They’ve done it again – and then some!

The New York Times has a history of prominently featuring articles when Israel or Israelis allegedly misbehave, while burying articles when Israel or Israelis or Jews are the victims.

It happened again last week – Dec. 1 – with a staggering omission compounding the Times’ pattern.

The Times published an article updating a particularly shocking and heinous act: the Palestinian-Arab attack on Israeli athletes, coaches, and referees at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.

The widow of one of the slain Olympians has offered new and particularly gruesome revelations about the attack based on information supplied by German authorities: all of the Israelis were beaten by their captors, and at least one of the Israelis murdered in the Olympic Village was tortured and his genitals mutilated by the Palestinian-Arabs.  There is photographic evidence of the mutilation.  

The electronic version of the article is categorized under “Sports.”  A footnote indicates that the print version was published on page B10 of the New York edition.

The article, by Sam Borden, is substantial in length, with more than 1,300 words.  However, whether ironically, shockingly, or predictably, two prominent words that should be in the article are not: “Mahmoud Abbas.”

Abbas – who today is simultaneously the president of the Palestinian Authority, chairman of the PLO (the P.A.’s dominant group), and chairman of Fatah (the PLO’s largest faction) – financed the attack.  One would think that such a fact deserves at least a mention, if not a full paragraph.  One would think.

Some background: In 1972, Abbas was a member of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement and served on the Palestine National Council and the PLO Executive Committee.  These were terrorists, after all.  Abbas had to have known that the money was not going to be used to line the boulevards of Ramallah and Jenin with flowers.

Abbas is also known by his nom de guerre: Abu Mazen.

News of Abbas’s involvement in the Munich massacre was first revealed in 1999 by Abu Daoud in his memoir about the attack.  It was Daoud who planned the attack.  He verified Abbas’s role in a subsequent interview in Sports Illustrated headlined “A Painful Visit,” by S.I.’s Don Yaeger.

Daoud was observing Abbas’s/Mazen’s role in the peace process and at the now-famous Oslo Accords signing ceremony on September 13, 1993, on the White House lawn.

Noted Daoud: “Do you think that … would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?  I doubt it.”

The Palestinian-Arab terrorists, operating under the guise of “Black September,” attacked the Israelis at the Olympics, ostensibly to garner the release of 200 Arab terrorists held in Israeli jails.  But the mutilation and torture of the Israelis at Munich make the attack more than merely a political act.  After killing two Israelis almost immediately, the perpetrators held the nine remaining Israelis in a hostage drama broadcast live throughout the world, and in America covered memorably by ABC’s Jim McKay.  The terrorists took the Israeli hostages to an airport, where together they were to fly to Cairo.  An attempt by German authorities to rescue the Israelis was botched, and all of the Israelis were killed, as were a German policeman and some of the terrorists.

The New York Times might not think that Abbas’s role in this savagery and stain on the Olympics is fit to print or note online, but we do.