By Sama Marwan,
In a continuation of Israeli crimes against Palestinians over decades since the start of the Israeli occupation on May 14, 1948, newly declassified documents have revealed secret support from Western intelligence agencies to Israel, enabling it to track and assassinate Palestinians suspected of involvement in the 1972 Munich operation.
According to the British newspaper The Guardian, this support was provided without oversight from parliaments or elected politicians.
The Israeli assassination campaign—carried out by Mossad, Israel’s main foreign intelligence agency—followed the attack by Palestinian gunmen on the Munich Olympic Games in September 1972, which led to the death of 11 Israeli athletes. At least four Palestinians believed by Israel to be linked to the operation were killed in Paris, Rome, Athens, and Nicosia, and six more were killed elsewhere during the rest of the decade.
This mission, known by some as “Operation Wrath of God”, inspired the 2005 film “Munich” directed by Steven Spielberg.
Evidence of Western intelligence support for the Israeli mission was found in encrypted telegrams discovered in the Swiss archives by Dr. Aviva Guttmann, a historian of strategy and intelligence at Aberystwyth University.
Thousands of these telegrams were exchanged through a previously unknown secret network called “Kilowatt”, established in 1971 to allow 18 Western intelligence agencies—including those of Israel, the UK, the US, France, Switzerland, Italy, and West Germany—to exchange information. The telegrams contained raw intelligence, including details about safe houses, vehicles, the movements of key individuals considered dangerous, updates on tactics used by Palestinian groups, and analysis.
Guttmann, the first researcher to access Kilowatt materials, said:
“The information was extremely precise, linking individuals to specific attacks and providing details that would be of great operational use. Maybe at first, the Western officials didn’t know [about the assassinations], but later on there were many media reports and other strong evidence pointing to what the Israelis were doing. They were even sharing the findings of their investigations into the killings with Mossad, which was likely the agency carrying them out.”
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had instructed Mossad to provide her with credible evidence linking any target to the Munich operation or to the broader wave of attacks launched at the time by Palestinian armed groups on airplanes, embassies, and Israeli airline offices across Western Europe and the Mediterranean. Much of this evidence came from Western intelligence agencies and was delivered to Israel through the Kilowatt network.
