Munich: The massacre the world must never forget - opinion

The attack was carefully planned to exploit the global spotlight of the Olympics. The terrorists understood that an attack on Israel's delegation would command the attention of millions around the world. They were right. The world watched the hostage crisis unfold, watched the failed rescue attempt at Fürstenfeldbruck airfield, and watched as 11 Israelis lost their lives.

But behind the headlines were 11 human beings.

Moshe Weinberg, Yossef Romano, Yossef Gutfreund, Ze'ev Friedman, David Berger, Eliezer Halfin, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shor, Mark Slavin, Andrei Spitzer, and Yaakov Springer were not political abstractions. They were husbands, fathers, sons, coaches, and athletes with families and futures ahead of them.

They went to Munich representing Israel and returned home in coffins. Their families did not get to watch them compete or welcome them home. Instead, they had to bury the people they loved.

That is what terrorism does. It turns human beings into targets and families into casualties.

My connection to Munich became personal years later in Beirut.

In December 1978, I met a striking, almost playboy-looking man at the Hilton Hotel. I had been told to go to the bar and ask for "the Red Prince." I had no idea who I was about to meet.

During our conversation, he told me that the United States would eventually secure "land for peace." When I asked whose land, he answered, "Israel's." He also told me he had received numerous warnings from the CIA about attempts by Mossad to assassinate him.

At the time, I did not understand the significance of the man sitting across from me. It was only later that I realized who he was: Ali Hassan Salameh, the man known as the Red Prince.

Salameh remained a powerful figure within the Palestinian movement and maintained close ties to Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel continued to regard him as a major terrorist target.

His death could not bring the eleven Israelis home. But Munich had already changed the world. Terrorists had discovered that they could turn innocent lives into political leverage and use television and the international media as a global megaphone.

The Olympics were supposed to bring nations together in peace. Instead, they became the stage for an act of calculated murder.

More than five decades later, the greatest danger may be forgetting what Munich taught us.

The language of terrorism changes. Organizations change. Weapons change. But the ideology that dehumanizes innocent people remains. We can debate governments, borders, negotiations, and political solutions. We can disagree passionately about policy. But there can never be a legitimate political justification for murdering innocent civilians.

Munich was not simply an attack against Israel. It was an attack against the principle that innocent people should be protected from political violence.

And the world has seen that lesson repeated many times since.

I remember the 11 Israelis who went to Munich to compete and never came home. I remember their families, whose lives were permanently changed by their murders. And I remember sitting across from Ali Hassan Salameh at the Hilton Hotel in Beirut.

That encounter taught me something I have never forgotten: history is ultimately about choices. The men who planned Munich made choices. The men who carried out the massacre made choices. And the nations that watched had to decide how they would respond.

More than 50 years later, we are still living with the consequences.

Munich remain a warning about what happens when hatred becomes an ideology, terrorism becomes a political weapon, and the murder of innocent people is rationalized in the name of a cause.

We must remember the eleven because their lives mattered, their families mattered, and their memory still matters.

When terrorism is tolerated, it never remains confined to its first victims. Eventually, it threatens everyone.