The Night the Lights Went Out in Gaza?

Back in September, I posted a story about HAMAS in Gaza and its practice of launching Kassam rockets into nearby Israeli towns in hopes of killing people at random. Well, the Israeli authorities announced on Thursday that they are now prepared to impose sanctions on HAMAS in the form of brief cuts in the electrical power that Israel supplies to Gaza. For each rocket, the power will be turned off for 15 minutes. See the story in today's Jerusalem Post. This strikes me as an eminently reasonable, even quite mild, response.

Naturally, HAMAS reacted by firing five more rockets at the town of Sderot today. So far, the Israeli authorities haven't cut the juice to the jihadis.

This Week in the History of Terrorism, October 28 to November 3

Here's my summary of significant past events for this week. They include the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and the very nearly successful attempt to assassinate U.S. President Harry Truman.

But the event that I find most intriguing was the 1972 hostage-taking operation by Black September - meaning, in reality, by Al-Fatah and Yassir Arafat - that coerced the West German government into releasing the three surviving Black September terrorists who had committed the Munich Olympic Massacre just eight weeks earlier. Germany released the prisoners to Libya, where they were welcomed as heroes and held a press conference (photo above, from the documentary film One Day in September).

That rank capitulation by the Federal Republic of Germany seemed to prove that nation-states, at least the democratic ones, could not stand up to terrorism. If that was true, it would challenge the foundation of nation-state sovereignty that is the basis of world order.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who up to that point had been reluctant to take unilateral action, now agreed to launch Operation Wrath of God, a covert effort to kill those responsible for the Munich Massacre and to conduct other retaliatory and pre-emptive attacks on terrorist groups.

In 1977, West Germany finally cowboyed-up and created it's own hardline 'no concessions' antiterrorism policy after the German Autumn.

October 28

2002 (Jordan) - Lawrence Foley, age 62, the Executive Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jordan, was assassinated as he left his home in Amman en route to his office at the U.S. Embassy. In December 2002, the Jordanian authorities arrested several suspects with ties to al-Qaeda who confessed to the attack. According to a December 15th story in the Jordan Times that quoted the Jordanian Information Minster, the suspects monitored several potential targets before singling out Foley after they noted he had regular home-to-office departure times and would be an easy target. One of the suspects hid behind Foley's car, armed with a silenced pistol and wearing a bulletproof vest, and shot him several times as he was unlocking the driver’s door. Foley's wife discovered his body.

In October, 2003, five men accused in the plot to kill Foley repudiated their confessions, and claimed that security officials had tortured them. In April, 2003, all of the accused were convicted, some in absentia.

October 29

1972 (West Germany) – Three Black September Organization terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa airliner and demanded the release of three other BSO members imprisoned in Germany for the Munich Olympics massacre, which had occurred two months earlier. The German government complied and released the prisoners to Libya. That capitulation to terrorism convinced Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to launch a unilateral campaign of retaliatory and pre-emptive attacks on Palestinian terrorist groups. The three freed terrorists (Adnan Al Gashey, Jamal Al Gashey and Mohammed Safedy) went into hiding.

2005 (India) – Three simultaneous bombings in New Delhi killed 55 persons and wounded almost 200, in the second deadliest terrorist attack in Indian history. The bombings came two days before the festival of Diwali, which is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains. The bombs were placed inside vehicles in high-traffic venues – two markets in central and south Delhi – and inside a bus. The Islamic Inquilab Mahaz, also known as the Islamic Revolutionary Front, claimed responsibility on an Islamic website. The bombs consisted of RDX plastic explosive and were detonated by timers. Many of the victims were Hindus and Sikhs shopping before the Diwali festival.

October 30

2000 (Spain) – A judge and two aides were killed and more than 30 person wounded in an ETA carbomb attack in Madrid.

October 31

1971 (United Kingdom) – A bomb exploded in the Post Office Tower in London, causing extensive damage but no injuries. The blast occurred in the public viewing galleries on the 33rd floor, shortly after police received a warning call that claimed that the "Kilburn Battalion" of the IRA was behind the attack. The Post Office Tower is a historic site that was used for restaurants and retail shops. It was closed to the public after the bombing. The attack was one of the Provisional IRA's earliest on UK targets.

1984 (India) – The Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by Sikh militants. Gandhi had offended the Sikhs when she authorized the army to storm their holiest temple, the Golden Temple, in an attempt to suppress a Punjab religious leader and his separatist political movement. In retaliation for the desecration of their shrine, two of Gandhi's Sikh guards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, shot her to death in the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence as she walked through the gate they were guarding. When her death was announced anti-Sikh violence spread across the country, killing thousands.

