The Palestinians
Sir: Mrs Elizabeth Cussons in :ier fascinating letter (September 16)
made many points worthy of further comment. "Never," she writes, "have I seen such mourning as that of the Olympic public and competitors when they all stood up in respect for the eleven dead Israelis." Strange words indeed, when reporters stressed the callousness of those athletes who ignored the tragedy, as it was being enacted; or how when the mourning crowd was still leaving the stadium the water sprinklers wore already on in preparation for the next event.
Did we see such sorrow, she asks, for the murdered Mexicans of '68 or for the victims of Belfast, Vietnam and Palestine? Surely it is because we saw exactly such " sorrow " that the darkness continues to spread. Her point about the half-million Palestinians being thrown out of their country to spend the rest of their lives in concentration — sorry refugee (Mrs Cussons has clearly never been in Jericho or Belsen) — camps would be more valid if firstly had the Arab League, at the time of the 1948 war not exhorted the people to leave, giving the " victorious " Arab armies a clear field against the Jews (Research Group for European Migration Problems, Vol V No 1) and secondly had not Egyptian barbed wire and machine-guns kept the refugees pinned in Gaza as an anti-Israel pawn for nearly twenty years. By contrast, in that period Israel absorbed 700,000 refugees expelled from Arab countries equivalent to a British immigration of over fifteen million.
"The so-called civilised world" did not give Palestine to the Jews, Mrs Cussons. On the contrary, it stood by while they fought the armies of Iraq, Syria and Egypt, not to mention the Britishofficered Arab Legion. Further, she implies that the Jews complained too loudly about how badly they had been treated. Her own reaction would be interesting if the inhabitants of Norway and the Isle of Man were to be murdered before the eyes of an apathetic orld. In fact, as Elie Wiesel had pointed out, the most amazing point about the survivors of the Holocaust is that they did not vow in eternal hatred a la Black September to bring down civilisa tion, despite what they had been through.
To compare freely conditions in Israeli prisons to the Nazi horrors that cost fourteen million lives says much for Mrs Cussons's hysteria but little for her balance or factual accuracy. Yet not a word about the ex-SS men hired by the Syrian Government ' to torture their pathetic captive Jews,
or the role of ex-Nazis in the Egyptian secret police missile and bacterial warfare establishments as Frederick Forsyth has so brought out in The Odessa File.
"I will not make excuses for Black September," says Mrs Cussons, and then proceeds to do so. "There is nothing else they can do "? Then, surely such rationale must condone all manner of murderous outrage by any thugs who care to put forward their case. The IRA, after all, have been waiting longer than the Palestinians, and the French Canadians
(as represented ' by the FLQ) since 1760. "Innocent people are killed in all wars," says Mrs Cussons airily dismissing the savage premeditated murder of innocents. Does that make it right? I look forward to seeing Mrs Cusson's approval in print on the day—may it never come to pass — when Jewish terrorists hold to ransom Russian athletes for the freedom of Soviet Jews imprisoned for protesting their right — " guaranteed " under the Soviet " constitution " — to leave the USSR.
Mrs Cussons should also read some history. While the Norwegian resistance had a glorious record, it did not free Norway. Only Germany's surrender to the allies did. Terrorism per se is not only wrong and savage, it will also fail of itself if faced down. And it is a contemptible slur on the Norwegian resistance to compare it with the murderous game of Fatah and Co who, unwilling to face the Israeli army as the Norwegians did the Wehrmacht, attack international airliners and competing athretes instead.
Indeed while Black September have no jet fighters, tanks, etc, the Arab armies of June, 1968 were somewhat well-equipped with such hardware. They had a "chance in an outright war" then which they took. Mrs Cussons's recommendation of "unorthodox methods" to them should make interesting reading to all those Nazis who regret 1945. However, no doubt she will therefore be more understanding of the Irgun and Stern Gang of 1947 who used such " unorthodox " tactics, than of the Israeli government which suppressed them in the Atalanta incident.
Mrs Cussons is, in fact, typical of the justifiers of such outrages as the Munich massacre and is of interest as such a specimen. Whoever stands up to the killers bears the " responsibility " for their subsequent outrages. The pattern is now familiar across the world. Solzhenitsyn, I believe, showed a little more insight when he identified such bloodthirsty little monsters as the Black September group as " Dostoievsky's devils . . . crawling across the whole world in front of our eyes . . . announcing their determination to share and destroy civilisation. And they may well succeed."
Martin Sieff
Oxford Union Society
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