The American media proves again why sensationalism sells, in this case trimming history down to what some asshole with big glasses in Cairo (…) thinks the roots of terrorism and the Arab Left really are. Scott McLeod’s obituary in Time magazine proves why, first, one of my old roommates was wrong to recommened TIME’s ‘Middle East Blog’ as illuminating reading, and second what the hell McLeod, his editors, and all their industry and cocktail friends really know or think people need to understand about the Palestinian national movement and the wider MIddle East. "Terrorism’s Christian Godfather"? Habash hardly identified himself as Christian. And no, you can’t make this into a movie, even if Bilbo Baggins did once play David Ben Gurion.

It was getting shot at and driven out of Lydda by Zionist militias that drove Habash, more than twenty years later, to orchestrate plane hijackings that TIME wants you to think were the "9/11 of their day." What else did he do? Well, since those hijackings are as useful an historical example as any Time’s Mcleod can find to reflect "on the Middle East’s seemingly unstoppable whirlwind of violence," I guess we’ll want to know. 

Habash’s group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), pioneered the hijacking of airplanes as a Middle East terror tactic — one eventually employed by the al-Qaeda hijackers on 9/11 — way back in 1968 when three PFLP armed operatives commandeered an Israeli El Al airliner enroute from Rome to Tel Aviv. Checking in for a flight has never been the same since. 

Too bad the French hijacked airplanes to kidnap Algerian resistance fights in the 1950s, among other examples that should rightfully divest Palestinians from exclusive ownership over the bright scheme of hijackings airplanes. Checking in for a flight is a bitch — very rude too — on El Al these days. Getting pulled out of line at Ben-Gurion (formerly Lod, formely Habash’s hometown of Lydda) because of Syrian and Lebanese visas, and then realizing that you’re the only non-Arab person in the security screening room, does open your eyes to how Israel responded to those hijackings, decades ago. But does Mcleod need to make it sound so cinematic? "Checking in for a flight has never been the same since." No, it isn’t; it’s gotten a lot more racist, I imagine.

But of course the New York Times used the same fiery picture of Habash in their obituary — under a headline announcing the death of the "Palestinian terrorism tactician." Time thankfully explains this photo as "George Habash attack[ing] a U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace plan during a speech in Beirut, March 11, 1979." Oh my. An Arab leader attacking US-made peace? And in the late 70s? Maybe US-ordered peace has never caught on because of those George Habash’s speeches. He does look angry. And he was attacking peace.

The level of ahistoricism, or at least of shedding every detail that confuses a narrative of Palestinian nationalism equaling "terrorism" and pioneering hijackings and allusions to the Godfather, is not just bald. It’s misinformation, quite deliberate too. Slander too. Not to cheer shooting people at airports or thinking that armed struggle is the one absolute path to self determination. But a view of George Habash, and in turn Palestinian nationalism, as inherently violent and always-tied and only defined by TV terrorism isn’t just reductive. And backhandedly (or not) racist. If Habash is the Godfather, who is Menachem Begin?  Mcleod should keep writing about cheez borgers at Lucilles like Hossam at 3arabawy suggested. Those bizarre and rude American women I saw scarfing them down there last summer, while chatting about church in Maadi, Mcleod’s burger article, and the rudeness of Arabs and Egyptians in general, seem to be Scott’s target audience.

 -f