Egyptian Journalist and TV Host Ibrahim Eissa: The Palestinians Who Carried out the 1972 Olympics Massacre Were Terrorists, Not Fedayeen

Egyptian journalist and TV host Ibrahim Eissa said recently that the Palestinians who carried out the 1972 Munich Olympics attack on Israeli athletes were terrorists. "When people storm the Olympic games and the Olympic village, and kidnap athletes – even if they are Israelis – they cannot be called 'fedayeen,' in my view. They should be called 'terrorists,'" he said. Eissa made the comment while reviewing a book on his show on the Egyptian ON TV, in which he said that the use of terrorism was "the backbone of the wretched political exploitation of the Palestinian cause."

Ibrahim Eissa: "Arab culture was the first to use sports events in politics, and to make terrorist use of sports events in politics. The great Palestinian cause, which has been the life cause of us all, was peddled by some, used by some, and exploited by some, but the backbone of the wretched political exploitation of the Palestinian cause has been the use of violence and terror under the false pretext that this constitutes resistance against the colonialist West, Israel, or the Americans. The highlight of this was the famous operation in the 1972 Munich Olympics. It demonstrated that the catastrophe has always originated from the same culture. It is exploiting religion today just as it exploited pan-Arabism and the Palestinian cause in the past. What happened in the Munich Olympics? A group of what we used to call Palestinian fedayeen... The truth is they had nothing to do with fedayeen... Fedyaeen fight the enemy, fedayeen fight the occupation forces, but when people storm the Olympic games and the Olympic village, and kidnap athletes – even if they are Israelis – they cannot be called 'fedayeen,' in my view. They should be called 'terrorists.'"