Ilana Romano and Ankie Spitzer, whose husbands were among the Israeli athletes murdered by PLO terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics, have for the first time made public information they obtained about the massacre, including photographs and descriptions of the torture and beatings to which the hostages were subjected. Sam Borden writes:

Ms. Spitzer explained that she and the family members of the other victims only learned the details of how the victims were treated twenty years after the tragedy, when German authorities released hundreds of pages of reports they previously denied existed. . . . “We asked for more details [in the aftermath of the attacks], but we were told, over and over, there was nothing,” Ms. Spitzer said.

In 1992, after doing an interview with a German television station regarding the twentieth anniversary of the attack in which she expressed frustration about not knowing exactly what happened to her husband and his teammates, Ms. Spitzer was contacted by a man who said he worked for a German government agency with access to reams of records about the attack.

Initially, Ms. Spitzer said, the man, who remained anonymous, sent her about 80 pages of police reports and other documents. With those documents, Pinchas Zeltzer, the lawyer [representing the victims’ families], and Ms. Spitzer pressured the German government into releasing the rest of the file, which included the photographs.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.