WASHINGTON -- Howard Metzenbaum, a ferocious liberal in his days in the Senate, has reacted to a new book by trying to banish it from the U.S. marketplace. And its author, he says, deserves the death penalty.
Without even reading the book, Metzenbaum took the unforgiving position against the memoir of Abu Daoud, a planner of the deadly kidnapping of athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.Abu Daoud, whose real name is Mohammed Oudeh, was a Palestine Liberation Organization leader whose Black September guerrillas took Israeli weightlifters hostage. Two athletes were killed during the assault. Nine others died when German police bungled a rescue attempt. A German policeman and five terrorists also were killed.
Among the dead: David Berger, a weightlifter from the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights with dual citizenship who had moved to Israel to pursue his dream of being an Olympian.
Berger grew up three doors away from Metzenbaum, who was with the athlete's parents as they watched the horror unfold on television.
Despite his reputation as a civil libertarian, Metzenbaum can't see giving First Amendment protection to Abu Daoud.
"I sure don't want him to profit by means of this evil and killing of people," said Metzenbaum. "He ought to be incarcerated. He actually ought to pay with his own life, after being tried by a jury or a court."
Abu Daoud's memoir, "Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich," was published this year in France, renewing the heartbreak of a family that has been grieving since September 1972.
"I just couldn't believe he was free all those years," Dorothy Berger, the mother of David, said from her Cleveland home. "It is so unfair to me.
"We've lived with this for 27 years," she said.
The company that bought the U.S. publication rights and is now having the 600-page book translated has amassed a file about 2 inches thick full of protest letters, mostly from Ohio.
"We have decided not to respond to these, including phone calls which are quite disruptive -- screaming," said Arcade's president and publisher, Richard Seaver.
"It's a book that we took in with a lot of thoughtfulness," he said. "We're doing it because it's a very strong book showing the other side of a story we've only published one side of."
Seaver described the Munich chapter of the book as an explanation, not a boast. "Believe me, he's so contrite about that," he said.
When the book came out in France, The Associated Press described its account of Munich as a plan to use Israeli athletes as negotiating chips, with the deaths blamed on Germans who betrayed a pledge to let the Palestinians leave.
Berger said she already has spoken with the managers of two local bookstores. One was nice, but the other was a younger man who seemed to have no idea what she was talking about, she said.
Metzenbaum has been asking bookstore chains to place no orders for the book to make it more difficult for Abu Daoud to make money off his explanations of events.
"There is no obligation for a bookseller to stock a book," said Metzenbaum. "If they're presented with 100 books, they don't choose all 100."
The company's titles include the memoir of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and many books about the Holocaust.
Metzenbaum, the publisher added, "certainly has the right to his own opinion, but I do note that he hasn't read the book."