November 1

1950 (United States) – Two members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party attempted to assassinate President Harry Truman, invading his temporary residence at Blair House and shooting two Secret Service agents and one White House Policeman before they were stopped. The attack was intended to draw attention to the Nationalist armed uprising that was then occurring in Puerto Rico, which included an attempt on the life of the island’s governor.

In the brief gunfight at Blair House, Oscar Collazo fired the first shot but was quickly wounded by two nearby Secret Service agents and collapsed. Griselio Torresola took advantage of the distraction Collazo caused, and came close to entering the residence, firing eight rounds that hit White House Policeman Leslie Coffelt and two Secret Service agents. He was reloading his pistol outside the residence entrance when President Truman stuck his head out of a window, presenting Torresola a clear target at a range of 31 feet. Before Torresola finished reloading, Coffelt, although mortally wounded, stood up, carefully aimed his revolver, and fired one round that hit Torresola two inches above the ear, killing him instantly and ending the gunfight. Cofflet died four hours later.

Oscar Collazo was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to death, later commuted by President Truman to life imprisonment. Pardoned by President Carter in 1979, he returned to Puerto Rico where he died in 1994.

November 2

1986 (Lebanon) – A U.S. citizen held hostage in Beirut by the Islamic Jihad Organization for 17 months was released. David Jacobsen's release was the third such success publically credited to the efforts of the British Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy, Terry Waite. However, it later became known that all of these hostage releases were really the product of secret bartering between White House National Security Council staffers, including Oliver North, and the Iranian regime that sponsored Islamic Jihad in Lebanon. Terry Waite served as the public front for four U.S. hostage releases before Islamic Jihad lost confidence in him and held him hostage from 1987 to 1991.

Mercy, or "Merely Good Manners?"

Have you noticed that this election season all the politicians are talking about torture? In the Republican debates Rudy Giuliani quibbles over the definition of waterboarding, and John McCain fervently denounces torture in all its forms (although he supports less torturous 'intensive interrogation').

All the Democrats are predictably appalled and aghast over the idea of torturing anybody, but who are they kidding? Am I the only one who's noticed the eerie resemblance between Hillary and Nurse Ratched??? She's the last person I'd want to see coming at me with hot pokers.

The Bush administration is adjusting its legal guidelines on torture, and the new Attorney General nominee was put on the rack himself, metaphorically speaking, on the second day of his Senate confirmation hearing. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse went medieval on Judge Michael Mukassey and demanded he crack and talk about whether waterboarding is constitutional.

According to CNN, Mukasey responded "I don't know what's involved in the techniques. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."

Whitehouse continued, "'If it's torture.' That's a massive hedge, I mean it either is or it isn't. Do you have an opinion whether waterboarding -- which is the practice of putting someone in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning -- is that constitutional?"

"If that amounts to torture, it is not constitutional," Mukasey said.

"I'm very disappointed in that answer," Whitehouse said.

The most sensible policy on torture that I've ever heard comes from that great movie Lawrence of Arabia. I refer to the scene wherein the old Arab chieftain King Feisal, played by Alec Guinness (photo above), is interviewed by the American newspaperman Jackson Bentley and they discuss Turkish barbarities and the treatment of prisoners of war:

(King Feisal) Our own prisoners are taken care of until the British can relieve us of them, according to the Code. I should like you to notice that.

(Bentley) Yes, sir. Is that the influence of Major Lawrence?

(Feisal) Why should you suppose so?

(Bentley) It's just that I heard in Cairo that Major Lawrence has a horror of bloodshed.

(Feisal) That is exactly so. With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.

I take his point. If I were the one on the waterboard, I'd prefer an interrogator who felt constrained by mere good manners.

Warning: Execution May Have Harmful Side Effects

I usually stick to commenting on matters related to government, particularly the U.S. State Department, and to terrorism, but this news story is just too good to ignore.

It must be a first, a convict on death row who has a note from his doctor saying he's too sick to be executed. The Federal Appeals Court in Mobile, Alabama, has granted him a stay.

This is the money quote:

"Siebert's attorney submitted a letter from an oncologist, Dr. Jimmie Harvey of Birmingham, that says "complications could arise" from the drug combinations [that would be used to execute him]."

Here's the whole story: Contra Costa Times

Erik Prince and Congressman Waxman: Strange Bedfellows?

