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After much poking around, I cannot find any particular significance about 11 Sept 1970 that Natalie was wondering about. The dates of any significance I found were:
On 6 September 1970 the PFLP carried out one of the most memorable hijackings in history prior to September 11 2001. This was the simultaneous hijack to Jordan of a Swissair DC-8 and a TWA 707.
On 12 September, this was followd by the hijacking of a BOAC VC-10. All aircraft were forced to land at Dawson Field, outside Amman. At the same time another group of PFLP hijackers hijacked a Pan American 747 to Cairo and blew it up there. The Jordanians were deeply divided on what to do about the hijackers. The day after the destruction of the hijacked planes King Hussein declared martial law and sacked his pro-Palestinian prime minister.
As far as I can figure, it was 14 September when it all finally went horribly pear shaped. The Jordanian army and Palestinians directly came to blows when the Jordanians attacked the Palestinian base at Zarqa.
On the 19 September, Palestine Liberation Army and regular Syrian army armoured units invaded northern Jordan, driving towards Amman, with Arafat declared northern Jordan a ‘liberated area’. After initially loosing ground, the very professional Jordanian army counter-attacked the Syrian/PLA forces and pushed them back.
On 22 September an Arab League delegation arrived in Amman to broker a deal between the Jordanians and Palestinians.
On 24 September (or 25 Sept in one accounts I found) no sooner had the Arab delegates returned to Cairo to announce a political deal than Arafat rejected the settlement and renews his calls for the overthrow of the Jordanian Hashemite monarchy (in spite of the fact the Jordanian Army was now starting to get the upper hand throughout the country).
On 27 September King Hussein arrived in Cairo for more peace negotiations with Arafat. These came to nothing and eventually Arafat’s forces were finally completely crushed and ejected from Jordan by July 1971.
Does any one else know if there was anything special about September 11 1970 that I might have missed? If so, e-mail and tell us.
David Deutsch points out the bizarre logical knots into which the so called ‘Arab Street’ is tying itself
There is an interesting BBC article about the latest tape of Bin Laden discussing the September 11 attacks
The BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Frank Gardner, says that at street level in the Arab world, many believe the tape is a fake, a PR gimmick dreamed up by the US administration.
To believe Bin Laden innocent despite the overwhelming evidence of his guilt, one must have an overwhelming psychological incentive.
This incentive comes from a deep admiration for, and identification with, Bin Laden.
This admiration and identification are derived from the fact that Bin Laden has succeeded in hurting Americans, which is the epitome of what people in that category compulsively yearn for.
In other words, it stems from those people’s belief that Bin Laden is responsible for the September 11 attacks.
They believe he isn’t responsible for the attacks because they believe he is.
I therefore guess that Frank Gardner’s men-in-the-street who believe, after seeing the videotape evidence, that Bin Laden had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, are to very high accuracy the same ones who celebrated the attacks themselves.
David Deutsch
I couldn’t resist throwing this BBC News 24 historical morsel into the stew of debate about possible cooperation between Jordan and Israel. King Hussein wanted Israel to bomb Syrian forces during the Black September crisis of 1970, according to British Government documents released thirty years later. Notice Mr Heath being as wrong about Hussein’s prospects as about everything else.
BTW, my post of earlier this afternoon now appears quite loopy. I often think this about my own past writing but to think it after a delay of hours rather than years is unusual.
When I first heard – at the school gates where I ought to be now – that some spectacular act of terrorism had taken place in America, some chime of memory struck about the date. I did wonder whether September 11 was the thirtieth anniversary of some event in Hussein’s expulsion of the Popular Front? I never did track it down, though.
Interesting predictions from both Jay Zilber and Glenn at Instapundit that Israel is setting the stage for the Jordanian reoccupation of the West Bank as the means by which Israel can avoid becoming host to what is well on the way to becoming a permanent state of Palestinian Intifada.
