Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced the death without providing further details.
In Israel, Mr. Zamir, sharp-tongued and precise, became the target of the nation's questions and grief after Munich as one of the first Mossad chiefs to face an intense public investigation. The following year, Mr. Zamir was embroiled in a high-profile controversy over whether information he received from an Arab informant could have better prepared Israel for the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.
Mr. Zamir was widely credited with maintaining discipline and focus within the Mossad amid the fallout from Munich, where 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed after Palestinian gunmen stormed the Olympic Village on September 5, 1972.
Two Israelis were killed during the attack, and nine athletes and coaches were taken hostage in a confrontation that was broadcast around the world. Nearly 20 hours after the raid, Zamir witnessed West German snipers and Palestinians exchanging fire at an airfield, killing all the captives as well as five Black September militants.
“Seeing this happen on German soil was a terrible sight,” said Zamir, who took over as Mossad chief in 1968 and served until 1974.
He mobilized a counterstrike on Palestinian targets, codenamed “The Wrath of God,” an operation that lasted more than a decade and was linked to the killing of more than a dozen suspected Palestinian militant leaders and others. Among them was the alleged mastermind of the Munich attack, Ali Hassan Salama, who died in the 1979 Beirut bombing.
Israel has never publicly acknowledged any role in the killings, but Mr. Zamir explained that Mossad was in a more aggressive stance after Munich. “I am not saying that those who participated in Munich were not marked by death,” Zamir told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “They certainly deserved to die. But we weren't dealing with the past. We were focused on the future.”
Mr. Zamir rushed to Germany as the hostage crisis developed, but West German authorities rejected his requests for help from Israeli commandos.
Negotiators eventually agreed to Palestinian demands for helicopters to transport them and the hostages about 15 miles to the Fürstenfeldbrück military airport, where they would supposedly try to arrange a flight to an Arab country considered a safe haven.
“I saw a scene that I will never forget for the rest of my life,” Zamir said in a 2017 documentary series called “Mossad: Israel’s Secret Service.” “With their hands and feet tied together, the athletes passed by me. Then the Arabs. Deathly silence.”
The West Germans planned an ambush at the airport. Mr. Zamir noted that he was shocked that some of West Germany's sniper rifles were old and did not have telescopic sights. “It broke my heart,” he said.
Snipers opened fire. Mr. Zamir was monitoring the matter from the airport control tower. At one point during the chaos, his Arabic-speaking aide shouted to the Palestinians: “Stop shooting!” …The plane is ready for you!
“Their response was clear,” he recalls. “They shot us on the balcony.”
Some hostages were burned to death after one of the militants threw a grenade at a helicopter while they were on board. Five of the eight kidnappers were shot dead. The remaining three were arrested – only to be released less than two months later after Palestinian militants hijacked a Lufthansa flight from Damascus to Frankfurt. (Mr. Zamir described “Munich,” director Steven Spielberg’s retelling of the events, as a “cowboy movie” that lacks nuance.)
Mr. Zamir returned to the Olympic Village after the bloodshed. He called the Prime Minister, Golda Meir, at home. She had already seen a mis-sent wire report that all the hostages had been released.
“Golda,” Mr. Zamir said, according to his Hebrew-language memoir “Eyes Wide Open” (2012). “I'm sorry to tell you, but the athletes were not saved. I saw them. None of them survived.”
Mr. Zamir's tenure also led to internal divisions and investigations that reverberated for years.
In July 1973, Israeli agents working under Mr. Zamir's supervision mistakenly killed a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchikhi, in Lillehammer, Norway, mistakenly believing he was the Munich attack planner, Salameh. Members of the Mossad team were arrested, and five of them were convicted by a Norwegian court.
The agents were released in 1975, but the damage was profound. Europe's relations with Israel became strained, and testimonies revealed Mossad secrets including safe houses in France and elsewhere. Mr. Zamir submitted his resignation, but Meir asked him to stay.
Soon, Meir's trust in Mr. Zamir was put to the test once again. The chief Arab informant told Mr. Zamir – later known as Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser – that Egypt and Syria were planning to launch surprise attacks in October on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish religious calendar. .
Mr. Zamir's previous warning has been proven wrong. In April 1973, Mr. Zamir's informant said that war was looming. The second advice from Mr. Zamir was only partially heeded.
Israeli forces were reinforced, but were not put on the footing for full-blown war. “You cannot summon the entire system just for a few letters from Zvika,” quipped the Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, using Mr. Zamir’s full first name, according to Israeli political scholar Uri Bar-Joseph’s account in his book. The 2016 book about informant Marwan, “The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel.”
Less than ten hours later, Syrian tanks rolled into the Golan Heights, and Egyptian ground forces crossed the Suez Canal. Israel suffered early losses but eventually prevailed after nearly three weeks of fighting with the help of rapid US military aid.
“It was burned [Mr. Zamir] Danny Yatom, who led the Mossad in the 1990s, told Army Radio in Israel: “He did not succeed in convincing the Israeli government to try to confront the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria sooner.” The Agranat Commission, an Israeli committee that investigated the period leading up to the war, provided some justification for Mr. Zamir by praising his information as an informant.
Zamir later said: “The Mossad’s greatest achievement during the time I was in charge was providing warning about the impending war.”
Zvika Zarzewski was born in Lodz, Poland, on March 3, 1925. Before his first birthday, his family immigrated to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. His father drove a horse-drawn carriage for an electric company. His mother was a housewife.
He changed his last name, according to some accounts, because a teacher found Zarzewski difficult to pronounce. One of Mr. Zamir's childhood soccer playing teammates was future Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
As a teenager, Mr. Zamir joined the Palmach, a guerrilla-style force within the Haganah, a secretive Jewish paramilitary group. He participated in the battles against the Arabs in and around Jerusalem. He also spent nearly a year in British custody for his links to a network smuggling Jewish immigrants to the region.
In 1950 – two years after the establishment of the State of Israel – Mr. Zamir was given command of a military brigade, and in 1953, he was assigned to train at the Staff College in Camberley, England.
He rose through the military ranks, being assigned to command forces on the Israeli-Egyptian border in the early 1960s. In July 1966, he was appointed Israeli military attaché in London, a position he held during Israel's 1967 war against allied Arab forces.
After leaving the Mossad in 1974, he led a construction company and served as head of the Petroleum and Geophysical Research Institute and the Israel Petroleum and Energy Institute. In 1995, he was a member of the Shamgar Commission that was formed to investigate Rabin's assassination.
Mr. Zamir's wife, the former Rena Sadowski, died in 2019. They had three children. Complete information about the survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. Zamir remained fiercely loyal to Meir until her death in 1978. When some Israeli commentators blamed her for Israeli military blunders before the Yom Kippur War, Mr. Zamir often asserted that the blame lay with Dayan and others.
During a visit to Mossad headquarters in July 1974, Meir joked that the strong-willed Mr. Zamir was easy to work with. “All that is required is that you agree with everything he says,” she said.
