The workplace of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced the loss of life however gave no different particulars.
In Israel, the meticulous and sharp-tongued Mr. Zamir turned a goal of the nation’s questions and grief after Munich as one of many first Mossad chiefs to face intense public inquiry. The next yr, Mr. Zamir was embroiled in high-level rifts over whether or not a tip he acquired from an Arab informant might have higher ready Israel for the Yom Kippur warfare in October 1973.
Mr. Zamir was extensively credited for sustaining self-discipline and focus inside Mossad amid the fallout from Munich, the place 11 Israeli athletes and coaches have been killed after Palestinian gunmen stormed the Olympic Village on Sept. 5, 1972.
Two Israelis have been killed throughout the assault, and 9 athletes and coaches have been taken hostage in a standoff broadcast around the globe. Almost 20 hours after the raid, Mr. Zamir watched as West German snipers and Palestinians traded hearth at an airfield, leaving all of the captives lifeless in addition to 5 of the militants from the Black September faction.
“To see this occur on German soil was a horrible sight,” stated Mr. Zamir, who had taken over as Mossad’s chief in 1968 and served till 1974.
He mobilized a counterstrike on Palestinian targets, code-named “Wrath of God,” an operation that lasted greater than a decade and was linked to the killing of greater than a dozen suspected Palestinian militant leaders and others. Amongst them was the alleged mastermind of the Munich assault, Ali Hassan Salameh, who died in a bombing in Beirut in 1979.
Israel by no means publicly acknowledged any function within the deaths, however Mr. Zamir made clear that Mossad was in a extra aggressive posture after Munich. “I’m not saying that those that have been concerned in Munich weren’t marked for loss of life,” Mr. Zamir instructed the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “They undoubtedly deserved to die. However we weren’t coping with the previous. We targeting the long run.”
Mr. Zamir raced to Germany because the hostage standoff unfolded, however West German authorities denied his requests to have Israeli commandos assist.
Negotiators finally agreed to the Palestinians’ calls for for helicopters to take them and the hostages about 15 miles to Fürstenfeldbruck navy airfield, the place they presumably would attempt to organize a flight to a safe-haven Arab nation.
“I noticed a scene I’ll always remember for the remainder of my life,” Mr. Zamir stated in “Mossad: Secret Service of Israel,” a 2017 documentary sequence. “With their fingers and toes tied to one another, the athletes trudged previous me. Subsequent to them, the Arabs. A deathly silence.”
The West Germans deliberate an ambush on the airfield. Mr. Zamir recalled that he was shocked that among the West German sniper rifles have been outdated and with out telescopic scopes. “It broke my coronary heart,” he stated.
The snipers opened hearth. Mr. Zamir watched from the airfield’s management tower. At one level throughout the chaos, his Arabic-speaking aide shouted to the Palestinians: “Cease firing! … The airplane is prepared for you!”
“Their reply was clear … They opened hearth at us on the balcony,” he recalled.
A number of the hostages burned to loss of life after a militant tossed a grenade right into a helicopter whereas they have been nonetheless aboard. 5 of the eight captors have been gunned down. The remaining three have been captured — solely to be launched lower than two months later after Palestinian militants hijacked a Lufthansa flight touring from Damascus to Frankfurt. (Mr. Zamir known as “Munich,” director Steven Spielberg’s account of the occasions, a “cowboy movie” that lacked nuance.)
Mr. Zamir returned to the Olympic Village after the bloodshed. He known as the prime minister, Golda Meir, at dwelling. She had already seen a misfiled wire report saying all hostages have been freed.
“Golda,” Mr. Zamir stated, in keeping with his Hebrew-language memoir “Eyes Broad Open” (2012). “I’m sorry to let you know however the athletes weren’t rescued. I noticed them. Not one in every of them survived.”
Mr. Zamir’s tenure additionally led to inside rifts and investigations that reverberated for years.
