Black September (organization)

Black September (Arabic: أيلول الأسود, Aylūl al-Aswad) was a Palestinian terrorist organization founded in 1970. It had ties to various groups within the PLO, mainly with Fatah, then led by Yasser Arafat, and later with the PFLP. He was responsible for the assassination of Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi el-Tell on November 28, 1971, as well as the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Origins

The name "Black September" arises from the eponymous conflict that began on September 6, 1970, when King Hussein I of Jordan imposed martial law in response to the fedayeen's attempt to overthrow him. Thousands of Palestinians were killed or expelled in that period. The group began as a small Fatah cell seeking revenge on Hussein I and the Jordanian Armed Forces, and was soon joined by recruits from the PFLP, As-Saika and other organizations.

Many of the organization's early members were Fatah dissidents, close to Abu Ali Iyad, commander of Fatah forces in northern Jordan, and who continued to fight even after the PLO had been driven out. Iyad was assassinated on 23 July 1971, and it was claimed at the time that Wasfi el-Tell had personally tortured and executed him.

Structure

There is disagreement among historians and journalists about the nature of the Black September organization and the extent of Fatah's control over it.

In his book Stateless, Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), Arafat's security chief and a founding member of Fatah, wrote that

«Black September was not a terrorist organization, but rather an auxiliary unit of the resistance movement, at a time when the latter was unable to achieve all its military and political potential. Members of the organization always denied any link between their organization and Fatah or the PLO.»

The denial described in Abu Iyad's statements was mutual: according to a 1972 article in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustur, Abu Daoud, a member of Black September and former PLO member, reportedly commented to the Jordanian police that “there is no such organization. Fatah announces its own operations under this name so that Fatah does not appear as the direct executor of the operation.» A telegram dated March 13, 1973 and declassified in 1981 by the US State Department, appears confirm that Black September was indeed a Fatah appendage.

According to American journalist John Cooley, the group represented "a complete break with the old operational and organizational methods of the fedayeen. Its members operated in hermetic cells of four or more men and women. The members of each cell were deliberately kept ignorant of the other cells. Leadership was exercised from the outside by intermediaries and 'cuts' (sic)." Even so, there was no centralized leadership.

Cooley claims 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 diplomats for many years. Operating without central leadership, it was a "true collegiate leadership". The cell structure and operational philosophy protected operatives by ensuring that the apprehension or surveillance of one cell did not affect the others. This provision offered a plausible deniability to the leadership of Fatah, which was always careful to distance itself from Black September operations.

Benny Morris, then a history professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, believes that Fatah needed Black September. The academic wrote: “There was a problem of internal cohesion in the PLO or Fatah, with extremists constantly demanding greater militancy. Apparently, the moderates acquiesced in the creation of Black September in order to survive." As a result of such pressure, Morris claimed, a Fatah congress held between August and September 1971 in Damascus agreed to the establishment of Black September. The new organization was based on Fatah's special intelligence and security apparatus, as well as PLO offices and representatives in various European capitals. Also, from very early on, there was cooperation between Black September and the PFLP.

The organization was dismantled in September 1973, on the third anniversary of its creation, due to "political calculation that terrorism abroad would bring no good." In 1974, Arafat ordered the PLO to refrain from committing acts of violence outside the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Starting in 1974, other groups such as Abu Nidal and the PFLP began to associate the name Septiembre Negro with some of their own acts. However, these groups most likely had nothing to do with the original organization.

Munich Massacre

Their best-known act was the Munich Massacre, the name given by the media to the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games. Five Black September members and a German policeman also lost their lives. The official name of the operation was Ikrit and Biram, after two Palestinian villages whose inhabitants were massacred or expelled by the Haganah in 1948.

Other notable facts

Other acts attributed to Black September were:

1971

• August 24, Madrid: explosion of an artifact inside a plane in which the Jordanian queen Zein had previously traveled. This fact has been attributed to Black September.
• September 9, Jordan: a bomb causes damage to the Transarabic Oleoduct, near the border of Syria. The group places a second device on the 17th.
• 11 November, Haman: bomb explosion at the Intercontinental Hotel in the Jordanian capital, the target being U.S. citizens.
• November 28, Cairo: murder of Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi el-Tell by members of Black September.
• December 15, London: attempted murder against Jordanian ambassador Zaid Rifai.

1972

• February 6, Ravenstein, Netherlands: Gulf Oil oil fire through explosions. Black September is awarded the attacks stating that Gulf Oil was helping Israel.
• February 6, Brühl, North Rhine-Westphalia: Black September members murder five Jordanians suspected of spying for Israel near Cologne.
• February 8, Hamburg: a bomb explodes at the Streuber engine factory, which produced electric generators for Israel.
• May 8, Israel: abduction of a Belgian commercial aircraft flying from Vienna to Tel Aviv. The plane was rescued by Israeli commandos in a successful operation.
• September 5, Munich: Munich massacre.

1973

• March 1: Attempted against the Saudi embassy in Sudan, which cost the lives of three people, including the US ambassador.
• March 2: Failed attack in New York with car bomb.
• August 5: Two fedayines opened fire in the passenger lounge at Ellinikon International Airport, killing three people and wounding 55. Another command group would hijack a Lufthansa Boeing 737 in Rome in December of that year, demanding the release of the surviving terrorists.

1981

• October 20: A car bomb was detonated in front of a Portuguese synagogue in the city of Antwerp, Belgium, killing three people and wounding 106. Black September the responsibility of the event was awarded the next day.