[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
On July 23, 1968, the era of terrorist airline hijacking and hostage taking went into full swing when terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked an El-Al flight originating in London’s Heathrow Airport and headed out of Rome on the way to Israel.
What became the world’s longest hijacking lasted for forty days. The PLO’s UN observer bragged that the hijackings had “awakened the media and public opinion much more” than its political propaganda. France paid a $7.5 million ransom and the hijackers were flown out to their destination of choice after Israel released 16 terrorists with blood on their hands.
Notes from the Johnson administration had initially expressed its concern “over serious blow(s) to international civil air transport which likely arise if hijacking of El Al aircraft permitted to stand… this incident, if not quickly redressed, might stimulate competitive hijacking attempts.”
And indeed it did.
The hijacking by a Marxist-Islamist group backed by the USSR and trained by its proxies in Egypt and Syria, spurred a new wave of Cuba hijackings by leftist sympathizers in the U.S, who had been briefly active earlier in the decade but whose attacks had fallen off, by the PFLP, by the North Koreans, the Japanese Red Army, Pakistanis and other members of the Red-Green Alliance. What had been the behavior of the occasional madman became a wave of terrorism.
The copycat leftist terrorists include a Black Panther who hijacked a TWA flight out of Oakland after murdering a police lieutenant and was able to live out the rest of his life in Cuba.
When PFLP terrorists were arrested, their allies attacked other airplanes, took more hostages and traded them for the hijackers. Governments that had formerly condemned the attacks, negotiated, made deals and paid out millions, freeing and financing the terrorists attacking them.
When Israel struck back at the states harboring the hijackers, it was condemned by the UN in resolutions like Resolution 262 while the State Department warned Israel that “we simply cannot have this kind of violence in the Near East.” Not by the terrorists hijacking Americans. By Israel.
On September 9, 1970, the PFLP hijacked four planes headed for New York City in the largest airplane hijacking campaign of the time that would prefigure and inspire September 11.
Four years later, PLO terror boss Yasser Arafat was invited to address the United Nations.
9/11 in turn inspired its own wave of imitators, with the 7/7 attacks in the UK, and other bombings across Europe, but despite fears at the time, major attacks failed to materialize. Why?
Large scale plots like 9/11 were difficult, expensive and all too prone to failure. And they offered little reward because the mass murder of 3,000 people did not provide any gains for the terrorists. Al Qaeda temporarily lost its base in Afghanistan (until the recent withdrawal) and the Jihadist movement became fractured into rival factions like ISIS focused on more local terror.
Had we responded to 9/11 by allowing Al Qaeda to take over Saudi Arabia, there would have been far more major terror attacks afterward. But instead we pounded the terror group and it picked up little to no sympathy outside the Muslim world. As a strategy, 9/11 had failed.
The same cannot be said of Oct 7.
“The powerful blow that was delivered to Israel on October 7 has yielded three very important historic achievements. First of all, it brought the Palestinian cause back. Why are all these countries recognizing Palestine now? Had any country dared to recognize the state of Palestine, prior to October 7?” Hamas leader Ghazi Hammad bragged in August.
After the latest push to recognize the terrorist state at the UN, Hamad again took credit. ”what is the benefit of October 7th? If you look at the UN General Assembly yesterday… they condemned Israel.”
What comes next?
Hamad already told us less than a month after the Oct 7 attacks. “The Al-Aqsa flood (the Hamas name for the Oct 7 attacks) is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight,” he bragged.
There is no reason not to believe him. And no reason to think the attacks will be limited to Israel.
Once the PFLP’s airline hijackings proved that they were an effective political strategy, they intensified and when the Israelis successfully deterred future hijackings, the Marxist-Muslim terrorists switched to hijacking European planes. And then a whole spectrum of other radical groups around the world adopted the strategy leading to metal detectors, the TSA and 9/11.
Will another Oct 7 succeed? Maybe not in Israel, but the same European countries pushing to recognize a ‘Palestinian’ state have their own Muslim ‘no-go zones’ and ‘states within a state’.
There are an estimated 40,000, 75% of whom are Muslim terrorists, on the UK’s terror watch list. France’s woefully inadequate watchlist has over 1,000. In Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Muslim gangs, many of them battle tested from Yugoslavia to Syria, fight street battles armed with Ak-47s and hand grenades. 700 explosions were set off in the Netherlands so far this year by Muslim gangs. There’s already a war and trained Muslim Jihadis in Europe.
What might happen if 1,000 heavily armed Muslim terrorists banded together to strike in London, Paris, Berlin or Brussels?
We don’t have to imagine too hard.
In 2015, 3 Muslim terrorists entered the Bataclan theater in Paris where over 1,000 people were enjoying a concert. It took the French police over two hours to finally take them down.
(Everyone wondering why it took so long for Israel to repel the Oct 7 attacks may want to look at how long it took to wrap up terrorist attacks with hostages in Miami during the Pulse massacre in Miami (3 hours), the Moscow theater attack (4 days), the Beslan school siege (3 days) and consider what our response time would look like in the event of a much bigger terrorist attack.)
What would Oct 7 look like in London, Paris or New York City? Worse, much worse.
The Hamas, PLO, Islamic Jihad and other terrorists had to break through a border wall and travel a distance to reach even the nearest Israeli city where they were soon repelled. In Europe, not to mention Canada and Australia, they’re already embedded in those cities.
The Israeli communities on the Gaza border were soft and liberal, but they still had security coordinators, arms caches and a defense plan. Where would they go to find guns?
After July 23, 1968, Muslim terrorists never successfully hijacked another Israeli plane. Instead they hijacked planes from all the countries that had pandered to them. There may never be another successful Oct 7 in Israel, but rewarding Islamic terrorists ensures there will be one.
Perhaps in Toronto, in Sydney, in Marseilles or in New York City.
Like that long ago airplane hijacking in 1968, Oct 7 was a political victory for Muslim terrorists. That means it’s going to be repeated the way that successful strategies usually are. The bigger the reward, the greater the repetition. Rewarding Oct 7 will globalize the October 7 attacks.
After the UN’s recognition of a terrorist state as a reward for Oct 7, the next such attack may not take place on Israel’s borders, but in the streets of Manhattan right by the United Nations.