On 1 October Golda Meir told the government that the Koppel committee had presented the report and it had been sent to Minister of Justice Ya’acov Shimshon Shapira. Minister of Police Shlomo Hillel attacked articles in the newspapers about the committee’s work that could serve the terrorist organizations. Golda said that the press items were no more than “a figment of the journalists’ imagination”, and added: “Anyone who is a journalist is automatically an expert on every topic” (Document 32).
A few days later the prime minister and a number of ministers met to discuss how to handle the report before its discussion by the government. Shapira attacked the report and called it “a very strange document”. The prime minister said that they must “prevent a gross injustice to the GSS”, which was doing a tremendous job. The discussion focused on responsibility for the failure to protect the delegation, and mainly on the committee’s implied conclusion that, in fact, the relevant government ministries were responsible. Golda indicated her willingness to accept personal responsibility, and stated frankly that it was not possible that a minister should not know what was going on in his ministry, especially on such a subject. The chain of responsibility should have ended with the minister responsible for the special services, i.e., with the prime minister herself, and should therefore have led to her resignation, “And if I were just a regular minister – I wouldn’t ask anyone and I wouldn’t consult with anyone (about my resignation)”. But she could not resign, as this step would have led to the fall of the government. In her words: “it is a sad and bitter business, that I am in a situation where my resignation would drag the government into a crisis…over the killing of eleven men; I feel bad, I feel very bad…”
P.M. Golda Meir in front of the newspaper editors in Tel Aviv, December 1972. Photograph: Moshe Milner, Government Press Office
Allon, whose ministry was responsible for the delegation, also attacked the report’s conclusion, and proposed that the prime minister state that she had studied the matter “and there is no doubt that the responsibility for security abroad does not fall on the ministries”. Bar-Lev stated that the conclusions of the committee were unequivocal regarding the GSS’s failure, “and if I were the head of the GSS, after a report such as this – I would (with great pain) leave my post”. He too demanded that government ministries should not be found responsible. Yisrael Galili also argued that the head of the GSS, Yosef Harmelin, should resign. He added that the committee had gone beyond its mandate and proposed that the government reject the report, and the prime minister publish her own conclusions, of which the Koppel Report would be a part. It was decided to appoint another team to produce a report by Golda to the government and the Knesset, based on the Koppel Report and other documents (Document 33).
The new team wrote a document for the prime minister, summarizing the information on the security arrangements of the Olympic delegations in Munich. On 7 October, the day before the government was to discuss the matter, another consultation was held on how much of the material on security matters in the Koppel Report could be revealed. The issue of responsibility was raised again. Shimon Peres complained “that the Germans set up an enquiry commission and said that everything on their part was fine…and now the Israelis come and say that they are guilty. We must explain that Israel could not have managed security matters in Germany”. Other speakers agreed, among them Shapira, who said: “In Germany no-one was fired, and a paper was accepted unanimously by the Interior Committee of the Bundestag; whereas here… three people [the GSS head of security, the security officer at the Bonn embassy and the director of security at the Foreign Ministry] should be fired”. Others continued to attack the Koppel Committee, and demanded that the issue of responsibility for the security of Israelis abroad be made clear (Document 34).
