http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1371.shtml

The Achille Lauro hijacking: Selective
memory does none of us justice
Daniel Jacob Quinn, The Electronic Intifada, 18 April 2003

The Achille Lauro is back
in the news. Most of us
know that a Palestinian,
Mohammed Abu Abbas, is
believed to have planned
the 7 October 1985
hijacking of the Achille
Lauro cruise ship. His
group, the Palestinian
Liberation Front, demanded
that Israel free 50
Palestinian prisoners.

During the hijacking, an
American Jewish passenger in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot and thrown into the sea. While Abbas was not on board the ship, the hijacking, taking of hostages, and killing of Mr. Klinghoffer were heinous crimes for which those responsible -- whether in the planning or the
implementation -- should be brought to justice. International law demands that attacks on civilians are prosecuted. Justice demands this is done impartially in all situations.

While extensive media coverage of the arrest
of Abbas in Iraq by US forces has ensured
that most of us know about the Achille
Lauro, no one seems to recall
Hammam-Plage.

On October 1, 1985, one week before the
cruise ship was hijacked, Israel launched an
air assault on Hammam-Plage, a residential
suburb of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. At the
time Israel claimed to be seeking out
Palestinian leaders given refuge by Tunisia
and attacking military targets in the
neighborhood.

According to an 2 October 1985 article
published by the Guardian, Israel's attack
"brutally signalled its determination to keep the Palestine Liberation
Organisation out of the emerging Middle East peace process." The
article noted that one of the buildings bombed by the Israelis was the
private residence of PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

The Guardian cites claims by Israeli military leaders that "one of the
targets of the raid was the headquarters of Force 17," an elite military
unit.  According to the verbatim record of the 4 October 1985 meeting of
the United Nations Security Council, however, Tunisia's Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Beji Caid Essebsi reminded the Security Council that
Israeli officials had, themselves, admitted that the Force 17
headquarters were not located in Tunisia.

Essebsi testified that it was a well-known fact that Tunisia had given
refuge to "the legitimate representation of the Palestinian people." But,
he emphasized, there was no Palestinian military base in Tunisia.

While the Hammam-Plage neighborhood did contain political offices of
the PLO, Essebsi underlined to the UN that the neighborhood was "a
clearly defined urban area, where many Tunisian families live and where
a small number of Palestinian civilians had found refuge after their
terrible ordeal during the Israeli aggression against Lebanon."

Essebsi testified that 68 civilians were killed and more than 100 were
wounded during the Israeli attack.

The United Nations Security Council considered the raid to be a
grievous act of aggression against the sovereign nation of Tunisia,
noting "with concern that the Israeli attack has caused heavy loss of
human life and extensive material damage." UN Security Council
Resolution 573 frames the Israeli attack as a "threat to peace and
security in the Mediterranean region" and vigorously condemned the
"flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations, international law
and norms of conduct."

Israel's representative to the United Nations, Benjamin Netanyahu, was
defiant in his stance that "we in Israel shall never accept" the Security
Council resolution.

The hijacking of the Achille Lauro and the murder of Leon Klinghoffer are
both examples of unjustifiable acts. Yet supporters of Israel, who are
currently working hard to emphasise the Achille Lauro incident as a tool
to demonize Palestinians, have a less than glowing record where acts
of terrorism committed by their own are concerned, never mind their
standard practice of glossing over or justifying acts by the State of
Israel that result in massive civilian casualties. The Hammam-Plage raid
is an example from around the time of the Achille Lauro, so too was the
murder of Alex Odeh.

Four days after the attack on the Achille
Lauro, on 11 October 1985, a bomb
demolished the Santa Ana offices of the
Arab-American Anti-Discrimination
Committee, killing Alex Odeh, the
organization's regional executive director.
Seven others were injured. According
to a New York Times article the following
day, "The Jewish Defense League, often at
odds with the [ADC], denied responsibility
for the bombing but praised the action." The
night before his death, Mr. Odeh had
appeared on a local news program to
comment on the Achille Lauro hijacking. He
reportedly denied the PLO's involvement in
the murder of Leon Klinghoffer. Rather than
condemn the killing of Mr. Odeh, the official website of the Jewish
Defense League confirms that JDL National Chairman Irv Rubin publicly
stated that Alex Odeh "got what he deserved."

