After Munich 1972: How the US and Israel Weaponized Terrorism

This article argues that the long-standing Zionist discourse of “self-defense” from “terrorism”—used to justify the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza—emerged in the late 1960s and escalated in the wake of the September 1972 Munich Olympics incident when Palestinian activists took Israeli athletes hostage. UN Resolution 3034, adopted that December, condemned attacks on civilians but also stressed that colonial domination breeds violence and that colonial violence itself constitutes terrorism. In response, Israel and Zionist groups in the US worked to reverse this by weaponizing the term “terrorism” as a means to delegitimize Palestinian struggles for self-determination. This article focuses on the 1970s, examining UN debates around international terrorism, laws and security policies enacted in the US, and The New York Times’ coverage of terrorism to show how Palestinians and Arabs came to be legally, politically, and ideologically defined as terrorists by the late 1970s—a discourse that persists to this day.