The killing of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics prompted Israel to turn to a strategy that has endured to this day: using secret agents abroad to assassinate its enemies.

Ever since Mossad intelligence launched its Operation Wrath of God to hunt down high-level militants it blames for the Munich bloodbath, it has covertly targeted Israel’s enemies abroad.

Half a century ago next week, Palestinian gunmen from the Black September militant group broke into the Olympic Village and stormed the quarters of Israeli athletes and their coaches.

After a violent hostage crisis exacerbated by the mistakes of German security services, all Israelis were dead — sparking deep consternation in the Jewish state less than three decades after the Holocaust.

“It was a real shock to the Israeli people,” recalls Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister who was then serving as a commando at the head of an elite military unit.

“The combination of the nature of the attacks and the helplessness of the attacked athletes and the fact that it’s German soil kind of resonates,” he told AFP.

The killings prompted “deep sorrow with much outrage” and a shared urge to “get revenge, kill (the) people involved” and prevent similar attacks in the future, he said.

The secret program was spearheaded by then-Mossad chief Zvi Zamir, Prime Minister Golda Meir and her counter-terrorism adviser Aharon Yariv, historian Michael Bar-Zohar said.

“After Munich, Golda Meir didn’t know what to do at first,” said Bar-Zohar.

The two security chiefs, both with “the aura of university professors,” met Meir, the Israeli historian said.

“They were shy, well dressed and they said only one thing: ‘Now we must destroy Black September’.”

The trio, aware that it would be near impossible to hunt down all members of Black September, instead devised a strategy of “smashing the serpent’s head” by killing the group’s lead, Bar-Zohar said.

“Golda was really hesitant,” he said. “Should it authorize assassinations across Europe and the Middle East?

Over the next few months, Black September leaders and their Palestine Liberation Organization allies began dying under mysterious circumstances in Rome, Paris and Cyprus.

Among the targets were three Palestinians who were killed in April 1973 in Beirut by a hit squad dressed in women’s clothing.

One of the agents disguised with makeup and artificial breasts was Barak, then commander of the Sayeret Matkal unit, which was deployed to kill Mohammed Youssef al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser.

The hit squad traveled by naval ship and then smaller speedboats to Beirut, where they were picked up by Mossad agents in rental cars posing as tourists.

The team believed that more than a dozen young men walking through an upscale Beirut neighborhood could raise suspicions.

“So we decided to make some of us girls,” said Barak, now 80. “I was the commander of the unit, but I was baby-faced at the time, so I was one of the girls.

“I was brunette, not blonde, with lipstick and blue eyes, and we used some military socks to fill our boobs,” he recalled.

The four agents, dressed as women, wore baggy pants, had weapons hidden in jackets and pockets, and were armed with hand grenades and explosives.

They split into small groups and made their way to their targets’ homes, but came under heavy fire. Two Israelis were killed, along with several Lebanese civilians and the three Palestinians.

Within hours, Barak was back home in Israel, where his wife questioned him about the eyeshadow and lipstick smeared on his face.

“I couldn’t tell her,” the ex-premier recalled, adding cheerfully, “she turned on the radio and there was discussion about what had happened.”

However, such early successes may have inflated Israel and contributed to later failures.

Three months after the Beirut operation, the Mossad believed it had located Ali Hassan Salameh, Black September’s commander known as the “Red Prince.”

Israel dispatched assassins to the Norwegian city of Lillehammer, where they killed Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi in the case of a mistaken identity.

The kill squad is “overconfident in itself,” said Bar-Zohar, who has authored a number of books on Israeli intelligence, including the operation in Norway.

“They arrived at Lillehammer with false information… They were already pretty sure it was a routine operation and ignored any evidence that proved it wasn’t,” he said.

“They saw, for example, that the man they were following lived in a run-down neighborhood, that he rode a bicycle, that he went to the swimming pool alone. A terrorist boss doesn’t do that.”

After killing the wrong man, three Israeli agents were arrested by Norwegian police and spent 22 months in prison.

Undeterred, the Mossad pushed ahead with a year-long operation to ensnare Salameh.

Israel dispatched an agent codenamed “D” to Beirut, who befriended the Palestinian and his wife Georgina Rizk, a beauty queen.

In a 2019 documentary broadcast by Israel’s Channel 13, D described his undercover time as “my real life” in Beirut, where he attended a sports club with Salameh and studied his habits and movements.

“I saw him as friend and mortal enemy at the same time,” D said. “It’s not easy. Deep down you know he’s going to die.”

In January 1979, almost five years after the operation began, Salameh was killed by a car bomb in Beirut.

The assassination of a leading Black September member did not end the killing spree.

Instead, Israel turned its attention to other targets, such as those it blamed for attacks on Israelis during the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, and targets of its nemesis Iran.

Ronen Bergman, author of the book Rise and Kill First on Israel’s targeted killings, said the Munich attacks made Israel realize “there would be no one else there” to protect its own interests and citizens.

“There’s a direct connection between what happened then and what we see today,” he said.

Today, “Israel uses targeted killings as one of its main weapons in its policy of defending national security interests,” he said.

Bergman cited the death of leading Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whose assassination outside Tehran nearly two years ago was blamed on Israel.

The author said that while targeted killings against the organizers of attacks on Israelis are “really effective,” “there is still debate about the effectiveness of the killings of nuclear scientists that began as early as 2007.”

“It’s very difficult to measure, but it’s clear that Israel is continuing with the same policies.”

Israel accuses Iran of developing a nuclear weapon, a goal Tehran denies, and vehemently opposes negotiations between the Islamic Republic and world powers reviving the ailing 2015 nuclear deal.

Few expect Israel’s “shadow war” with Iran and the Mossad’s covert operations to end soon.

Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said his country would “do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities.”