Hatred is a cycle: a feedback loop of venom and violence. Often it intensifies over time; sometimes it dampens down only to bite quickly and savagely, like a woken dog. And it is precisely because hatred and injustice usually go hand in hand that we struggle so hard to deal with it. Injustice seems to justify hatred, and therefore tolerates violence. It’s a logic that fits uncomfortably. And none more so than the case of Israel and Palestine, where Jason Burke’s book begins.
The Revolutionists details the story of the mostly amateur extremists of the 1970s and their links. It begins with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Black September faction, tracing the ties to the international “armed struggle” that included the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Japanese Red Army, Sandinistas and Carlos the Jackal (named after Frederick Forsyth’s book). Burke has sidestepped labelling these people as terrorists or freedom fighters.
Terrorism is usually defined as the calculated use of violence to create fear and to bring about a political objective. Yet, as Burke shows, the Palestinian movements did not set out initially to provoke fear or to kill people. They wanted to attract attention to the cause and did so by blowing up the planes they had hijacked. As hijacking became more everyday and less impressive, the levels of violence spiralled. This was done on a global scale, which was a marked contrast to historical terrorism, usually aimed at the population of the state you were trying to change.
The term “revolutionists” is probably a better description than terrorist, and allows us to look at these stories more analytically. It gives leeway for Burke to include the Iranian revolution and the roots of Osama Bin Laden’s campaign. Russian anarcho-communist Sergey Nechayev’s 1869 tract The Revolutionary Catechism says that for the sake of his mission, the revolutionary “should not hesitate to destroy any position, any place or any man in this world”. The revolutionary should be coldly calculating and excise any personal emotion.
As Burke illustrates, the Palestinian operatives initially killed people by accident, as collateral to destroying jumbo jets. There was little conscience in doing so and Burke does not pause to allow us to feel any compassion.
A foreign correspondent with The Guardian and author of several acclaimed books on Al-Qaeda and Islamic militancy, Burke is less value-free when it comes to describing Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. Baader was a genuine creep who stole expensive German cars because they matched his high opinion of himself. He was a misogynist and a spoilt and serial complainer: as a guest of the PFLP in Jordan he wore out his welcome very quickly. Meinhof, on the other hand, was a young mother and journalist who gave up a respected career as a radical intellectual to become a hunted criminal.
In a moment reminiscent of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character in A Bout de Souffle (who reaches for a gun knowing the police will shoot him down for doing so), Meinhof has an existential moment when she chooses to leap out of a window and join Baader on the lam. It’s an act of self-destruction, one in which she opts for the power of action over words.
It is surprising how many of the operations were fluffed, both on the side of the “revolutionists” and the Israelis, who counter the threat by playing the same game – going global and creating fear and uncertainty in the minds of the Palestinian gunmen. The wrong people get fingered, someone walks into an attack at an inopportune moment, bombs go off and maim the perpetrator. There’s a shrug of the shoulders at all this mess.
At the Munich Olympics, the German government is unprepared for the attack on the Israeli Olympics team, and the negotiations are strung out while traps are laid to capture the Palestinians. Everything fails and the hostages die. This is a world before airport screenings, when you could carry a bag full of grenades and submachine guns and stow it in the overhead locker. Be careful, bags may shift during the flight and fall.
Despite the Western world’s naivety over terrorism, perhaps born out of distance and a lack of empathy for the passions involved, there is a real understanding of the human costs for the protagonists in the Near East. In a conciliatory attempt to shut down the bloody Black September group, Yasser Arafat offers the men the choice of marrying: with an apartment in Beirut, a fridge and gas stove, a non-violent job and $3000 cash, and a further $5000 if they start a family within two years. In a telling interview in 1972, the left-leaning Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was asked if she had ever killed anyone.
“There’s no difference between killing and making decisions by which you send others to kill,” she said. “It’s exactly the same thing. And maybe it’s worse.” Yet Meir is stone-faced when asked if the Palestinian refugees will ever be allowed to return to their homes. She says they will not, as “for 20 years they have been fed on hatred for us”.
This is a constant theme in the book. When one of the Baader-Meinhof group dies from a hunger strike, a follower keeps a photo of his emaciated corpse in his wallet so as not to dull his hatred. Similarly, systematised revenge is part of the cycle of killing. Describing Tehran in 1979, a Polish journalist spoke of how a period of mourning ends on the 40th night with the bereaved coming together and hatreds rekindled. Then “a thirst for revenge seizes the people [and] in an atmosphere of unfettered wrath and aggravated hatred they pronounce the name of the killer, the author of their sorrow, and it is believed that, even if he is far away, he will shudder at that moment [for] his days are numbered”.
We often think such enmity is an irrational phenomenon. Yet, as Burke shows, it has its own cold logic. Violence is perpetuated because it simply makes sense. The few moments of hope in this book are when the perpetrators realise violence is no longer working. They are fleeting, of course, because the underlying cause is that national bird of troubled states – the phoenix of injustice.
