Terrorist groups
Sir: In your issue of November 4, 1972. (' Another Spectator's Notebook ') you speak of "the murderous activities of the Black September and other groups, including graduates of the American University of Beirut."
We regret that The Spectator should publish such an unfounded allegation about the graduates of our university. We must protest strongly your inclusion of our graduates among groups whose terrorist acts you condemn.
Our graduates who number over 15,000 occupy positions of leadership in government, business and the professions all over the Middle East. The American University of Beiruit is a non-political educational institute which has been serving the countries of the area for over a hundred years. To suggest that its graduates are one of the groups that engage in "murderous activity" is completely unjustified and can only serve to damage the reputation of this respected University.
In fact AUB graduates are often accused of being conservative and belonging to the establishment. The truth is that, like graduates of western universities, they represent a wide spectrum of political convictions and loyalties, This is because during their years of study at our university they learn to think for themselves and enjoy freedom of thought and expression in the best traditions of American higher education and of western democracy. To accuse them as a group of terrorism is a disservice to these traditions in addition to being unjust and most regrettable.
George Haim Vice-President for Public Relations, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Republic of Lebanon.
Sir: I have just read the lead paragraph in Another Spectator's Notebook ' (November 4) and would offer a few observations. I have spent the last twenty-eight years mostly in the Middle East, speak Arabic, have a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew and many friends in the area. I have lived here in Beirut for the last eight and a half years and written a weekly Middle East column for an international weekly.
Your opinion in the first paragraph seems unfair to me in several respects: (1) The Lebanese government by no means "turns a blind eye " to Arab terrorists. My own daughter left Beirut airport on October 21, the day before the Lufthansa hijacking, and, with all other passengers, she was searched most thoroughly. This has been normal for some time. Lebanon is very anxious to restrain such terrorism which inevitably brings retaliation against civilians by Israel's armed forces.
(2) It is an unwarranted generalisation to state that " the Arab
countries . . are in essential collusion with the hijackers." Certainly Lebanon is not, nor Jordan. Some evidently are.One can no more generalise about an "Arab world " than about a "European world."
(3) The gratuitous inclusion of the American University of Beirut among groups engaged in "murderous activities " is about as fair to "graduates of Oxford University" as "among those engaging in treacherous espionage " because of the publicity that attended the Philby affair. Any fair observer who investigated would realise that the American University in Beirut has been a force for peace and stability in the area for over a century, Surely responsible journalism could do much to help it continue to be so,
The Arab terrorists responsible should be brought to justice; 'equal justice should be meted out to the known assassins of Count Bernadotte, Lord Moyne and others in the too-easily-forgotten earlier acts of this tragedy.
Harry J. Almond
PO Box 3616, Beirut, Lebanon
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