text: Operation Wrath of God and Operation Spring of Youth\n\nGolda Meir and the Israeli Defense Committee made a decision secretly authorizing the Mossad to track down and eliminate those responsible for the Munich massacre [25]. To this end the Mossad set up a number of special teams to locate and eliminate these terrorists, aided by the agency's stations in Europe [26].\n\nThe Israeli mission later became known as Operation Wrath of God or Mivtza Elohim[27]. Reeve quotes General Aharon Yariv — who, he writes, was the general overseer of the operation — as stating that after Munich the Israeli government felt it had no alternative but to exact justice.\n\n    We had no choice. We had to make them stop, and there was no other way ... we are not very proud about it. But it was a question of sheer necessity. We went back to the old biblical rule of an eye for an eye ... I approach these problems not from a moral point of view, but, hard as it may sound, from a cost-benefit point of view. If I’m very hard-headed, I can say, what is the political benefit in killing this person? Will it bring us nearer to peace? Will it bring us nearer to an understanding with the Palestinians or not? In most cases I don’t think it will. But in the case of Black September we had no other choice and it worked. Is it morally acceptable? One can debate that question. Is it politically vital? It was.[28]\n\nBenny Morris writes that, using information from "turned" PLO personnel and friendly European intelligence services, the Mossad compiled its target list, placing at the top Wael 'Aadel Zwaiter, a suspected member of Black September and the official PLO representative in Italy, who was shot and killed on October 16. Abu Iyad, the PLO's deputy-chief and chief of intelligence until his death at the hands of an Abu Nidal operative in 1991, later claimed that Zwaiter was not connected to Black September and had "fiercely opposed ... all forms of terrorism" (Abu Iyad 1983). Zwaiter's death was followed by non-fatal letter bomb attacks on PLO representatives in Algeria and Libya, on Palestinians in Bonn and Copenhagen, and on a Red Cross representative in Stockholm, writes Morris.\n\nOn December 8, the PLO's representative in Paris, Mohammad Hamshari was killed by a radio-detonated bomb under his desk. Over the next three months, writes Morris, four PLO, PFLP, and PFLP-GC operatives were killed in Cyprus, Greece, and Paris.\n\nOn April 9, 1973, Israel launched Operation Spring of Youth, a joint Mossad-IDF operation in Beirut. The targets were Mohammad Yusuf al-Najjar (Abu Yusuf), head of Fatah's intelligence arm, which ran Black September, according to Morris; Kamal Adwan, who headed the PLO's so-called Western Sector, which controlled PLO action inside Israel; and Kamal Nassir, the PLO spokesman. A group of Sayeret commandos were taken in nine missile boats and a small fleet of patrol boats to a deserted Lebanese beach, before driving in two cars to downtown Beirut, where they killed Najjar, Adwan and Nassir. Two further detachments of commandos blew up the PFLP's headquarters in Beirut and a Fatah explosives plant. The leader of the commando team that conducted the operations was Ehud Barak.\n\nOn June 28, 1973, the Algerian-born director of operations for Black September in Europe, Mohammad Boudia, was killed by a car bomb in Paris.\n\nOn July 21, 1973, in the so-called Lillehammer affair, a team of Mossad agents killed Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan man unrelated to the Munich attack, in Lillehammer, Norway, after an informant mistakenly said Bouchiki was Ali Hassan Salameh, the head of Force 17 and a Black September operative. Five Mossad agents, including two women, were captured by the Norwegian authorities, while others managed to slip away[29]. The five were convicted of the killing and imprisoned, but were released and returned to Israel in 1975.\n\nThe Mossad later found Ali Hassan Salameh in Be