Overview
Operation Wrath of God — known in Hebrew as Mivtza Za’am Ha’el — was a covert Mossad assassination campaign authorised by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the autumn of 1972. Its objective was the targeted killing of individuals identified as planners and facilitators of the September 5, 1972 Munich massacre, in which 11 Israeli Olympic team members and coaches were murdered by the Palestinian militant group Black September.
The operation, running from 1972 into the 1980s and arguably continuing in attenuated form into the 1990s, resulted in the confirmed deaths of at least twelve individuals across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. It stands as the most extensively documented Mossad targeted killing programme, confirmed through Israeli government statements, first-person accounts from participants, and declassified intelligence assessments.
Munich and the Authorisation
On 5 September 1972, eight Black September operatives seized the Israeli Olympic team’s dormitory in Munich, killing two athletes immediately and taking nine hostage. A failed German rescue attempt at Fürstenfeldbruck airbase resulted in the deaths of all nine remaining hostages, a German police officer, and five of the eight attackers. Three attackers survived and were subsequently released by the West German government in October 1972 after a Lufthansa hijacking.
Prime Minister Golda Meir convened a special committee. In her memoir, she confirmed she authorised a response operation: “I authorised the retaliation.” Mossad Director Zvi Zamir was tasked with assembling assassination teams — referred to internally as kidon (bayonet) units.
Operations
The first killing attributed to Wrath of God occurred in Rome on 16 October 1972, when Wael Zwaiter, a PLO representative identified by Mossad as a Black September liaison, was shot twelve times in the lobby of his apartment building. Abu Baker Al-Nashr was killed in Paris in December 1972. Hussein Al-Bashir, a PLO figure, was killed in Nicosia by a bomb in January 1973.
The operation’s most controversial incident occurred in Lillehammer, Norway, on 21 July 1973. A Mossad team killed Ahmed Bouchiki — a Moroccan waiter with no connection to Black September — after misidentifying him as Ali Hassan Salameh, the Black September operations chief who had planned Munich. Six Mossad officers were arrested by Norwegian police; two were convicted of complicity in murder. Israel never officially acknowledged the incident, though it later paid compensation to Bouchiki’s widow.
Ali Hassan Salameh himself was eventually killed in Beirut in January 1979 by a car bomb, the operation’s most high-profile confirmed success.
Confirmation
Israel maintained formal deniability for decades. The operation entered the public record primarily through George Jonas’s 1984 book Vengeance, based on interviews with a claimed Mossad operative known as “Avner.” Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich dramatised the account. In 2006, Israeli officials including former Mossad figures gave on-record confirmations to journalists, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had previously acknowledged the programme’s existence in a 2004 interview.