The "threat to peace and security in the Mediterranean region" posed
by Israel's aggression goes back further than its attack on Tunisia. In
June 1979, the United Nations Security Council condemned Israel's
"acts of violence against Lebanon that have led to the displacement of
civilians, including Palestinians, and brought about destruction and loss
of innocent lives." UN Security Council Resolution 450 called upon
Israel "to cease forthwith its acts against the territorial integrity, unity,
sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon, in particular its
incursions into Lebanon and the assistance it continues to lend to
irresponsible armed groups."

In violation of this and other
UN Security Council
Resolutions regarding its
acts against the
sovereignty of Lebanon,
Israel invaded Lebanon on
6 June 1982. Three months
later, under the command
of Ariel Sharon who was
Israel's minister of defense,
Israel transported a special
force composed of
extremist Lebanese
Christian militiamen and
members of the Israeli
surrogate force, the South
Lebanon Army, to Beirut's
Palestinian refugee camps,
Sabra and Shatila.

On 16 September 1982,
Israeli soldiers allowed the
militiamen into the camps.
Israeli soldiers proceeded
to encircle and seal off
Sabra and Shatila lighting
up the camps with flares. For the next two days, while Israeli soldiers
stood by, the militiamen raped, maimed, and killed countless unarmed
civilians, mostly children, women and the elderly.

Israel officially numbered the dead at 700 but, by 23 September 1982,
the International Committee of the Red Cross had counted 2,750
victims killed. The ICRC figure does not include those buried in mass
graves, those who were buried under the ruins of houses, or those who
were taken alive and never returned. Estimates by Palestinian groups
place the death toll as high as 3,500. The United Nations Human Rights
Commission strongly condemned what it called "Israel's responsibility
for the large-scale massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps,
which constituted an act of genocide."

The Achille Lauro hijacking and other attacks by groups of Palestinian
militants have certainly caused horrific deaths amongst civilians. But,
as noted by the United Nations Security Council, what is more
disturbing is the persistent pattern of state-sponsored aggression and
acts of terror committed by Israel which have constituted a far greater
"threat to peace and security in the Mediterranean region." The murder
of Mr. Klinghoffer was heinous, but no more heinous than the killings of
thousands of refugees in Sabra and Shatila, or the victims of those who
died in the Israeli air attack on Tunisia the previous week. 

This pattern of Israeli
aggression has not
subsided. Israel continues
to flagrantly disregard
United Nations resolutions
regarding its occupation of
Palestinian territories and
its excessive use of force
against a defenseless
civilian population.

According to the Palestine
Red Crescent Society
(PRCS), since September
2000, over 2,250
Palestinian civilians have
been killed by Israeli
soldiers and armed settlers
in Gaza and the West
Bank. 430 of these were
children, according to
Defence for Children
International. Another
22,446 Palestinians have
been injured, one quarter
by live ammunition. In just
one example, evoking the
Klinghoffer killing, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs reported that two teenage Palestinians, one of
them in a wheelchair, were killed in Gaza on 12 January 2003 when an
Israeli helicopter fired a missile at the taxi in which they were riding.

Mohammed Abu Abbas has already been convicted in absentia in Italy
for the attack on the Achille Lauro and should presumably serve his
term there. Will Ariel Sharon ever face prosecution for the far greater
number of attacks on innocent civilians carried out under his command?
The Washington Post reports that Abbas had renounced violence and
both the US and Israel dropped their warrants against any members of
the PLO prior to the signing of the 1993 Oslo peace accord.

Nevertheless, Mr. Klinghoffer's daughter told
NBC's Today show that she wants Abbas
brought here to the US to serve a life
sentence. Sadly, few of those massacred
under the command of Ariel Sharon at Qibya
or Sabra and Shatila have family members
who survived to be able to demand the same
justice for their loved ones. And the mother
of Rachel Corrie was never invited to speak
on any of the major American networks
about the killing of her daughter just last
month by the driver of an Israeli military
bulldozer. Selective memory does none of
us justice.

Daniel Jacob Quinn
Washington, DC


Daniel Quinn is a licensed clinical social worker with a local public
school system. Last summer, he lived and worked for 2 months in the
Gaza Strip and the West Bank, volunteering as a clinical consultant
with the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.