It is certainly a fascinating idea but I have one big question for these two esteemed blogpundits… what on earth is in it for Jordan? It seems to me that the Hashemites would have to be out of their minds to want to take on the responsibility for several million pissed off, radicalised, impoverished Palestinians.
Do not forget that in 1970-71 the Bedouin Jordanian Army forcefully crushed the PFLP after years of Palestinian agitation and violence, ejecting them from Northern Jordan at bayonet point (and leading to the creation of ‘Black September’). Do they really want to go through all of that again? Somehow I doubt it.
There is an excellent article on Rantburg about Al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy. It quotes some of his remarks as printed in a London based Arabic newspaper
Terrorist attacks on Western civilians are justified because they live in democracies and are directly responsible for government policies that anger Arabs, Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant implies in the latest excerpt of his memoirs. In the passages that appeared Tuesday in the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, Ayman al-Zawahri says the West understands only “the language of self-interest coupled with oppressive power. If we want to make them understand our rights we have to speak to them in the language they understand,” he said.
Well he is correct in one respect: the West, particularly the Anglosphere, does indeed understand that language. The problem is, we are considerably better at expressing it than they are. If they want this ‘dialogue of civilisations’ to be conducted at 3000 feet per second, ok, we can do that. That is not a dialogue we are going to be on the loosing end of.
The Islamists like poor deluded Mr. Al-Zawahri are actually in a no-win situation. If they elect to fight us, which they obviously have, we are richer by several orders of magnitude and much, much better at the whole ‘directed violence’ thing than they are… but if they do not fight us, they are still doomed. In the long run the sheer joyous banalities of globalised capitalist consumer culture will snow them under with a blizzard of addidas shoes, MP3 players, porno DVDs, air conditioning, satellite videophones and silicon enhanced actresses in very short skirts. Worst of all, we can quite happily tolerate and actually absorb the Islamic world’s best and brightests in ourcivilisation. In the final analysis either way they’re screwed.
Once more, Adil Farooq of Muslimpundit takes conspiracy theorists and the ludicrous Tony Benn to task for incoherent thinking
I am having a bit of an argument with a friend at the moment. Among a number of other things, he insists that the U.S. is fighting this war for oil, as stated some time ago by Tony Benn. This latest conspiracy to do the rounds is getting really irritating. For I thought that perhaps we are at war simply because the Al-Qaida terrorist network, which we understand to be aided and abetted by their puppet Taliban regime, were the cause of the attacks on the WTC on September 11, not to mention the Pentagon attack, and a possible attack on the White House through Flight 93.
However, should Adil mistakenly think such convoluted interpretations are the exclusive preserve of Islam’s wacko fringe and their secular socialist counterparts such as Anthony Wedgewood Benn, that is not the case. Alas similar dark prognostications can be found in the more loopy eddies of libertarian thought as well.
One example is Emmanuel Goldstein of Airstrip One, who is a well thought out, largely coherent quasi-libertarian who writes a lot of very good and insightful stuff. Yet it seems to me he become unhinged at the first whiff of US or UK military involvement in pretty much anything. I realise he thinks me far too trusting of the state (a novel concept for me) but I regard his approach, like that of many Muslim conspiracy theorists, as a ‘theory of reflexive disbelief’ rather than one of skeptical rational analysis.
Of course the irony of sharing some aspects of world view with Emmanual’s strain of libertarianism might be lost on Muslim extremists, unless they also have a sense of humour. I certainly think it is funny.
Christian Michel sees Israel’s problems as rooted not in geography but in what it is.
It has been said that Israel is ‘a state in the wrong place’.
But Israel’s problem is not that it is a state in the wrong place (where else should it be?), it is that it is a State. Because it was artificially established from the outside, its sovereignty is questioned inside (as is the case by minorities of so many states set up by their colonial powers, notably in Africa and the ex-Soviet Union).
