Home
By Marc Sirois
(YellowTimes.org) – Abu Abbas. The very
mention of the name conjures images in the Western mind of an evil terrorist
bent on exterminating Jews.
There is good reason for this attitude, seeing as how the man in question has been so widely associated with one of the most gratuitously vicious incidents in the history of political violence. Indeed, Abu Abbas has acknowledged his role in the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, an appalling episode in which an elderly Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot in the head before being dumped overboard in his wheelchair.
Abu Abbas heads a faction of the Palestine
Liberation Front, itself an offshoot of still another group in the endless
chain of assemblages formed to fight Israel. Apart from the notorious
Achille Lauro affair, the PLF's record is mostly one of spectacular
failures.
For what it's worth, Abu Abbas has apologized for the ugliness that took
place aboard the Achille Lauro, describing it as "a mistake" that resulted
from a botched operation when the crew of the ship discovered the hijackers'
weapons before they made their play to commandeer the vessel. At one point,
he renounced violence entirely, publicly supporting the Oslo Accords and
urging both sides to leave the past where it belongs. He traveled to and
from the Occupied Territories with the knowledge and consent (however
begrudging) of the Israeli government.
Like many Palestinians (and Israelis), he eventually gave up on Oslo after concluding that it would never be implemented. He threatened to resume attacks by the PLF, but never followed up. However, U.S. intelligence reports allege that he was having fighters trained in Iraq and using the PLF as a conduit for payments by Saddam Hussein's regime to the families of suicide bombers in the West Bank.
Now, Abu Abbas is in U.S. custody after being captured by commandos at his Baghdad home. He is reported to have sought refuge in Syria, Iran, Libya, Yemen, and Lebanon but was turned down by each.
It is unclear what will become of him, but none of the options look very appealing. The Achille Lauro was an Italian vessel, and an Italian court has convicted him in absentia of murder. Klinghoffer was a U.S. citizen, though, and many Americans -- including the victim's daughters -- want to see him tried in the United States.
The Palestinian Authority has noted a wrinkle in all this: Under the terms of the Oslo Accord, no member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella group of which the PLF is a part, can be tried or sentenced for acts of violence committed before September 1993.
The official U.S. response is that Oslo is only binding on the Israelis and the Palestinians. That may be true from a technical point of view, but the United States is rightly regarded as a guarantor of the agreement and needs nothing less than yet another indication that it is only interested in enforcing those clauses that favor Israel.
More to the point, Abu Abbas' detention reveals yet another glaring double standard in how the United States -- frequently mimicked by much the international community -- treats the Arab-Israeli conflict. How else can one describe the formula by which Abu Abbas, a bit player by any standard, is almost universally vilified while someone like Ariel Sharon is welcomed at the White House as a "man of peace"?
There is no varnishing what happened on the Achille Lauro. The fact of the matter, however, is that the PLF is a tiny splinter group whose operations were a) few and far between; and b) largely ineffectual.
By comparison, Sharon is accused of having been participating in the wholesale slaughter of civilians since the late 1940s. He and people under his command have murdered hundreds of women and children, killed prisoners of war, and blown up entire residential neighborhoods. His most horrific exploit took place in Beirut in 1982, when his troops allowed an allied militia to butcher at least 800 civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
Despite this record, Sharon has never been a fugitive from justice and was only briefly a political outcast. Now he is Israel's prime minister and gets to sit in the Oval Office with a smiling George W. Bush.
Sharon is not an exception. Menachem Begin headed the Irgun when it and another militant group, the Stern Gang, snuffed out at least 100 innocent lives during 1948's Deir Yassin massacre. His "punishment" for this and other acts of violence (including numerous attacks on civilians and the 1946 bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel) was a long political career that culminated in the Prime Minister's Office.
How have such inexplicable inconsistencies come to be? Simple: Washington uses every bit of its influence to punish one side and exonerate the other. Anyone who can read knows which is which.
No one should shed any tears for Abu Abbas. Is he really important, enough, though, to let a thirst for vengeance against him pollute the climate in which, it is widely hoped, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process might shortly resume? Why should any Palestinian official be willing to support a final status agreement if its terms will not be respected by the international community?
No one should coddle terrorists, but the issue is larger than that: No one should continue to fuel a feud that has claimed far too many lives already. Or, if it has to be this way, then surely fairness demands that Abu Abbas be joined in his cell by the likes of Sharon and his ilk.
[Marc Sirois is a Canadian journalist who lives in Beirut, Lebanon, where he serves as managing editor of The Daily Star. The proud and fanatically protective father of three beautiful princesses, his opinionated writing style owes to the fact that he is never wrong along with his holding monopolies on wisdom, logic, morality, and justice. He is also exceedingly modest.]
Marc Sirois encourages your comments: msirois@YellowTimes.org