This stuff keeps coming out about so-called “good guy” Abu Mazan. It appears he was involved in funding the terrorist massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. An Israeli civil rights group has asked that U.S. and German law authorities open an investigation into Abu Mazan’s role:
While recent newsmedia profiles of Abu Mazen have accentuated the Palestinian leader’s alleged “terrorism-free” personal history, the Shurat Hadin charges that in 1972, Abu Mazen, then a high ranking PLO official, provided financing for the terrorist attacks being perpetrated by Yassir Arafat’s PLO faction Fatah under the nom de guerre Black September.
Shurat Hadin is basing its information on published statements by the terrorist who masterminded the the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (“Abu Daoud”). In his French-language autobiography, Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, Abu Daoud describes the role of Abu Mazen in providing the funds to carry out the Black September Olympic attack.
Furthermore, in an interview with journalist Don Yaeger of Sports Illustrated Magazine in August 2002, Abu Daoud reiterated his charges that Abu Mazen supplied the money for the deadly attack.
The sad thing is that we seem to have such low expectations of anyone who can step up to assume a leadership role in the Palestinian Authority. It is pretty much taken for granted that someone who is truly against terrorism can never survive politically, and will never have any clout. So the U.S. and Europe are willing to overlook many things about the man they are backing, Abu Mazan. And they’ll probably overlook this as well.