But Israel’s problems only anticipate those to be faced sooner or later by Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, to name a few in Europe. A modern State, all the more so if it claims to be democratic, is viable only when it rules a totally homogenous, uniform, undifferentiated population. Yet, whether we like it or not, populations will get more and more differentiated, by fortune, by education, by new ethnic awareness, by culture. States will either have to level down differences through brutal ethnic cleansing and economic intervention, with the risk of stifling innovation and prosperity, let alone human rights; or withdraw.
In my childhood liberal Christian environment, Jews were regarded as the “chosen people”, our “elders in the faith”. When anarchist issues became of interest, Jews appeared to me as the obvious model of a God-given historically proven example that human beings’ social identity is not attached to a land, it is not dependent on some bureaucracy conferring citizenships. We can live collectively without these artificial constructs. Jews managed to do it despite persecutions for 2000 years.
This constant and admirable refusal to be assimilated and reduced to the single dimension of a subject attached to a land and a state is a root of anti-semitism. It is not the ‘deicidal people’ that Hitler hated, but the ‘wandering’ one. Hitler’s fight, his ‘Kampf’, was not so much against Jews as such, as against cosmopolitanism. The Communist was an enemy (the name USSR with no reference to a land was a statement of the internationalist nature of communism at the time), the Capitalist was another one, so were the landless Gypsies and Jews. It is no coincidence, of course, that Jews were so heavily represented in both capitalist and communist elites.
An extraordinary paradox of our time, then, is that Israel is established just when the world is discovering the absurdity of social organizations based on the junction of a territory, a people and a government (ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer). Inherited from the French Revolution, the dogma that all three had to go together led to the Versailles Treaty and its disastrous consequences. It is still causing today ethnic cleansing through forced assimilation, deportation or elimination.
The creation of a State of Israel after the Holocaust might have seemed a good idea to some. Jews wanted a country of their own where they would be safe and not dependent on the goodwill of alien governments. It turns out that Jews are safe everywhere except in Israel, and Israel survives only thanks to the goodwill of a few alien governments.
Sacred texts, whether the Bible or the Koran, are metaphors. The universe was not created in 6 days and the Promised Land is not 20,000 sq. km between Eilat and the Golan. Land belongs legitimately to individuals only, not States, and the only Promise to look for is that it will remain your property to enjoy until you give it away, sell it or die. It matters little then that neighbours are Palestinian and Jews, provided they respect property rights. And provided they don’t need to get control of a government, either because no government exists, or it is powerless anyway to redistribute their wealth, subsidize their business, educate their children, run their police, ban what they will eat or drink, dictate how they should dress and when they should fast and close their shops… compare Palestine before the State of Israel and today.
That is the lesson Jews had been teaching us throughout History, how to remain yourself among others. They have discharged themselves of this mission with terrible consequences. Maybe that torch has passed on to Libertarians.
Christian Michel also writes on liberalia.com, one of Europe’s leading libertarian websites. All texts available in English and French.
Hurrah! Someone must have poked Adil Farooq with a sharp stick because because the excellent Muslimpundit blog has once again started loudly proclaiming some common sense from the minarets.
He is in effect pointing out the absurdity of ‘multiculturalism’ (which is of course nothing of the sort) and puts the boot in where it is sorely needed. The fact such self-evident remarks are even controversial is a testament to the degree of stupidity often heard on the subject
I would have thought that any attempt to accelerate the integration of citizenship-seeking immigrants into Britain, thereby preparing such people at the outset to take advantage of more opportunities to help increase their welfare, would have been welcomed by all. After all, this is what immigrants come for – to increase their living standards through seeking jobs. Taking English classes would make this easier
It is a dark marvel that there are people who cannot understand that!
Muslims often claim that their religion is misunderstood by America and others in the West. Well, in the aftermath of September 11, that is no longer the case. Non-Muslims have bent over backwards to understand Muslims, their history, their religion, even the source of their grievances, in an effort to understand what they are dealing with. The onus is now on the Muslims to do the same, and to actively throw off the shackles of ignorance and misunderstanding that they persistently have had have of America and others in the West. It will not be easy, but then serious introspection never claims to be, especially in the Muslim World, where vast hordes of people are almost always wrong almost all the time.
