Abu Daoud

Abu Daoud
Born	Mohammad Daoud Oudeh 1937 Silwan, Mandatory Palestine
Died	3 July 2010 (aged 72–73) Damascus, Syria
Nationality	Palestinian
Years active	1960s–2000s

Mohammad Daoud Oudeh (Arabic: محمد داود عودة), commonly known by his nom de guerre Abu Daoud or Abu Dawud (Arabic: أبو داود)‎ (1937 – 3 July 2010)^[1] was a Palestinian militant, teacher and lawyer known as the planner, architect and mastermind of the Munich massacre. He served in a number of commanding functions in Fatah's armed units in Lebanon and Jordan.

Biography

Oudeh was born in Silwan, East Jerusalem, in 1937.^[2][3] He was a teacher by training.^[3] He taught physics and mathematics in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.^[3] Then he worked at the justice ministry of Kuwait^[3] and studied law.^[2] He lived in Jerusalem until the 1967 Six-Day War, when he was displaced after Israel captured the eastern portion of the city. He resettled in Jordan, where he joined the PLO.

In 1970, Abu Daoud was one of the founders of Fatah. He received military training from the North Korean military.^[4] From 1971 he was leader of the Black September, a Fatah offshoot created to avenge the September 1970 expulsion of the Fedayeen Movement from Jordan and carry out international operations. The group gained international notoriety for its role in the Munich massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which a number of athletes on the Israeli team were taken hostage by Black September. Eleven Israeli athletes and a German policeman were killed by the end of the multi-day stand-off. Documents uncovered in 2012 show that logistical help and support were supplied by two German neo-Nazis, Wolfgang Abramowski and Willi Pohl. The connection was made through Udo Albrecht, a neo-Nazi who set up a right-wing German group (Volksbefreiungs-Front Deutschland) and provided assistance to the Palestinians in return for training facilities in Jordan.^[5][6]

After the Black September attack, Oudeh lived in Eastern Europe and Lebanon.^[7] He resumed his activities with Fatah and the PLO in close collaboration with Abu Iyad and other officials. He led armed units in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War. In January 1977, Oudeh was intercepted by French police in Paris while travelling from Beirut under an assumed name,^[8] and was arrested despite protests from the PLO, Iraq and Libya, who claimed that because Oudeh was travelling to a PLO comrade's funeral he should receive diplomatic immunity. The French government refused a West German extradition request on the grounds that forms had not been filled in properly and put him on a plane to Algeria before Germany could submit another request.^[8] Oudeh fled to Eastern Europe, then to Lebanon until the 1975 Lebanese Civil War broke out, then back to Jordan.

On 1 August 1981,^[9] Oudeh was shot five times from a distance of around two meters (6') in the coffee shop of the Victoria Inter-Continental Hotel in Warsaw, but he survived the attack, chasing his would-be assassin down to the front entrance of the hotel before collapsing. Oudeh claimed the attempted assassination was carried out by a Palestinian double agent recruited by the Mossad, and claimed the would-be assassin was executed by the PLO ten years later.

After the 1993 Oslo Accords, he moved to Ramallah in the West Bank. Following a trip to Jordan and the publication of his memoirs, Oudeh was banned from returning to Ramallah. He settled with his family in Syria, the only country that would take him. He lived on a pension provided by the Palestinian Authority and gave interviews to Aljazeera and other Arab and international media outlets about his life, the Munich events, and Palestinian politics. Oudeh was allowed safe passage through Israel in 1996, so he could attend a PLO meeting in the Gaza Strip to rescind an article in the PLO charter calling for Israel's eradication.

Munich massacre

As a commander of Black September, Abu Daoud was the mastermind behind the Munich massacre. He planned the operation in July 1972, briefed the execution cell on the specifics of the operation, and accompanied the members of the execution cell to the Olympic Village by taxi on the night/early morning of the attack.^[10] It was on the evening of 4 September 1972, the day before the operation commenced in the early morning of 5 September 1972, that Abu Daoud briefed the assassination squad and issued final instructions over dinner in a restaurant at the Munich railway station.^[11]

In 2006, Abu Daoud gave several personal interviews after the release of the Steven Spielberg film Munich revived discussions of the massacre. Abu Daoud remained unrepentant regarding his role in the Munich attacks, stating on Germany's Spiegel TV, "I regret nothing. You can only dream that I would apologise."^[12] In an Associated Press interview, he justified the operation by claiming it was a strategic success, declaring: "Before Munich, we were simply terrorists. After Munich, at least people started asking who are these terrorists? What do they want? Before Munich, nobody had the slightest idea about Palestine."^[13]

