Additional information
by Charles River (Author)
*Includes pictures
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
Historians once portrayed Eichmann mostly as a colorless, unimaginative bureaucrat who carried out the Holocaust simply because he lacked the imagination to reject the crime. Essentially "banal," this version of Eichmann turned him into a compliant functionary who handled the ghastly matter of collecting, transporting, and murdering millions of people with the same bland methodical means that other administrators applied to supplying the Wehrmacht with bread rations or new boots. Of course, Eichmann's story is best known for the way in which the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, kidnapped him out of Argentina in 1960 to put him on trial back in the Jewish State. Employing the same failed defense used by many defendants at the Nuremburg Trials, Eichmann claimed he was simply following the orders of his superiors and was bound by an oath of loyalty, and while judges found him not guilty of personally killing anyone, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other crimes before being executed.
At 10:00 a.m. on September 12, 1972, Prime Minister Golda Meir appeared before a special session of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Wasting no time, the austere, chain-smoking grandmother addressed a full house of 120 members. "I want to share my plans with you," she said. 'I've decided to pursue each and every one of them. Not one of the people involved in any way will be walking around on this earth for much longer. We will chase them to the last." These determined and resolute words were spoken in reference to the surviving operatives and planners of one of the most audacious terrorist attacks mounted against Israel since the founding of the nation in 1948. A week earlier, on September 5, 1972, 8 Palestinian terrorists belonging to the Black September faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) entered the Olympic Village in Munich, West Germany, and took 11 Israeli athletes and team members hostage. After a lengthy standoff and a bungled rescue operation, all 11 were killed.
A few months before Munich, on May 8, 1972, a new style of warfare came to the fore when 4 members of Black September hijacked Belgian Sabena Flight 571 en route from Brussels to Tel Aviv. From a security perspective, this was quite an unprecedented situation, as an operation to free hostages on board a commercial airliner had never been tried before. Hijackings and similar attacks only increased in number and violence in the following years. In response, the Israelis instituted a policy of an "eye for an eye," destroying Arab aircraft whenever the Palestinians or others damaged or destroyed one of their own. They also established a custom of refusing to negotiate with hostage-takers and terrorists, while greatly increasing security measures surrounding their national airline, El Al. Nonetheless, the violence only increased after the Israelis won the Yom Kippur War of 1973 in spite of early Arab successes. In the process of countering these attacks and hijackings, the Israelis developed valuable skills in commando operations and hostage rescue. This experience stood them in good stead in the summer of 1976, when a large-scale hijacking led to a daring Israeli operation thousands of miles from the Levant at the Ugandan airport of Entebbe, then part of the domain of dictator Idi "Big Daddy" Amin.Israel's Most Legendary Operations: The History and Legacy of the Capture of Adolf Eichmann, Operation Wrath of God, and Operation Entebbe examines the chain of events that led to three of the 20th century's most dramatic operations. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Israel's most famous operations like never before.
