Munich gives way to soccer vs. jihad

Abstract

ABSTRACT In many ways, the Black September killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics tells little about the evolution of targeting sporting events by political and religious militants, though this attack has never been replicated in scale and drama. It introduced a post-World War II era in which secular nationalists rather than religious militants dominated the targeting of sporting events, executives and athletes. That may have been different if plans for attacks by religious militants had not failed or been foiled. Interestingly and more as a result of local circumstances, successful attacks on sporting events and personalities since Munich have struck a balance between having been perpetrated by secular and religious terrorists. This is true even if political violence since the 1980s has increasingly been perpetrated by religious rather than secular terrorists.