Published works

He published his autobiography Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich in French in 1999. It was later published in English as Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist, also titled Palestine-A History of the Resistance Movement, by the Sole Survivor of Black September by Arcade Publishing in hard-cover format.^[14] The book is a first hand account of the rise of the Palestinian resistance movement from its inception to the attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Regarding the book and his subsequently being barred from returning to the West Bank, "The Israeli decision to bar my return is linked to an event which happened 27 years ago, the Munich operation, which we considered a legitimate struggle against the enemy we (the PLO) were fighting."^[15]

In 1999, the Palestinian Prize for Culture was granted to Abu Daoud for his book Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, in which he describes how he planned and executed the Munich operation. As part of the prize, Abu Daoud was awarded 10,000 French francs.^[16][17]

Death

On 3 July 2010, Daoud died of kidney failure at Al-Andalus Hospital^[15] in Damascus, Syria.^[18] After a funeral service in the Al Wasim Mosque in Yarmouk with his coffin draped in the Palestinian flag, he was buried in the Martyrs Cemetery of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus. He was survived by his wife, five daughters and a son.^[7] His daughter Hana Oudeh, in the eulogy, said her father was "a great loving and sincere man whose dream was to go back to Palestine." Representatives of various Palestinian groups, including Fatah and Islamic Jihad, attended the funeral. Shortly before his death, Oudeh said in a statement to Israelis, "Today, I cannot fight you any more, but my grandson will and his grandsons too."^[2]

In a condolence letter to Abu Daoud's family following his death, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, wrote: "He is missed. He was one of the leading figures of Fatah and spent his life in resistance and sincere work as well as physical sacrifice for his people's just causes."^[12][19]

References

1. Bard, Mitchell. "Mastermind behind the Munich Olympics attacks dies". Archived 28 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine France24. 3 July 2010.
2. "Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, mastermind of Munich kidnappings". The National. 10 July 2010. Retrieved 16 December 2012.
3. John E. Jessup (1998). An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Conflict and Conflict Resolution, 1945-1996. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-313-28112-9.
4. "How North Korea supports Palestine and aided Hamas | NK News". 20 May 2021. Archived from the original on 20 May 2021.
5. Gunther Latsch and Klaus Wiegrefe. (18 June 2012). Munich Olympics Massacre: Files Reveal Neo-Nazis Helped Palestinian Terrorists Der Spiegel Archived 12 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine
6. Daniel Koehler. (2017). Right-Wing Terrorism in the 21st Century: The 'National Socialist Underground' and the History of Terror from the Far Right in Germany. Routledge 2017 p. 80
7. Mostyn, Trevor (4 July 2010). "Mohammed Oudeh (Abu Daoud) obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 December 2012.
8. Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York: Basic Books. p. 319. ISBN 0-465-04195-7.
9. "Suspected Olympic massacre mastermind shot" Archived 1 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Montreal Gazette, 6 August 1981, p10
10. Weinberg, Guri. "Nazis at the Olympic Village Gate." Archived 6 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine Jewish Journal. 4 August 2016. 4 August 2016.
11. "Abu Daoud". The Daily Telegraph. London. 4 July 2010.
12. "Suspected Munich massacre mastermind dead, reports say". CNN. 3 July 2010.
13. Karam, Zeina (24 February 2006). "Munich mastermind has no regrets". Seattle Post Intelligencer. Associated Press.
14. Daoud, Abu (2007). Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist'. Arcade. ISBN 978-1559704298.
15. Makdesi, Marwan, Dominic Evans and Jon Hemming. "Palestinian who planned Munich attack dies in Syria". Archived 7 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine Reuters. 3 July 2010.
16. Fayez Abbas (14 November 1999). "Mastermind of Munich Massacre to Receive the Palestine Prize". Yedioth Ahronoth. Archived from the original on 15 July 2006.
17. Arnold Beichman (5 May 2003). "Why Peace Can't Work". National Review. Archived from the original on 7 July 2012.
18. "Planner of deadly Munich Olympics attack dies in Syria". Archived 5 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine Haaretz Daily Newspaper. 3 July 2010.
19. Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik (6 July 2010). "Abbas on mastermind of Munich Olympics massacre: "A wonderful brother, companion, tough and stubborn, relentless fighter"". Palestinian Media Watch. Archived from the original on 11 July 2010. Retrieved 6 July 2010.

External links

• Mastermind of Munich Massacre to Receive the Palestine Prize
• "Thirty years after he helped plan the terror strike, Abu Daoud remains in hiding – and unrepentant". Sports Illustrated. 20 August 2002.