If you're old enough to remember Watergate, you'll no doubt recall John Erlichman's description of being abandoned by the White House and left to the mercies of a televised Congressional committee investigation. He said he was left to "twist slowly, slowly in the wind." Today, it's Blackwater's CEO, Erik Prince, who is twisting in the wind of Rep. Waxman's committee, but Prince, unlike Mr. Erlichman, apparently intends to do something about it.

See today's Washington Times story, in which Blackwater points the finger of blame at State for turning down it's proposal to install dashboard cameras on convoy vehicles back in 2005: Here

Blackwater's CEO has recently expressed his resentment about the lack of any public support from the State Department for Blackwater. Evidently he is now starting a media campaign of his own, complete with leaks of e-mails. The e-mail leak, and the naming of two of my fellow bureaucrats in the above story, suggest to me that Mr. Prince must see the writing on the wall about the renewal of his contract with State (which I believe is due in May, 2008). Evidently he's cutting loose from State, and trying to salvage his company's reputation for future clients.

Part of that defensive media campaign is this Blog, Blackwater Facts.

The Blog was created in September, 2007, purportedly by "friends of Blackwater," but it's pretty obviously a corporate front. Today's Washington Times story was discussed in a post Blackblawg published yesterday, before today's Times edition came out.

This new twist might just make for Washington's latest pair of strange bedfellows. Is Blackwater's CEO passing tidbits of insider info to Rep. Waxman for him to use against the State Department and the administration? I've noted Waxman's occasional asides to State Department witnesses before his committee to the effect that he gets better cooperation from Blackwater than from State. I'd thought it an odd thing for him to say, but maybe there was more truth to those remarks than I'd supposed.

P.S. - As I was posting this, I heard the news that Ambassador Griffin, State's Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, has decided to resign. No reason has been given but, of course, the whole Blackwater issue and State's lack of adequate supervision of its protective details in Baghdad are the cause.

This Week in the History of Terrorism, October 21 to 27

Here's my summary of significant past events for this week. They include two of the most notorious attacks in modern times: the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, and the seizure by Chechens of a packed theater in Moscow. But the incident that I think the most about was the unsuccessful 1986 attempt by a Jordanian resident of Great Britain to plant a bomb on an Israeli airliner using his pregnant girlfriend as a unwitting bomb-carrier.

That minor incident, in which no one died, illustrates much about the ruthlessness of terrorists and the vulnerability of civil infrastructure. More importantly, it illustrates the hopelessness of Western liberal expectations that Arab Islamist extremists who just happen to live in Western liberal societies will absorb Western liberal values and become just like us only swarthier. But the truth is that people don't change their core civilizational values easily, if at all. The attacker in that case was being manipulated by the Syrian government, but his willingness to kill a few hundred airline passengers bound for Israel was something that arose from his inner being.

Nizar Nawwaf aI-Mansur al-Hindawi became eligible for parole in 2001, but successive British Home Secretaries have barred the Parole Board from considering his case. A Home Secretary statement in 2003 noted that reports on Hindawi's behavior in prison did not demonstrate that he had "victim empathy, insight into the causes of his offense, or strategies to prevent further offending." Imagine that: the man who sent his clueless pregnant girlfriend off with a bomb in her suitcase lacks "victim empathy!" I suspect it would be more accurate to say that Hidawi only selectively lacks empathy, that is, he reserves his empathy for his coreligionists and withholds it from Jews and infidels.

October 21

2002 (Israel) – Fourteen people were killed and some 50 wounded when a car bomb containing about 100 kilograms of explosives was detonated alongside a bus at the Karkur junction. The bus had pulled over at a bus stop when the suicide bomber drove up from behind and exploded. The military wing of Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades, claimed responsibility for the blast, saying that it was carried out by Ashraf al-Asama, age 18, and Mohammed al-Hasnin, age 19, both from Jenin.

October 22

1974 (United Kingdom) - A 5-pound bomb exploded inside Brooks Club, London, injuring three employees. Prime Minister Edward Heath was dining nearby, but was probably not the target since he had decided to dine at the club only a few minutes earlier. The bombing was one in a series of attacks on British clubs with military or establishment connections. The Provisional IRA was suspected. PM Heath had been the direct target of an IRA bomb attack earlier in 1974, and he was the target of a third bomb, at his home, before the year was over.

October 23

2002 (Russia) - Chechen terrorists seized the Palace of Culture theater in Moscow during a crowded performance, taking 850 persons hostage and demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya. After a siege of two and a half days, Russian Anny troops raided the building after inserting an aerosol anesthetic, evidently an opium-based compound, into the theater to overcome the hostage-takers. All of the 42 terrorists were killed, but 128 hostages died as well, almost all of them from the effects of the gas used to end the siege.