Now if that is not a brutally objective critically rational perspective, then I don’t know what is!
A highly recommended blog for all, but particularly those who mistakenly think the merest whiff of Islam invariably causes homicidal dementia and an urge to take flying lessons. Now all we have to do is hassle the hell out of Adil to update the blog more often.
I just saw over on Muslimpundit that Robert Fisk was attacked and beaten up by a mob in Pakistan. My heart bleed for him. Not. You may be sure he will try to find some way of blaming the US for what happened. Fisk and his dismal newspaper, the oh so ironically named Independent, have been amongst my pet hates for rather a long time. A tip of the turban to those guys.
On the other hand, respect to pundit Jeffrey Simpson. There is a good post on Daimnation about how he admits he got it all totally wrong about the war in Afghanistan. There are very few pundits who are willing to do that. An honourable journalist in BigMedia(tm): what a concept!
Addendum:
I was correct. Fisk did indeed blame the US for what happened to him: “It doesn’t excuse them for beating me up, but there was a real reason why they should hate Westerners.”
Well I’m also a Westerner, Fisk, and I hate you too.
I just spotted this muslimpundit blog mentioned on Instapundit.
“Going after starry pan-Islamic futurists with a rubber glove and a sharp stick”.
Way to go! I have always believed that there is a large body of rational, reasonable and moral Muslims living in the west who did not subscribe to the crap spewing out of the mouth’s of some of their community ‘leaders’. Now we know that is indeed the case!
Following the horrors in Israel, it is entirely reasonable and justified for the Israeli security services to do what the Palestinian Authority of Yassir Arafat has singularly failed to do, namely go after the psychopathic Hamas and Islamic Jihad organisations.
Israel is also quite right to demand that Arafat make a serious effort to suppress Hamas himself. This very point was made by an Israeli minister on the BBC this morning. In response however, the BBC reporter asked the minister
“If you want Arafat’s security services to do their job as you demand, then why are Israel’s attacks primarily directed at Arafat’s security services themselves?”
The reply can be best described as no reply, other than to insist that Arafat was responsible for arresting members of Hamas and he was not living up to his part of the bargain. The BBC reporter rephrased the question, asking:
“Why is Israel destroying the very force that you are demanding Arafat order to crush Hamas?”
The minister replied
“Israel is sending Chairman Arafat a message and if he does not understand that message, we will send it again.”
Well I sure as hell hear Israel’s message and it has very little to do with what that minister was saying. It is entirely reasonable for Israel to go after Hamas, given the Palestinian Authority’s abject failure to do so. But how does destroying Arafat’s assets achieve this? It would be rather like the USA striking the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan because they were not attacking the Taliban with enough gusto. Clearly that is absurd. If you want to understand what is going on, you have to ignore what the Israeli government is saying and just look at what they are doing.
The reality is that Palestinian Authority is a deeply corrupt, tyrannical, factionally riven organisation which could not control Hamas or Islamic Jihad even if it was inclined to. My analysis is that as well as going after the elusive Hamas, Israel is attacking the Palestinian Authority partially because internal Israeli outrage demands ‘action’ and requires someone been seen to pay big time (and the Palestinian Authority is a nice easy visible target) but mostly because Sharon sees this as his best chance to destroy the Palestinian Authority and reshuffle the deck whilst the world’s attention (meaning the USA) is focused on Afghanistan. Israeli colonisation of the occupied territories will continue (25 new settlements under the Sharon government) and the Palestinian west bank bantustans will not be allowed to expand into a proto-nation. Governments by their very nature are vast engines of deception: watch what they do and subject every utterance to skeptical but rational analysis. The target is Arafat’s ‘government’ with Hamas only being struck en passant. For reasons that are a mixture of Jewish colonial expansion and reasonable self-defense of Israel, Sharon wants to destroy the existing order in Palestine and replace it with something more to his liking. That is the reality.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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