[Mb-civic] Terrorism: Confusing cause, effect - The Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

  Terrorism: Confusing cause, effect

By Alan Dershowitz  |  January 16, 2006  |   The Boston Globe

WHATEVER ANYONE might think of the artistic merits of Steven Spielberg's 
new film ''Munich," no one should expect an accurate portrayal of 
historical events.

''Munich" portrays a squad of Mossad agents, led by a fictional 
character named Avner Kauffman, tracking down and killing the Black 
September terrorists who had perpetrated the massacre of Israeli 
athletes at the 1972 Olympics. As the movie progresses, Avner becomes 
increasingly disillusioned with his mission.

His chief concern is that counterterrorism only incites more terrorism, 
which in turn provokes reprisals. The last shot in the movie rests on 
the World Trade Center, suggesting a connection between the Middle 
East's ''cycle of violence" and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Deepak Chopra wrote that the movie ''draws a trail that leads directly 
to the attacks of 9/11."

The trouble with this ''cycle of violence" perspective is that it 
confuses cause and effect. The period immediately preceding Munich was 
plagued by airline terrorism, including the blowing up of a Swiss 
airliner that killed all 47 passengers and crew, and dozens of deadly 
hijackings. Palestinian hijackings were successful because even when the 
hijackers were captured, they were quickly released as soon as 
Palestinian terrorists hijacked another airplane.

This long pattern of high-publicity, low-risk hijackings is what 
encouraged Black September to up the ante by infiltrating the Olympic 
Village in Munich.

As I wrote in my book ''Why Terrorism Works," ''Based on the reaction to 
international terrorism over the previous four years, the terrorists 
planning the Munich operation could expect to succeed in attracting the 
world's attention and be relatively certain that if any of the 
terrorists were captured, they would not be held for long."

In short: Terrorism works because it is successful, and success begets 
repetition.

In the final scene of the movie, Avner asks his Mossad handler why 
Israel killed the Black September terrorists instead of arresting them. 
The answer, never given in the film, is that the arrest method had 
failed. Arrested terrorists were never tried and imprisoned for long. 
Between 1968 and 1975, 204 terrorists were arrested outside of the 
Middle East. By the close of 1975, only three were still in prison. 
George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of 
Palestine (a Marxist terrorist group responsible for some of the 
Palestinians' most brutal mass killing), noted that Europe's refusal to 
imprison terrorists meant that, when it came to plotting hijackings and 
bombing, ''success [was] 100 percent assured."

Take the example of PFLP hijacker Leila Khaled. In 1969, Khaled hijacked 
a TWA plane. She was arrested but soon released. Only a year later, in 
September 1970, she led another hijacking operation, this time on an El 
Al flight to New York. Khaled was held in a British prison where, by her 
own account, she was treated ''as if I were an official state guest." 
The British released her -- after her second hijacking! -- before she 
had spent even one month in jail.

Both Israel and America pressured the British to extradite Khaled to 
Israel to stand trial. England refused, aligning itself with every other 
European country that had refused to extradite terrorists for trial in 
Israel.

And it is not only Israel whose extradition requests have been utterly 
frustrated. In 1985, for example, Italy allowed Achille Lauro mastermind 
hijacker Abu Abbas to flee safely to Tunisia, rather than sending him to 
the United States to face charges of killing American tourist Leon 
Klinghoffer.

The best evidence of why the arrest method advocated by ''Munich" would 
not work was provided by Black September's own demands in Munich -- that 
Israel free more than 200 imprisoned terrorists. Israel understood that 
releasing terrorists would encourage future terrorism. Without European 
cooperation, Israel stood little chance of curbing international 
terrorism. Sure enough, Germany released the surviving Black September 
terrorists less than two months after Munich, when Palestinian 
terrorists ''hijacked" a Lufthansa plane.

(According to the senior aide to Germany's interior minister, it is 
''probably true" that the ''hijacking" was orchestrated as part of a 
German-Palestinian scheme to free the terrorists.) It was the German 
decision to free these killers to kill again that strengthened Golda 
Meir's resolve to take the steps necessary to protect her citizens, but 
you wouldn't know that from watching ''Munich."

Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His latest book is 
''The Case For Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/16/terrorism_confusing_cause_effect/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060116/2e8d265a/attachment.htm