Israeli sources said today that there was a link between Friday night’s bomb blast that wrecked the West German-Israeli stand at the International Radio and Television Fair in West Berlin and the terrorist attempt in Rome two days earlier to shoot down an El Al airliner with Soviet-made ground-to-air missiles.
A letter received by the Duesseldorf office of the West German news agency DPA yesterday claimed credit for the blast on behalf of the Black September terrorist organization, the group responsible for the massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich Sept. 5, 1972. West German police who examined the note, reportedly typed in flawless German, said they were taking the Black September’s claim seriously but that they had no concrete evidence that the letter actually came from the Black September.
The explosion occurred after the fair had closed for the night and caused no casualties. But it did about $25,000 worth of damage to the stand of the Isrex Import Co., a Duesseldorf firm in partnership with a Tel Aviv company which builds television sets. An Isrex spokesman said in Berlin yesterday that Israel-made TV sets were to have been on display but had not yet arrived. Only German and Japanese goods were on display when the bomb went off, he said.
The purported Black September letter said: “Black September is assuming responsibility for the destruction of the Israeli stand at the West Berlin radio exhibition. West German investments in Israel are strengthening Zionist expansionism.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
