massacre.

A few years ago, I went to Munich, to Connolly 31,

where the Israeli delegation were living during the Olympic Games.

And that was a shock,

to stand there in front of the house.

It wasn't easy to be there, because this event was a trauma.

It's very severe trauma in Israeli public memory.

After the assassination of Abu Hassan Salameh,

the security link was cut with the Americans.

This secret channel was cut off

until a public channel was renewed in 1988,

when the US Secretary of State, George Shultz, informed Yasser Arafat

that if he renounces terrorism,

only then will the United States be ready to negotiate with them.

It is the first agreement ever signed

between Palestinians and the state of Israel.

A short ceremony in Jerusalem saw Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

carefully read the letter from PLO chairman Yasser Arafat.

And then, breaking the greatest of psychological barriers

that have lasted for generations,

he signed the document of mutual recognition.

The Oslo peace agreement, signed in Washington in August 1993,

signaled a fresh start in relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

It also offered the first real hope

of a final peace agreement between the two sides.

Today, the leadership of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization

will sign a declaration of principles on interim Palestinian self-government.

It charts a course toward reconciliation

between two peoples who have both known the bitterness of exile.

Enough of blood and tears. Enough!

What is incredible in this story

is that 23 years after the assassination,

I received a phone call from UNESCO. "Listen, can you help us?"

"Tonight is the first anniversary of the peace treaty in Oslo."

So, right away, I miraculously managed to find all my musicians and technicians,

and we arrived in Oslo.

And we went on and played in front of this audience,

in front of Shimon Peres and Arafat, who didn't know me.

They didn't know who I was.

And I find myself playing in the country where my brother was assassinated,

playing in front of people who, by their function,

represent what he was assassinated for.

Shimon Peres was Israeli, Arafat is Palestinian.

And... after the concert, Shimon Peres and Arafat came on stage

and shook hands.

And I found that really a sign of fate.

I forgave because forgiveness is what helps us to build,

and especially to rebuild ourselves. Because, frankly, we were really touched.

I was appointed UNESCO's Special Envoy for Peace on May 9, 1996.

And so I went to play in Israel, in Palestine.

I always thought... that we could be a small bridge

over this barrier that they have between them.

And this bridge, I believe, is called forgiveness.