1983 (Lebanon) - Simultaneous truck bombs exploded at the US. Marine Battalion Landing Team barracks at Beirut airport and at a French Foreign Legion barracks four kilometer away, killing 246 Marines and 56 French troops.

The bomb used at the U.S. Marine target was the largest improvised explosive device charge on record, approximately equivalent to 12,000 pounds of TNT. It was loaded in a Mercedes-Benz delivery truck that drove up an access road toward the 1stBattalion, 8thMarines, headquarters, crashed through a fence around a parking lot, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through a gate and drove into the lobby of the Marine headquarters building. The building collapsed, crushing most of those inside. About 20 seconds later, an identical attack occurred against the barracks of the French Third Company of the Sixth Parachute Infantry Regiment, where another suicide bomber drove his truck down a ramp into that building's underground parking garage and detonated his bomb, leveling the headquarters.

The two suicide bombers were later identified as Abu Mazen, age 26, and Abu Sijaan, age 24, both members of the Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement, a group of Lebanese Shia Muslims and part of an extremist faction of the Amal militia that was then based in Syrian-occupied eastern Lebanon.

2001 (Ireland) -The Provisional IRA began decommissioning their weapons in accordance with the Northern Ireland peace process. In a statement the PIRA said: "In order to save the peace process we have implemented the scheme agreed with the IICD [Independent International Commission on Decommissioning] in August 2001." General John de Chastelain, head of the IICD, confirmed that a quantity of arms and explosives had been put "completely beyond use."

October 24

1986 (United Kingdom) -Nizar Nawwaf aI-Mansur al-Hindawi, a Jordanian with ties to Syria, was convicted of conspiracy to place a bomb aboard an Israeli EI Al flight from London to Tel Aviv in April, 1986. He was sentenced to 45 years imprisonment, the longest sentence ever given in British history. After the verdict was announced the British government broke diplomatic relations with Syria, the U.S. and Canada recalled their ambassadors from Damascus, and the EU imposed minor sanctions.

Hindawi was a resident of the UK in 1985 when he was recruited into the plot by officials of the Syrian Air Force intelligence organization. They provided him with explosives concealed in a suitcase, and Hindawi persuaded his pregnant British fiancee, Anne Mary Murphy, to unwittingly take the rigged suitcase with her to Tel Aviv, where she believed she was to meet her future in-laws. The bomb, which consisted of 3 pounds of Semtex plastic explosives and a detonator concealed in a pocket calculator, reportedly made it through two X-ray machines undetected and was only found by a hand search.

October 26

1995 (Malta) -The founder and leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, Dr. Fathi al-Shaqaqi, was assassinated outside the Diplomat Hotel in Sliema, Malta. He had stopped in Malta on his way to Libya to visit Muammar al-Qaddafi, who had promised to finance the PIJ. Israel is suspected of sponsoring the attack in retaliation for a wave of PIJ suicide bombings in Israel during 1995.

The assassination was carried out professionally. As al-Shaqaqi was returning to his hotel, a gunman shot him five times with a silenced handgun that had been equipped with a device to catch ejected brass, then escaped on a waiting motorcycle driven by a second man. Since al-Shaqaqi was traveling under a false Lebanese passport, Maltese police didn't identify the victim until three days later.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement often carries out attacks against Israeli targets on the anniversary of al-Shaqaqi's death. The PIJ, although composed of Sunni Muslims, follows the lead of the Iranian Shiite Revolution, and has a unique ideology that bridges the Sunni-Shiite divide. The PIJ claims the unity of the Islamic world is not a precondition for the liberation of Palestine; rather, the liberation of Palestine is the key to the unification of the Arab and Islamic world.

October 27

1998 (Paraguay) -Subhi Mahmoud Fayad, a Lebanese citizen and a major fund-raiser for Hizballah, was arrested by Paraguayan authorities after loitering on the street in front of the U.5. embassy in Asuncion. He is suspected of being a link between the Iranian embassy in Brasilia and Hizballah affiliates in the tri-border area near Ciudad del Este.

1982 (Northern Ireland) -Three Royal Ulster Constabulary officers who were patrolling near Belfast were killed by a roadside bomb that exploded under their armored car. The bomb was command-detonated via wire from a nearby hill. The explosive charge was large enough to throw the patrol car into a field and make a crater 60 feet wide and 25 feet deep. The IRA was presumed to be responsible. The attack coincided with the funeral of a Roman Catholic who was murdered in revenge for the abduction of a part-time Ulster Defense Regiment (Protestant, Loyalist) volunteer.

