The Israeli reaction

So began a siege and a tragedy that remains one of the most significant terror attacks of modern times. The assault, and the nature of the Israeli response, thrust the Israeli-Palestinian crisis into the world spotlight, set the tone for decades of conflict in the Middle East, and launched the new era of international terrorism. Olympic events were suspended, and broadcasters filled the time on expensive new satellite connections by switching to live footage from Connollystrasse. A TV audience of 900 million viewers in more than 100 countries watched with lurid fascination.

The killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics by the Palestinian militant group Black September moved Israel to consider measures to deter future similar actions. Soon after the incident, Prime Minister Golda Meir created Committee X, a small group of government officials tasked with formulating an Israeli response, with herself and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan at the head. She also appointed General Aharon Yariv as her Advisor on Counterterrorism; he, along with Mossad Director Zvi Zamir, took the principal role in directing the ensuing operation. The committee came to the conclusion that to deter future violent incidents against Israel they needed to assassinate those who had supported or carried out the Munich massacre, and in dramatic fashion. Pressured by Israeli public opinion and top intelligence officials, Meir reluctantly authorized the beginning of the broad assassination campaign. Yet when the three surviving perpetrators of the massacre were released just months later by West Germany in compliance with the demands of the hijackers of a Lufthansa aircraft, any remaining ambivalence she felt was removed. The committee's first task for Israeli intelligence was to draw up an assassination list of all those involved in Munich. This was accomplished with the aid of PLO operatives working for Mossad, and with information provided by friendly European intelligence agencies. While the contents of the entire list are unknown, reports put the final number of targets at 20–35, a mix of Black September and PLO elements. Once this was complete, the Mossad was charged with locating the individuals and assassinating them. For Israel, the sight of Jews dying again on German soil, just a few decades after the Holocaust, was simply too much. Israel struck back hard. Warplanes bombed Palestinian "military bases", killing many militants, but also scores of innocent civilians and children. Hundreds of Palestinians joined militant groups in response. 

Along with direct assassinations, the Mossad used a variety of other means to respond to the Munich massacre and deter future terrorist action. Victor Ostrovsky says that this included psychological warfare, such as running obituaries of still living militants and sending highly detailed personal information to others.  Reeve further states that the Mossad would call junior Palestinian officials, and after divulging to them their personal information, would warn them to disassociate from any Palestinian cause. More directly, the Mossad engaged in a campaign of letter bombs against Palestinian officials across Europe. Historian Benny Morris writes that these attacks caused non-fatal injuries to their targets, which included persons in Algeria and Libya, Palestinian student activists in Bonn and Copenhagen, and a Red Crescent official in Stockholm. Klein also cites an incident in Cairo where a bomb malfunctioned, sparing the two Palestinian targets.