The Achille Lauro Hijacking And Terrorism Revisited

By Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal

Just as Leon Uris' Exodus was presented as a historical document on film and television, so NBC similarly attempted to present its Feb. 13 revisit to the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking. Yehiel Aronowicz, around whom the character of the captain of the Exodus was constructed and who was taking his degree in business administration at Columbia when the novel was published, said about the Uris story: "The novel is neither history nor literature."

The same is true of the two-hour NBC production heralded on the cover of the Feb. 11-17 TV Guide with these words: "Survivors reveal: Our life and death struggle with Arab terrorists. " The film is not a documentary. The interviews, selected to damn the PLO, were principally with the murdered Leon Klinghoffer's two daughters, neither of whom had been on the cruise ship, their friend Charlotte Spiegel, and Philadelphia Judge Stanley Kubacki.

The four Palestinian hijackers were shown quarreling violently amongst themselves, snarling at the passengers, and mumbling some unintelligible political justification for their action, which only made their cause look worse. Yet, in its account of the hijackers leaving the cruise ship in Port Said after safe conduct had been negotiated for them by Mohammed Abbas, head of a Palestinian splinter group within the PLO, The New York Times had them waving goodbye and some of the just-released passengers waving back.

The film conveyed the impression that the Palestinians had planned to seize the ship. In fact, their design was to remain on board until the ship reached the Israeli port of Ashdod, where they were to disembark and seize Israelis to exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Not shown on television was the fact that the hijackers had left the door to their cabin ajar, and a waiter had seen them cleaning their guns. They took him prisoner and then seized the ship while only 95 passengers were on board. The rest of the 500 passengers were touring Cairo and its environs.

On television the hijackers demanded the release of Palestinians "from US, French, West German, and Italian prisons," in particular a Shamal Kantari, whom a voiceover described as "a killer of babies. " In real life, the 50 prisoners whose release was demanded were solely in Israeli jails.

To place the hijacking and the Klinghoffer killing at the door of the PLO, the reputed mastermind of the incident, Mohammed Abbas, was shown leaving a building identified by a sign with large letters, "PLO" (which exists nowhere in Egypt), and then arriving at a gathering of diplomats assembled to end the crisis. When Abbas speaks by radio to the ship, the leader of the hijackers replies, "Commander, we are happy to hear your voice."

The off-camera facts are not so clear. Abbas was sent to Egypt by Arafat to end the hostage crisis. The Palestine Liberation Front had earlier split, with one faction defecting to Syria, which was vehemently opposed to Arafat's leadership. According to The New York Times of Oct. 13, one hijacker on the ship was quoted as saying they were there "in behalf of Yasser Arafat." Arafat, however, publicly condemned the hijacking from the start.

Then Prime Minister Shimon Peres asserted that Abbas was not a mediator in securing the surrender of the Palestinians, but was "part and parcel of the whole incident. The hijackers were acting on his behalf."

Claims that the United States had evidence of the PLO linkage, advanced by Justice Department spokesman Patrick Korten on Oct. 13 and supported by Attorney General Ed Meese, were never substantiated. Instead, Americans were told, "This is sensitive and classified. It cannot be revealed without endangering our intelligence sources. " Perhaps for similar reasons, the Israelis failed to advance any proof of PLO linkage, but their allegation, too, received front-page coverage.

From Belgrade, where he fled from a US warrant for his arrest, Abbas, in a telephone interview published in the Times, challenged the US to prove his involvement in the seizure of the cruise ship. There were no takers.

None of this bothered anyone connected to NBC's recounting of the Klinghoffer murder, which just happened to be released at a time when Arafat and the PLO were under the closest scrutiny to gauge whether their renunciation of terrorism was truly genuine. In the two months since the PLO chairman had uttered the "magic words" to qualify the PLO for ongoing dialogue in Tunis with the United States, scarcely a day had passed that the media in one form or another had not come up with some news item reflecting on PLO sincerity. In the words of Arafat, he was being asked to "do a striptease" as efforts were redoubled to scuttle the talks.

When Arafat remarked that anyone calling for an interruption of the intifadah, including himself, would face stones or bullets, his remarks were falsely twisted into a threat to Bethlehem mayor Elias Freij, who had suggested a temporary halt to the insurrection in return for negotiations.

In the two months since Arafat uttered the "magic words" to qualify the PLO for ongoing dialogue in Tunis with the United States, scarcely a day had passed that the media in one form or another had not come up with some news item reflecting on PLO sincerity.

A few days later, The New York Times repeated, this time in a front-page story, an allegation (with the sub-head, "Arab Group Still Suspected") that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a Syrian funded group led by Ahmed Jebril, was the number one suspect in the Dec. 21 bombing over Scotland of Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 on the plane and on the ground. This story ignored evidence pointing to Iranian responsibility, as well as Syrian charges that Israel's Mossad had been behind the bombing.

When, in early February, Palestinian guerrillas belonging to George Habash's PFLP, in total disregard of Arafat and PLO instructions, crossed into southern Lebanon on their way to Israel and were killed, the hue and cry of terrorism was again raised by the media. Later in February, when three guerrillas of Nayef Hawatmeh's DFLP were killed in Lebanon trying to do the same thing, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens claimed that the Arafat no-terrorism pledge had been broken and demanded that ongoing US-PLO talks be called off.

On Feb. 28, in a stern warning, the State Department declared that "attacks against Israel civil or military targets inside or outside of Israel are contrary to the peaceful objectives of the dialogue." The PLO was told that it was being held responsible for such attacks on military targets regardless of whether such attacks fit the US definition of terrorism and regardless of which Palestinian group or faction carries it out. The same day, Israeli bombs hit a Palestinian school in southern Lebanon, killing three people and wounding 22 school children. There was no warning, stern or otherwise, to Israel.

Such distortions and selective presentations of facts would not be tolerated by the public from either NBC or The New York Times were the beneficiary not Israel. But rational judgments are surrendered where Israel is involved. This routine application of a public and media double standard has been immeasurably assisted by the incessant rekindling of the holocaust. Without this it would be almost impossible to make the label "terrorist" stick so easily to every action against Israel and its armed forces.

American public opinion attitudes toward the Middle East conflict are being manipulated today as they have always been, not in terms of contemporary Palestinian and Israeli realities, but in terms of the tragic history of Christian Judaic relations.

Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal served in the Middle East in World War II and has spent a lifetime since then educating Americans on Middle East realities. He is the author of What Price Israel?, There Goes the Middle East, The Other Side of the Coin, and his monumental The Zionist Connection.