A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Sunday, July 4, 2010

. . . And Abu Daoud 1937-1910

Okay, a second prominent person is sabotaging the Fourth of July weekend by dying and making me post. As I was finishing my obit for Sheikh Fadlallah, I learned that Abu Daoud has died, too. The Guardian here; BBC Arabic here. He actually died yesterday. The man allegedly behind the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, and the leader of the shadowy Black September organization, he was the prime target of the Israeli assassination campAign against Black September (on which Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich is very loosely based), but died in Damascus of kidney failure at 73.

Unlike many PLO leaders, Abu Daoud (Muhammad Da‘ud ‘Odeh) was not a refugee from 1948, but from 1967, when he left his native Silwan (in East Jerusalem) after the Israeli occupation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good riddance to bad rubbish - both of them.

Anonymous said...

one of the most interesting things about abu daoud was his memoirs. he provides a history of the early days of fatah tht is generally not available in english(really only salah khalaf (abu iyyad) has english language memoirs available)unfortunately, it is impossible to find a copy of abu daoud's memoirs in english. i have tried all kinds of book searches and interlibrary loan efforts with no luck. it is difficult to believe that a book published in 2002 can't be found somewhere