“Vengeance” by George Jonas – The Israeli Revenge for the Munich Murders

In 1972 a terrorist group known as the PLO specifically targeted and murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Once the initial mourning stage was over with, Golda Meir, the fourth Prime Minister of Israel, declared that her government would hunt down and bring those responsible for the acts to justice. 

In order to do that, they assembled a team of five Israeli operatives, spearheaded by a man named Avner. Cut off from direct contact with the government of Israel and officially ceasing to exist, the team of five traveled around the world, putting themselves through the grinding wheels, both physically and mentally. Vengeance by George Jonas is the account of that story in novel form, based on accounts from a Mossad agent, the first to reveal details about this deeply covert operation.

While we constantly get books where the hero is a central figure of the CIA or the FBI, it seems that authors often forget that other countries have their own special services, and in most cases, their history is at least as... “colorful”, for lack of a better word, than that of the agencies we have become familiar with.

Those who are interested in the topic of espionage and secret services probably already know a bit about the Mossad, with one of their finest traits being the denial of responsibility for certain actions for lack of proof. In some cases, it can be difficult to determine whether the Mossad was involved in a particular event or not, but if there is one for which no doubt ever existed, it is the revenge mission for the 1972 Munich murders.

For a very long time we had practically nothing to go on to determine how the operation actually happened. All that writers and movie makers could get their hands on were reports from witnesses that had witnessed the revenge murders, as well as a trail of bodies.

This marks the first time that a Mossad agent has come to actually talk about that operation, what those people did on a day-to-day basis, completely undercover, changing identities and countries as often as they changed their shoes, and giving all they have to offer for the sake of vengeance.

What I liked about this novel is that George Jonas, the author, doesn’t seek to simply reveal how the operation happened... he actually seeks to make a work of art from it without changing the facts. 

He achieves that, in my opinion at least, by providing us with some very interesting insight into the mindset of the members of the Israeli team, how with every killing they become increasingly unstable, sometimes even questioning if they got the right guy, why they volunteered for this, and if they should keep on going in spite of all the horrors awaiting them. 

All in all, it makes for a very gritty, realistic, and yet touching look at one of the most interesting secret service operations to ever happen on this planet. This book fares extremely well both as an accurate historical account and as a form of entertainment, I’d recommend it to literally anyone who even remotely likes the concept of espionage.

---

George Jonas  (June 15, 1935 – January 10, 2016) George Jonas is a Hungarian-Canadian writer, journalist and poet. He is best-known for his 1984 bestseller, Vengeance, in which he explores the Israeli operation to avenge the fallen athletes at the 1972 Munich Massacre, a novel which was adapted into movies on two occasions. In 2013, Jonas was made a member of the Order of Canada.