From the NYT:
George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a hard-line Marxist group that shocked the world with a campaign of airline hijackings and bombings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, died Saturday of a heart attack in Amman, Jordan.
From the bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket in 1969 to the simultaneous hijacking of three Western airliners to Amman, Jordan, in September 1970, the Front stayed in the news with high-profile attacks that other Palestinian groups never seemed able to match.
“When we hijack a plane it has more effect than if we kill a hundred Israelis in battle,” he told the German magazine Der Stern in 1970 ...
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, ordered three days of mourning and flags lowered to half-staff in the Palestinian territories.
Here's something to consider when reflecting on responses to Habash's death:
"This week, the Knesset marked the 100th birthday of Lechi founder and commander Avraham Stern [of the Stern gang], known by his codename Ya'ir. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke warmly of the former anti-British fighter, saying, 'His way was not the general path taken by the Zionist movements, but we are all obligated to honor his greatness. He was like a match that ignites a large flame.'"
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125088
Another exalted "freedom fighter"!
(Of course this doesn't justify any attacks on civilians conducted by the PFLP.)
Posted by: John | January 31, 2008 at 07:00 PM
IMHO you've got the right aswner!
Posted by: Tilly | May 20, 2011 at 05:51 AM