In July 1973, Israeli brokers working beneath Mr. Zamir’s course mistakenly killed a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchikhi, in Lillehammer, Norway, believing in error that he was the Munich assault planner Salameh. Members of the Mossad staff have been captured, and 5 have been convicted by a Norwegian court docket.
The brokers have been freed in 1975, however the harm ran deep. Europe’s relations with Israel have been strained, and testimony revealed Mossad secrets and techniques together with secure homes in France and elsewhere. Mr. Zamir submitted his resignation, however Meir demanded he keep on.
Meir’s religion in Mr. Zamir was quickly put to the check once more. Mr. Zamir’s high Arab informant — later recognized as Ashraf Marwan, a son-in-law of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nassar — stated Egypt and Syria have been planning shock assaults in October on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish spiritual calendar.
An earlier warning by Mr. Zamir had been confirmed fallacious. In April 1973, Mr. Zamir’s informant stated warfare was looming. The second tip from Mr. Zamir was solely partially heeded.
Israeli forces have been bolstered however not placed on full warfare footing. “You may’t name up the entire system simply due to a number of messages from Zvicka,” scoffed Israeli’s protection minister, Moshe Dayan, utilizing Mr. Zamir’s full first identify, in keeping with an account by Israeli political researcher Uri Bar-Joseph in his 2016 ebook on the informant Marwan, “The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel.”
Lower than 10 hours later, Syrian tanks rolled into the Golan Heights, and Egyptian floor forces crossed the Suez Canal. Israel took early losses however finally prevailed after almost three weeks of preventing aided by fast U.S. navy assist.
“It burned [Mr. Zamir] up that he didn’t achieve getting the Israeli authorities to attempt to counter the shock assault by Egypt and Syria sooner,” Danny Yatom, who led Mossad within the Nineties, instructed Military Radio in Israel. The Agranat Fee, an Israeli panel that investigated the lead-up to the warfare, provided some vindication for Mr. Zamir by praising his informant tip.
“The best achievement of Mossad throughout my time in cost,” Mr. Zamir later stated, “was to supply the warning in regards to the looming warfare.”
Zvicka Zarzevsky was born in Lodz, Poland, on March 3, 1925. Earlier than his first birthday, his household emigrated to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. His father drove a horse-drawn wagon for an electrical firm; his mom was a homemaker.
He modified his final identify, in keeping with some accounts, as a result of a instructor struggled to pronounce Zarzevsky. One among Mr. Zamir’s boyhood soccer playmates was future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
As a teen, Mr. Zamir joined Palmach, a guerrilla-style power inside Haganah, a clandestine Jewish paramilitary group. He took half in battles towards Arabs in and round Jerusalem. He additionally served almost a yr in British custody for hyperlinks to a community smuggling Jewish immigrants to the area.
In 1950 — two years after Israel’s statehood — Mr. Zamir was given command of a navy brigade and, in 1953, was assigned for coaching on the Workers School in Camberley, England.
He rose by means of the navy ranks, being given command of forces alongside within the Israel-Egypt border within the early Nineteen Sixties. In July 1966, he was appointed Israel’s navy attaché in London, a put up he held throughout Israel’s 1967 warfare towards allied Arab forces.
After leaving Mossad in 1974, he led a development agency and served because the chairman of the Institute for Petroleum and Geophysics Analysis and the Israel Petroleum and Power Institute. In 1995, he was a part of the Shamgar Fee set as much as examine the assassination of Rabin.
Mr. Zamir’s spouse, the previous Rina Sadovsky, died in 2019. They’d three kids. Full info on survivors was not instantly accessible.
Mr. Zamir remained intensely loyal to Meir till her loss of life in 1978. When some Israeli commentators blamed her for Israel’s navy missteps earlier than the Yom Kippur Struggle, Mr. Zamir usually asserted that the guilt rested with Dayan and others.
Throughout a go to to Mossad headquarters in July 1974, Meir joked that the strong-willed Mr. Zamir was simple to work with. “All that’s wanted,” she stated, “is that you just agree with every part he says.”
