Black September (group)

The Black September Organization (BSO) was a Palestinian paramilitary unit founded in 1970. It is believed to have drawn its members chiefly from Fatah, the PLO faction controlled by Yasser Arafat. In 1973, the U.S. State Department distributed documents (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/plobso.html) regarding the links between the PLO and the BSO.

The name Black September comes from the conflict known as Black September in Jordan that began on September 16, 1970, when King Hussein of Jordan declared military rule, and which resulted in the expulsion of Palestinian refugees and militants from the kingdom.

The group began as a small cell of Fatah men obedient to Arafat who was determined to take revenge on the Jordanian army. Other recruits from the PFLP and al-Saiqa also joined.

In his book Stateless, Saleh Khalaf (Abu Iyad), who was Arafat's chief of security and a founding member of Fatah, wrote that: "Black September was not a terrorist organization, but was rather an auxiliary unit of the resistance movement, at a time when the latter was unable to fully realize its military and political potential. The members of the organization always denied any ties between their organization and Fatah or the PLO."

The group's best-known operation was the "Munich massacre", the kidnapping and killing of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Following the massacare, the Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Golda Meir, ordered the Israeli Mossad to eliminate all "Black September" group members involved. Eight were assassinated by 1979, including leading figure Ali Hassan Salame, a wealthy, flamboyant son of an upper class family nicknamed "The Red Prince", killed with a car bomb in Beirut.

On July 21, 1973, Mossad mistakenly identified and killed Ahmed Bushiki, a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, thought to be Hassan Salame. The Israeli perpetrators were arrested in Norway and later freed with diplomatic efforts. In 1996 the Israeli government agreed to pay reparations to Bushiki's family.

According to American journalist John K. Cooley, Black September represented a "total break with the old operational and organizational methods of the fedayeen. Its members operated in 'air-tight' cells of four or more men and women. Each cell's members were kept ignorant of other cells. Leadership was exercised from outside by intermediaries and 'cut-offs'," (Black September Green March: The Story of the Palestinian Arabs (London, 1973).

Cooley writes that many of the cells in Europe and around the world were made up of Palestinians and other Arabs who had lived in their countries of residence as students, teachers, businessmen and even diplomats for many years. The cells operated without a single, central leadership. It was a "true collegial direction," writes Cooley. There was no "brain" or "mastermind."

The cell structure and the "need to know" operational philosophy protected the operatives by ensuring that the apprehension or surveillance of one cell would not affect the others. The structure also offered plausible deniability to the Fatah leadership, who were careful to distance themselves from Black September operations.

According to a 1972 article in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustur, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), who says he conceived of the Munich attack, told Jordanian police: "There is no such organization as Black September. Fatah announces its own operations under this name so that Fatah will not appear as the direct executor of the operation."

In his autobiography Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich (published in English as Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist) and in a written interview (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/news/2002/08/20/sb2/) to Sports Illustrated, Abu Daoud writes: "Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack." Abbas became Chairman of the PLO on November 11, 2004.

The 72-year-old Abu Daoud, who lives with his wife on a pension provided by the Palestinian Authority, has said that, although Yasser Arafat was not involved in conceiving or implementing the attack, "the [Munich] operation had the endorsement of Arafat."

Fatah needed Black September, according to Benny Morris, Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University. He writes that there was a "problem of internal PLO or Fatah cohesion, with extremists constantly demanding greater militancy. The moderates apparently acquiesced in the creation of Black September in order to survive," (Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001, Vintage Books edition (2001), p 379). Morris says that, as a result of the pressure from militants, a Fatah congress in Damascus in August-September 1971 agreed to establish Black September. The new organization was based, writes Morris, on Fatah's existing special intelligence and security apparatus, and on the PLO offices and representatives in various European capitals; and from very early on, there was cooperation between Black September and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

However, according to Morris, the PLO closed Black September down in the fall of 1973, prompted, he says, by the "political calculation that no more good would come of terrorism abroad," (ibid, p 383). In 1974 Arafat ordered the PLO to withdraw from acts of violence outside Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Other actions attributed to the BS include:

November 28, 1971: the assassination of Jordan's Prime Minister, Wasfi Tel, "in retaliation" for his leadership in expelling Palestinans from Jordan in 1970-71.
December 1971: attempted assassination of Jordan's Ambassador to London and former chief of the Jordanian royal court, Zeid Al Rifai.
February 1972: sabotage of a West German electrical installation and a Dutch gas plant.
May 1972: hijacking of a Belgian Sabena airplane flying from Vienna to Tel Aviv.
March 1, 1973: attack on the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum, killing the American chargé d'affaires J. Curtis Moore, the American ambassador, Cleo Noel, and the Belgian chargé d'affaires, Guy Eid.

After the March 1973 attack, the Black September campaign was ended. Apparently, the PLO which believed that overseas terrorist acts — so-called "external operations" — were damaging public perception of the Palestinian cause.

After 1974, when the Abu Nidal Organization split from the PLO, the Abu Nidal group started associating the "Black September" name with some of its actions. The PFLP also used the "Black September" name on occasion.

Black September remains controversial since its tactics were unabashedly terrorist. It is considered bad form in many circles to discuss Black September in the context of its actual history, structure, and leadership.

The famous film "One Day in September," which won the Academy Award for best documentary for its portrayal of the Munich Massacre, fails to identify Black September other than by name.

References

Cooley, J.K. (London 1973), Black September Green March: The Story of the Palestinian Arabs Frank Cass and Company Ltd., ISBN 0714629871

Michael Bar Zohar, Eitan Haber, (2002), The Quest for the Red Prince: Israel's Relentless Manhunt for One of the World's Deadliest and Most Wanted Arab Terrorists, The Lyons Press, ISBN 1585747394