In 1970, three Arab terrorists attacked a group of Israelis at the Munich airport. They were arrested by German police, but released a few months later as part of a deal following an unrelated airplane hijacking. Eldad Beck, citing a new study of the subject, writes that this act of capitulation “paved the way for the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.”

From 1968-1984, 48 of the Palestinian terrorist attacks in Europe were carried out on German soil. The deadliest was the slaughter of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 by eight members of Black September.

The then-director of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, who had been sent to Germany to track [German] attempts to rescue the athletes, asked his German counterpart what his government intended to do with the terrorists who remained alive, since the Palestinians could hijack a Lufthansa plane and force the Germans to free them. The head of Germany’s spy agency said he couldn’t guarantee that scenario wouldn’t occur. . . . [I]t took little time for Zamir’s prediction to be fulfilled.

[This] capitulation paved the way for formal relations between West Germany and the PLO, which demanded a mission in the West German capital, to be housed in the offices of the Arab League. The Palestinians also asked the Germans to help fund the PLO. A telegram sent on February 28, 1973 by Helmut Radius, head of the Middle East Department in the German Foreign Ministry, ordered the transfer of 50,000 marks to support the Wafa news agency, which disseminated Palestinian propaganda. Radius also issued instructions that the purpose of the funds be hidden to avoid diplomatic complications, although there is no confirmation that the money was actually transferred.

Remko Leehmhuis, the author of the study, also remarked on the “open anti-Semitism” he found in German foreign-office documents discussing these policies.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.