There is an epic movie named MUNICH based upon a true incident in the 1972 Olympics in the city bearing the same name. At least 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped by the "Black September" a Palestinian terrorist group. A botched up operation to rescue them ended in killing all the Israeli athletes.
Golda Meir was the then Prime Minister of Israel (she was known as Iron lady, a christening she shared with Indira Gandhi at that time). The lady Prime minister of the Blue Star state shows the actor Eric Bana who plays the head of a Special team selected from MOSSAD the feared secret service of Israel its famous Red file.
In Mossad parlance, if a terrorist's name finds its way to the Red file, his goose is cooked. It's said that no one making it to Mossad's red file has survived till date. Golda Meir minces no words as she tells the team leader "Your job is to find them and brutally eliminate them one by one, making the killings well publicized so that they get the message. Whoever plays with our state of Israel ceases his right to live".
It took the team several years to track and eliminate each one of the perpetrators involved in the 1972 Munich massacre. One can feel her patriotic fervor well depicted by the legendary director Steven Spielberg in the movie.
In 1976 an El Al (Israeli) Air liner was hijacked and landed in Entebbe Airport, Uganda close to Lake Victoria. Flying 2500 miles, the Israeli commandoes conducted a spectacular raid code named "Operation Thunderbolt" to rescue the passengers with minimal casualty. The commando leader Yoni Netanyahu, the brother of the current Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost his life in that operation. (It probably brought the hardliner out of him).
Years later, I believe in January 2011 a team from MOSSAD, one of them a blond woman as captured by CCTV camera (probably wearing a wig) stealthily arrived in Dubai. They tracked their target to his hotel room and eliminated him.
The marks of electricity shock and cigarette butts on the victim's body bore signs of Mossad hospitality. When his body was discovered by the hotel staff next morning, his killers had already escaped hours ago in different groups by boarding different flights to multiple destinations. All of them came to Dubai using fake passports. One of them from a British national who was certainly not a commando material for he had quadruple bypass heart surgery and never travelled out of his country.
We can agree to disagree on Israel and it's policy. But I can never stop admiring their patriotism and the extent they can go to protect their nation. They are not only good at military, the have perfected the art of lobbying in the diplomatic front by having almost unwavering support of the soul Super Power America. It won't be an exaggeration to ascribe Israel as the 52st state of United States.
In this context, the Indian Prime minister Modi courting Tel Aviv is important. Gladly the nation is slowly relinquishing its age old policy of treating Israel as a pariah state, even if it runs the risk of earning the wrath of Islamic world. But who cares. Indeed a bold, pragmatic and out of the box move by Modi.
This trip is widely covered in Indian media, social or otherwise. It will be interesting to know how much coverage this visit got on Israeli media. Not long ago Modi's meeting with Trump in Washington was widely covered back home, whereas the American media didn't share the same enthusiasm.
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