This Week in the History of Terrorism, October 14 to 20

Here's my summary of significant past events for this week. One of them was the ambush of a U.S. diplomatic convoy that was entering the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, resulting in the deaths of three security contractors. Their armored Suburban was targeted with a buried mine (photo at left). It was, and still remains, the only direct terrorist attack on U.S. interests in Israel or the Palestinian territories.

The December 2004 issue of the Foreign Service Journal carried a poem by William Roebuck, one of the diplomats who had been in the convoy and survived the attack. It was entitled “On the Road to Gaza.” Here's an excerpt:

Like so many trips before, some completed and reported on,
With this or that minister or snaggle-toothed PA security officer;
Many others aborted over obviously idle security concerns.
This one proceeded two miles into sunny Gaza,
Until we in the lead car were suddenly showered with dark dust
And strange debris and heard the explosion . . .
A temple of sorts had come tumbling down,
Crashing on our assumptions of safety and normality and
Our sense of importance that we were among friends, that we were spreading good will
And processing peace . . ."

Among friends, spreading good will and processing peace? I don't share the sentiments, but I believe that the phase accurately reflects the attitude of many U.S. Foreign Service Officers. If anything good can come of this attack, it will be the crashing down of those fuzzy assumptions.

October 14

1987 (Spain) – A small package bomb exploded near the front door of the U.S. Consulate in Barcelona, injuring eight Spanish nationals, including two Consulate employees. The Catalan Red Liberation Army (ERCA), a terrorist group with a fusion ideology based on Catalan territorial separatism and Marxist-Leninism, claimed responsibility. Unlike other Catalonian groups, ERCA has often attacked U.S. interests, including bombing the General Electric and Hewlett-Packard offices in Barcelona in May and June, respectively. It also killed a U.S. serviceman with a bomb in a bar in Barcelona.

October 15

2003 (Israel) – Palestinian militants attacked a U.S. diplomatic convoy as it entered the Gaza Strip at the Erez checkpoint, detonating a buried improvised explosive device that killed three Americans. The attack was the first to directly target U.S. interests in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza. The Palestinian Authority (PA) had yet to identify the perpetrators.

The convoy was carrying a Public Diplomacy Officer to Gaza to interview an applicant for a Fulbright Scholarship. The three persons killed were Diplomatic Security high-threat protective detail contractors John Branchizio (age 36), John Linde (age 30), and Mark Parson (age 31).

October 16

1997 (Sri Lanka) – The Tamil Tigers (LTTE), apparently acting in response to a Sri Lankan crackdown on the rural Tamil insurrection, detonated a suicide truck bomb outside the 39-story World Trade Centre in Colombo, killing eighteen people and wounding 100. The WTC housed the Colombo Stock Exchange, the Central Bank and many foreign companies, and the attack was a strike at the Sri Lankan economy, which was just beginning to attract foreign investment.

October 17

2001 (Israel) – The Israeli right-wing politician, former General, and historian Rehavam Zeevi was assassinated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Zeevi was shot in the Hyatt hotel on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, by four gunmen who intercepted him as he and his wife entered their hotel room. Zeevi was the only Israeli cabinet minister who did not have a personal protection detail.

PFLP acknowledged responsibility and stated that the action was in revenge for the assassination by Israel of Abu Ali Mustafa, PFLP Secretary-General, in August. The four PFLP members who killed Zeevi were captured five years later and put on trial in Israel in May, 2006.

October 18

2003 (Indonesia) – The Imam Samudra, convicted in the Bali bombing that killed over 100 persons, and in other terrorist attacks in Indonesia, was sentenced to death. Samudra taught at a religious school in the south of the Indonesia that was run by suspected leaders of the Jemaah Islamiah group and has been linked to al-Qaeda. According to prosecutors, Imam Samudra traveled to Afghanistan to learn bomb-making and to fight for the Taleban.

October 19

2000 Sri Lanka) – A suicide bomber attacked the town hall in Colombo just as President Chandrika Kumaratunga prepared to swear in a new Cabinet, wounding 23 persons. The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) were responsible.

October 20

1981 (Belgium) – A car bomb exploded outside the Antwerp Diamond Club opposite the Hoveniersstraat Synagogue, killing three persons. Responsibility was claimed by the Black September Organization, a PLO offshoot, although a local television station also claimed that the Belgian cell of Action Directe had also claimed responsibility. The attacker(s) were never identified.