25th anniversary of the killing of Leon Klinghoffer
Ann Althouse reminds us that today is the 25th anniversary of the killing of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian terrorists.
In honor of Klinghoffer and his family, I am linking to a previous post of mine on the subject of his death, and the sympathetic way his killers have been treated in song and story.
I happened to be driving in Canada shortly after this affair. The question for radio call-in show was whether the US was justified in intercepting an Egyptian airliner which had the supposedly arrested terrs on board.
Ninety percent of the Canadians who called in said we had done a vile thing. In addition, they’d start out saying, I’m not trying to justify the killing of Klinghoffer…but then they’d excuse it.
What’s to be done?
Abu Nadal, the man behind the murder of Klinghoffer, had a government office in Baghdad for years before Operation Iraqi Freedom.
I’m being ironic when I say I love it when Leftist say that there weren’t any terrorist in Iraq before the US showed up.
Wrong.
An Iranian guy I knew in New Orleans (he bolted when Khomeni took over) once told me that in Teheran PLO stood for Push Leon Overboard.
Never ceases to amaze how big a load people will swallow if it suits their prejudice. I heard for nearly 30 tears that it was all about illegally occupied territories taken from Palestinians in 1967.
And the antidote? The PLO, founded by an Egyptian three years before that war began.
Political victimhood for fun and profit. Works everywhere it’s tried.
Ah, the followers of the religion of peace. It’s so hard to keep track of all their works.
The death of Klinghoffer was one of those events which, small in themselves, in the grand scheme of things are heavy with significance. This was an act of almost insane casual cruelty and viciousness, the murder of an elderly man who was entirely helpless.
And as the poster above notes, many people either condoned it or wanted to “understand” what motivated his killers. It was one of the ways the Palestinians learned, and they have learned well, that against Israel and Jews they can commit the most savage of acts and will never be called to account for it. The most grotesque and vile act will not harm their interests or standings at all.
Meanwhile, of course, acts of self-defense by Israelis and Jews are subject to the most delicate and unsparing analysis.
It seems like such a long time since the worst thing we worried about was being hijacked on a plane. I just spent a few minutes reviewing the incident that included the death of this poor man, as I was barefoot and pregnant for most of the 80’s, and certainly oblivious to most of the news. It took me on a little sideline, because my family emigrated from England to New Zealand in 1967 on the Angelina Lauro, sister ship to the Achilles. Amazing what you can find on the internet. The two ships had some interesting history.
1. RIP. Never forget.
2. Actually, I say ‘RIP’ as a formality. If there is an afterlife (which I doubt but do not rule out), I hope Klinghoffer is living it joyfully, free of the limitations of this existence, especially those of old age.
3. Wrt to Neo’s linked post: I find John Adams’ music approachable but not profound. I certainly do not consider him a source of moral insight. In fact, I view him as an example of misguided contemporary oversensitivity that masks decadence. Here is a link to his interview about the piece he wrote to commemorate 9/11. (Speaking of decadence, note that the people who commissioned the piece knew how Adams had treated the Klinghoffer atrocity.)
His case, how it was handled on the ship, by governments afterward, and by the press, was a huge awakening for me. I realized many governments and media outlets were still with Hitler. The veil, to me, on that one, was quite thin. It was shortly after my own history lessons, reading about everything involved concerning WWII I could get my hands on lead me to be an absolutist anti-socialist belief after a couple of years of serious flirtation with it in my early teens.
I wonder if it woke any one else up? Oh, it was subtle, but the hatred, disrespect, and lack of concern was all there. The haters merely disliked the notion that it was so public they had to actually, you know, acknowledge the act and fake any sympathies or such. It woke me up. I will be surprised to hear anything about the anniversary anywhere else.
I certainly pray he is in a far better place. Same with all Jews and non-muslims murdered by and for that cult. I honestly do not care what the devil does with his own.
Huffington Post, of all places, is running a multi-part series on American Jews’ “buyer’s remorse” about Obama, and the signs of his anti-Semitism.
The leftie Comments that follow these articles are blood-curdling, and very worrying for anyone who cares about, not only Israel, but the Jews worldwide.
One of the HuffPo commenters said this:
Worldwide Jewry may see the country of Israel as one and the same as the Biblical Land of Israel, but the rest of the world does not. Frankly, Jews are just going to have to find a way to reconcile themselves to the fact that their view is not only not that of the rest of the world, but furthermore, that the persistence in holding onto that view is one of the biggest problems in that part of the world.
No one wants to have the Jews be susceptible[sic] to the horrors visited on them by the Nazis, but we also see that the way that sitiuation was resolved was not wholly satisfactory. It would be very helpful if Israel would understand this and get serious about finding a way to coexist with their Palestinian neighbors.
Just one more bit: this is an excerpt from Part 3 of the HuffPo article:
“On March 10th of this year, a relatively low-level official in the Israeli Interior Ministry issued a permit for 1,600 new housing units for Israelis in the Ramat Shlomo section of East Jerusalem. The ill-timed announcement came on the very day vice president Joe Biden arrived in Israel to kick-start a round of indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately apologized to Biden, who accepted his expression of regret. But Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority on the West Bank, called off the “proximity talks.”
“The next day, at the regularly scheduled weekly breakfast meeting between the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama made his feelings clear. He was livid. As he saw it, the Israelis had purposely humiliated his vice president and tried to sabotage his peace plan. It was a personal affront, and he wouldn’t stand for such treatment. He instructed Hillary to call Netanyahu and read him the riot act.
