My op-ed....

No mainstream newspaper that I queried opted to publish this. So I'm publishing it here today, in memory of the people who needlessly lost their lives two years ago.

"Black September Revisited"

In the two years since the attacks of 9/11, I have searched through mountains of U.S. commentary and commemoration for mention of a 33-year-old terrorist strike that chillingly prefigured the 2001 attacks.

Without success.

On September 6, 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) simultaneously hijacked four airliners bound for New York. Two—TWA Flight 741 of Frankfurt and Swissair Flight 100 of Zurich--were forced to land at Dawson's Field, a former RAF airstrip in the Jordanian desert. The third, Pan American Flight 93 of Amsterdam, was too large for Dawson's, so hijackers forced it down in Cairo, where passengers and crew were evacuated and the plane blown up.

In uncanny parallel to what happened 31 years later, the PFLP’s fourth hijacking attempt was foiled in flight. At the outset, the pilots of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York plunged their jet into a steep dive, throwing the hijackers off their feet. One, Leila Khaled, 24, was overpowered by passengers. The other, Californian Patrick Arguello, 27, was fatally shot by an El Al onboard security guard.

Unlike United Flight 93, which on September 11th, 2001, plunged to the ground in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board after passengers tried to regain control from hijackers, El Al 219 landed safely in London.

Yet the drama was far from over. On September 9th, PFLP operatives hijacked a fifth jet, adding it to the two planes in Jordan. Passengers were exchanged for Leila Khaled. Then, on September 12, 1970, the three empty airliners were blown up on the ground while television crews broadcast the spectacle to the world.

The diplomatic embarrassment spurred King Hussein of Jordan to declare military rule, provoking a bloody civil war between Palestinian refugees and the Jordanian army. Some 15,000 people died before the Palestinians, under Yassir Arafat, fled Jordan. The debacle spawned the infamous Black September Movement, responsible for killing 10 Israeli athletes and their coach at the Munich Olympics—two years later, again in early September.

The PFLP spelled out their motive for the 1970 hijackings as retribution for American arms-sales to Israel—sales which continue to this day. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, America has given the state a staggering $97 billion in foreign aid, a sizeable portion of which has gone towards weapons.

With such an investment, are we closer to peace in the Middle East? Is terrorism waning?

You judge: in 1970, one person was killed in five hijackings over six days. In 2001, some 3,044 people died in four hijackings in a matter of hours.

Those numbers expose a terrible trend. Noncombatant casualties are growing in lock-step with “get tough” policies of governments towards extremists. The policy of “No negotiation with terrorists” has escalated into all-out war, frequently pitting professional armies against civilians.

U.S. Predator drones track automobiles across Afghani deserts, obliterating alleged Taliban ringleaders and passengers alike. Israeli missiles target Hamas operatives, slaughtering bystanders in crowded Palestinian alleyways. “Coalition Forces” pulverize Iraqi cities, maiming tens of thousands who have nowhere to flee. In response, terrorists strap on explosives and board crowded busses. Civilians die regardless, “collateral damage” to one side or another.

History could have played out differently. What if Americans had paid heed to legitimate Palestinian concerns after the first hijackings and reassessed foreign policy in the region? Might 9/11 have been averted?

These questions are not even being posed. In contrast to al Qaeda, who one can assume studied the 1970 hijackings, U.S. leaders have “disappeared” them. President Bush publicly treated 9/11 as if it came out of nowhere—which is curious, given his neocon advisors are steeped in Middle Eastern history.

Take neocon godfather, Irving Podhoretz. On September 13, 1970, he signed a letter to The New York Times condemning the PFLP hijackings. More recently, he signed the statement of principles for the Project for the New American Century, with Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Podhoretz is also father-in-law to Elliott Abrams, director of Near Eastern & North American Affairs in the National Security Council.

Given the striking parallels, these men must discuss the earlier hijackings? Yet posing before news cameras, all Bush can ask is, “Why do they hate us?” Our rejoinder should be, “Why play dumb?” Why conceal the fact we were warned decades ago that our foreign policy, if unaltered, would result in devastating blowback?

Obscuring the fact that 9/11 was a by-product of corporate greed, arms sales and America’s unquenchable thirst for oil is fundamental to the pursuit of Bush’s foolhardy, expensive and ineffectual “War on Terrorism.” This never-ending conflict, with its lucrative war profiteering and curbs on civil liberties, advances both the fortunes and longstanding political aims of Bush’s closest supporters.

An even more dangerous obfuscation, however, is that we can deter future attacks through a “get tough” military strategy. If that were true, Israelis and Palestinians would not be dying at a rate of nearly 100 a month since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September—there’s that month again—2000.

We now have more than 33 years experience to demonstrate the futility of force as a deterrent to terrorism. Isn’t it time to try something new? Maybe refurbishing hospitals, schools, roads and power plants, instead of bombing them into rubble. How about offering Palestinians, ancient regional inhabitants, a standard of living comparable to that offered Jewish immigrants the minute they step foot on Israeli soil? Not only would these measures prove less expensive in money and lives in the long run, but Islamic fundamentalists have won over the Middle East’s poverty-stricken inhabitants by offering far less in the way of social services.

Or we can continue our present course of action: disregard the past, feign innocence and hope for the best. Just keep in mind, though, what the next escalation could involve. Can you imagine the death toll were a determined martyr to detonate a nuclear device in Manhattan?

Horrific as 9/11 was, it was also a second opportunity to change our ways. I, for one, am still hoping for a miracle, that we take the chance and avoid being condemned to relive history.

END

As far as I can ascertain, until Tuesday of this week when Walter Chronkite did a piece on NPR, this story remained essentially uncovered in the mainstream American media.

I can't help but wonder if circulating my piece wasn't the spark that finally got someone with access to cover it.

The NPR story, by the way, was gutless. Rather than making any points about American foreign policy, the media's lack of historical memory, or questioning why the 1970 hijackings have been ignored for two years, the best Chronkite could do was claim the event represented "the moment when the jet plane first became an instrument of international terror."

Which is not only absurd, but historically inaccurate. What a total waste of the public's airwaves!