How the PLO's activities emboldened a new generation of terrorists
Evaluate Hoffman’s conclusion that the PLO was a model for certain types of terrorist groups. What types of groups? What were the features of the PLO and its actions that seem to have been adopted by other groups?
Hoffman was quite explicit in how the PLO's efforts have been emulated in regional and international terror groups. Their ruthless efficiency in 1972 Munich made the whole world stand up and take notice. "The undivided attention of some four thousand print and radio journalists and two thousand television reporters and crew... was suddenly refocused on Palestine and the Palestinian cause. An estimated 900 million people in at least a hundred different countries saw the crisis unfold..." (69). This act, according to Hoffman, emboldened terrorists throughout the world. From the Netherlands to Sri Lanka, revolutionary groups received a primer on effective international terrorism.
Among the types of groups empowered by the PLO's example were ethno-nationalists. Armenian separatist groups within Turkey had fought an ineffective battle against Ottoman oppression for decades. Their strivings for nationalism and efforts to avoid genocide had been crushed and quelled at every opportunity, both by local governmental authority and by the Turk populace. Their fortunes began to change in 1975, when "two Armenian terrorist groups -- known as ASALA (the Armenian Army for the Secret Liberation of Armenia) and the JCAG (Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide) -- emerged from the civil war then engulfing Lebanon" (71). The Armenian groups "unhesitatingly" adopted the PLO's ruthless and attention-getting tactics. They saw their previous terror acts as ineffective and worthy of the dustbin. ASALA began a very public international campaign, beginning with the bombing of the Turkish Airlines ticket counter at Orly Airport in Paris and followed it up with another bombing, this time at Ankara's airport (72). While these Armenian groups found their impact did "not necessarily translate into more tangible gains" in public perception or recognition of the Armenian cause, they achieved more in five years of terror than in seventy years of pursuing separatism through diplomatic means (73).
Another group inspired to acts of international terror was Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF). Like textbook Marxists, this revolutionary group strove for redistribution of German wealth through violent means. RAF leaders traveled covertly to Palestine; while they were not offered weapons and arms, the RAF leadership received invaluable training from the more experienced PLO (76-7). The RAF's effectiveness blossomed over the next few years. Its PLO influence was
never more clear than in 1985, when the RAF joined
forces with the French left-wing terrorist organization
Direct Action..., in hopes of creating a PLO-like umbrella
"anti-imperialist front of Western European guerillas" that
would include Italy's Red Brigades... and the Belgian
Communist Combatant Cells... (79).
The PLO's effect was clearly motivating and shaping the efforts of both the RAF and the Armenians. The binding point between these groups was "a burning sense of injustice and dispossession and a belief that through international terrorism they too could finally attract worldwide attention to themselves and their causes" (71). The PLO's example allowed other organizations to learn, hoping to become just as effective as the Palestinians.
What did terror groups learn about public relations from the PLO? And why has the PLO, Hamas, and Hizbollah not overtly excuted terrorist attacks against international decades in recent decades? Wouldn't those attacks help bring ever more attention to their grievances?
Continued terror attacks would most definitely keep their causes in the forefront. The seeming decrease in attacks recently could be for one of two reasons:
1. The PLO, Hamas, Hizbollah, etc., currently have adequate international voice for their grievances. The PLO has a permanent representative to the UN. Especially in recent years, they have states coming to their defense, namely Iran, Syria, and Saddam's Iraq. All of them (allegedly) provided arms and funding for continued terror. So these Palestinian groups may sense an adequate public airing of the grievances.
2. Increased awareness of the PLO's, Hamas's, and Hizbollah's modi operandi brings an equivalent security posture. El Al, for example, has the most stringent security procedures of any airline. On a recent trip to Europe, I had to pass a first checkpoint to get into Frankfurt airport and a further security check to get on the American-flagged jet plane bound for the US. Circumstances may be that these terror groups find it more difficult to pull off further Munichs or 9/11s due to heightened security.
Or, more likely, it's some combination of the two or better yet, something I have completely overlooked.
Source: Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.