Wrath of God

aka Mivtzah Elohim

Wrath of God was a covert Israeli assassination campaign carried out to avenge the 1972 kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants at the Munich Olympics.

[Page 412]A secret committee chaired by Israeli prime minister Golda Meir and defense minister Moshe Dayan is said to have authorized the assassination of everyone directly or indirectly involved in the Munich killings. The Wrath of God hit squad, made up of members of the Mossad, Israel's secret foreign intelligence service, spent six years tracking down and killing the suspects.

The hit squad first killed Wael Zwaiter, a Palestine Liberation Organization organizer and cousin of Yasir Arafat, shooting him in the lobby of his Rome apartment building in October 1972. Mahmoud Hamshiri was targeted next. After a Wrath of God member, posing as an Italian journalist, scheduled a telephone interview for December ...