Anybody remember who this is ?
Got me there, no idea. Aside from the image caption.
Leila Khaled
Why?
Has she died? She’d have to be about 70 or older by now.
More a question of who remembered her. Actually, Leila is still with us, still banging the drum for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Has given up terrorism and hijacking planes, however … JR.
Raises the interesting question of legitimate versus illegitimate “terrorism”
The Palestinians were dispossessed and forced out of Palestine by Zionist terrorism.
The Palestinians have a legitimate and massive grievance against Israel and, it can be argued on a “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” basis, a legitimate right to respond with their own terrorism against their oppressors.
Contrast that with, for example, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italian Red Brigades, American Symbionese Liberation Army and Japanese Red Army which weren’t responding to any offences even vaguely comparable with the Zionist terrorism towards and expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland but were merely as trivial minorities challenging and, with not the slightest prospect of success, seeking to overthrow the existing order which they found unacceptable.
Then there were the various revolutionary movements in South America which also sought to overthrow the existing order, but with rather more justification as challengers to corrupt governments and dictatorships which, unlike Germany, Italy, the USA and Japan around the same time, were vastly more oppressive and exploitative towards the least well off in their nations.
Overall, Leila Khaled was fighting for a demonstrably just cause, and one demonstrably more just and with vastly more at stake than, say, the comparatively trivial and selfish issues which provoked the American War of Independence which the USA holds up as the foundation of liberty and democracy, despite that liberty and democracy established in 1776 allowing entrenched hostility to and discrimination against, among others, Jews and blacks until well after WWII.
The British regarded Americans as a form of terrorists in the War of Independence because often they didn’t fight in regular formations or battles, while the Americans extol that conduct as a form of military ingenuity which overcame a greater power.
Some instances, such as ISIS in Syria and Iraq, are without justification beyond the quest for power of those involved, but in many other instances in history it’s a matter of interpretation from one’s personal standpoint and biases which determines whether someone is a terrorist or a freedom fighter.
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