Mossad wanted to send a message to its enemies in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. In an event that shocked the world, 11 Israeli athletes were brutally killed in attacks orchestrated by Black September, a breakaway militant faction of the Palestinian organization Fatah.

It was the second time since WWII that Jews had been massacred on German soil and Israel decided 'enough is enough'. In retaliation, Israel vowed to eliminate those responsible for the Olympic murders and put an end to Black September. They would turn the hunters into the hunted. First they needed to draw up a list of targets.

Israeli PM “Golda Meir was very determined but she didn’t want to be the one who decided on her own so she took the Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, and another two ministers who were deeply involved in security issues. And they created what they called  Committee X to decide, to consider - based on recommendations of Mossad - whom to target,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told Netflix's Spy Ops (2023) series.

Amid the cloak-and-dagger web of vengeance however, a Mossad mission that unfolded in Lillehammer in 1973 would haunt Norway and Israel for decades.
‍

Mossad's Operation Wrath of God

Black September was a secret group within a secret group. The terrorists began preparing for their Munich mission with training in the Libyan desert in July 1972, weeks before the Olympic Games. Inevitably, rumors leaked out. Israel was warned but missed the signs. “So many terror alerts and tips were flooding the Mossad’s research department that, inevitably, more than a few were overlooked,” writes journalist Ronen Bergman, author of Rise and Kill First.

As the Games approached, Black September smuggled weapons from Spain into Germany. Overnight on September 5-6, 1972, the assailants climbed a fence at the Olympic Village and walked to Connollystraße 31, where the Israeli delegation was housed. Over the course of the next 23 hours, 11 Israeli athletes were murdered. The agonizing drama ended in an airport shootout as the militants prepared to fly to Cairo with Israeli hostages. Four Arab suspects and a German officer also died.

Israel initially responded with airstrikes on Palestinian Liberation Organization bases in Syria and Lebanon. But Mossad and the Israeli Defense Forces wanted more. They wanted Operation Wrath of God to bring the perpetrators to justice and strike fear into the hearts of Palestinian militants. The international operation was fraught with challenges and complications, however. To achieve their goals, Israel would need to operate covertly in friendly countries like France, Italy, and Norway.
‍

‍

‍

Mossad's mistake

Mossad's target list was a mix of Black September and PLO members. The idea was to locate and kill them while maintaining plausible deniability, ensuring a direct connection to Israel could not be proven. On October 16, 1972, Wael Zuaiter, the Fatah spokesman and Yasser Arafat’s cousin, was the first target. He was shot dead in Rome. Two months later, a Mossad operative named Sylvia Rafael (aka Canadian 'photographer' Patricia Roxburgh) set up a meeting with Mahmoud Hamshari, the PLO representative in Paris. While Hamshari was away from his home, Mossad planted a bomb in his telephone. They later called him and activated the device remotely. He died from injuries sustained in the explosion.

An operation in Lebanon followed, targeting three more men. Another breakthrough came in July 1973 when a suspected militant boarded a flight to Oslo, Norway, and then a train to the Lillehammer ski resort. Twelve Mossad operatives quickly assembled. Among them was Sylvia Rafael.

“What happened next is a matter of some dispute," Ronen Bergman writes. In some versions - one in particular that Bergman believes is likely - Mossad lost track of their original target and used a ‘combing method’ that involved narrowing down a target’s position by combing a large search area. Instead of the initial target, Mossad reportedly found a second man they believed to be linked to the Black September group. They notified Tel Aviv HQ.

The new suspect was followed but he didn’t appear to be a man on the run - he wasn’t showing nervous tendencies or making an effort to hide. At about 10:30 pm on July 21, 1973, as the suspect and a blonde woman left a Lillehammer movie theater, two operatives using Beretta pistols shot him to death. It was later revealed that the victim was, in fact, Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter who also cleaned the town’s swimming pool. The blonde woman with him was Ahmed’s wife, a Norwegian lady who was seven months pregnant.

“Not one of us has the means of making only correct decisions. Wrong identification of a target is not a failure. It’s a mistake,” Mossad chief Zvi Zamir said. But the conviction of five Israeli operatives tied to the operation in Norway and the international outrage that followed may have compromised Mossad's operations and assets across Europe.

The legacy of Mossad Operation Wrath of God

The five Mossad agents - Swedish-born Marianne Gladinkoff, South African Sylvia Rafael; Israeli Abraham Gehmer; Denmark-born Dan Aerbel; and Brazilian-born Zvi Steinberg - were convicted of the killing and jailed in Norway but later pardoned, according to The Guardian. Raphael reportedly wrote to her friend, Abraham Gemer, from prison: "Something in me broke after Lillehammer... it eroded my desire to continue serving with the people I respected so highly.”

In January 1996, Israel paid undisclosed compensation to Bouchiki's family but did not admit responsibility for the death.

"This was much more than a murder," said Gullow Gjeseth, head of the Norwegian government commission that issued a 179-page report on the death in 2000. "This was a violation of Norwegian sovereignty." 

The legacy of Operation Wrath of God is complex. While it is believed to have achieved some of its goals, it also raised questions about the ethics of targeted assassinations and their long-term consequences. The operation remains a subject of debate, illustrating the challenges faced by intelligence agencies when pursuing justice in the shadows.

In 2016, the Olympic Village in Rio held a ceremony in the Place of Mourning, a memorial set up to honor the 11 Israeli athletes who died more than four decades earlier.