The following day, during a 43-minute harangue, Hillary delivered a set of ultimatums to Netanyahu. Prefacing each remark with the phrase “I have been instructed to tell you,” Hillary demanded that Israel release a substantial number of Palestinian prisoners as a token of goodwill; lift its siege of Gaza; suspend all settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem; accept that a symbolic number of Palestinians be given the “right of return” to Israel under a future peace treaty; and agree to place the question of the status of Jerusalem at the top of the peace-talks agenda.
“If you refuse these demands,” Hillary told Netanyahu, according to our sources, “the United States government will conclude that we no longer share the same interests.”
Et cetera. . . .
Re HuffPo:
Last month Yahoo reported, Obama Should Have Focused on Jobs, Not Health Care, Says Arianna Huffington.
“If you refuse these demands,” Hillary told Netanyahu, according to our sources, “the United States government will conclude that we no longer share the same interests.”
I wonder if no god (secular) progressive Jewish liberals think this is wonderful…
so will the war result in the rebuilding of the temple?
For our leader and such is not really understanding what has just been done…
if there is no relationship
then there is nothing to protect
if there is nothing to protect
there is no reason not to act
IE. it was the special relationship with the US and such that kept Israel from acting in certain ways.
now, with no relationship, they can remove them ALL, tear down the mosque, and rebuild the temple.
whats the US going to do?
threaten the relationship?
failure to understand tactical and strategic forces and responses fully, and treating these relationships like a narcisist would, is very bad and dangerous.
a narcisist thinks they are so great that you would care if they broke off the friendship. obama has allowed me to dump narcissist friends because they threatened their relationship to force a change in my opinion… I let them leave… and now i wonder if my ‘friend’ is doing ok retiring to north mexico from california, or has he eaten so much crow that he wont talk to me ever for the taste in his mouth.
basically, he said we are so wonderful and if you want to remain friends you have to do what i tell you.
guess what? Obama doesn’t understand the real dynamic here… (and i wonder what his idea of stopping Israel from handing our technology over to china and Russia now we are not friends).
they are collapsing economy
preventing our ability to borrow to fight
isolating us from any help that may come
anyone other than me see how they are going to get the problem child alone and have a war once its isolated enough and too poor to fight?
(too fat, too stupid, too confused, too lazy)
this now is where we are heading even more so than i said 2 years ago…
Beverly, Did the Huffington Post give a source for those demands Obama made to Netanyahu? It sounds reasonable that a spoiled arrogant child with no understanding of the world would make such demands but not a US president.
I suspect that is Obama’s secret strength, people cannot accept that we have a spoiled adolescent in the White House, they can comprehend the demands of the position but not the nature of the man in it. Indeed the two are cognitively irreconcilable, the two cannot coexist.
Beverly, re her quoted commenter: Yeah, with every tribe in a thousand-mile radius at each other’s throats for thousands of years except when they are under empire, it’s Israel that has to get serious about understanding.
What we see in the ME is their usual behavior. Israel is a European-style country dropped into that vast insanity. Expecting them to act like their next-door neighbor is Finland is double insanity.
ARTFLDGR,
ref : rebuilding the Temple
As well read as you are, I suspect you are aware that a certain wolf in Sheeps Clothing as understood by many in Christian prophecy makes a treaty with Israel for 7 years, then breaks it half thru while commiting some horrible act in the Temple-which causes some Christians to suspect that the rebuilding of the Temple, or at least a wing of it, and the intitial Treaty itself are not separate things.
In muslim prophecy, as I understand, a certain “good guy” from the Muslim point of view, makes a Treaty for 7 years with a descendant of Aaron-who was the ancient High priest of Israel, and supposedly finds “the Ark of the Covenant”, which was kept in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, as well as (altered) copies of the Torah and Christian writings which he uses to convert some to Islam.
I do not think the convergance of these two lines of prophecy are by acident. The “Wolf in Sheeps Clothing” in one is the man who supposedly forces the World to Islam in the other. Though at mid point of the Treaty, to follow the Christian prophecy, he will have to make a break with the Muslim Prophecies- and declare himself god.
http://al-mahdi.atspace.com/al-mahdi.html
I have not kept up with the final disposition of the murder of Klinghoffer. I remember how it made me feel. Those who planned it, and those who carried it out can not have enough fear and pain brought upon them during their slow, agonizing deaths. The same goes for those who have committed other atrocities in similar manner.
I wouldn’t harm a fly, ordinarily. But those types? Oh, I’d enjoy it!
Didn’t realize it was the anniversary. Perhaps that’s why Obama signed off on the Lockerbie bomber’s release? His Justice department rep, Perez, the same guy that refused to prosecute the Black Panthers (who in turn just met with Farrakhan and Iran’s maniac leader in NYC) is purportedly in Murphreesboro, Tenn. assuring the resident mullah that “he’s got his back” in the growing fight to expand his “place of worship”. Twenty five years after this disgusting crime, I wonder how Leon’s children feel about their country, their President? As I get older, I find it increasingly difficult to think anything but bad thoughts when it comes to the religion of peace. I suppose I should be assured though, Obama has stated that he is a Christian, and after all, like failed Times Square bomber Shazad, he did indeed, take an oath.