WASHINGTON REPORT: Working Both Ends of the Street
Getlein, Frank
WASHINGTON REPORT WORKING BOTH ENDS OF THE STREET Life went abruptly out of Washington within days of the bicentennial Fourth of July. The Queen went off to New York, thence to Boston and Canada,...
...The United Nations being the United Nations, the proposal was listened to as if it were rational, as if there were nothing odd in the idea that the preservation of some degree of law and order, the rescue of innocent victims threatened by murderous criminals, were themselves criminal acts to be punished lest the world become unsafe for kidnappers and murderers...
...The Democrats and much of the press went off to Madison Square Garden to witness the formal ceremonies commemorating Jimmy Carter's amazing replay of the Kennedy primary campaign of 1960...
...The Public Library, the most fundamental cultural institution, has been reduced to cutting its hours and services drastically...
...The action was occasioned by Uganda's preposterous proposal that the Parliament of Man punish the single member-state capable of defying and foiling the illegal and monstrous forays against civilization undertaken by the criminal band of Palestinian terrorists...
...The criminals flew the captured plane to Uganda, where they received a warm welcome, Ugandan troops being deputed to stand guard on the captive passengers and crew while the kidnappers and extortioners got in a little sleep...
...Similarly in the Irish War of Independence, conducted along both guerrilla and terrorist lines, the people seized as hostages-as in Brendan Behan's play of that name, (O'Connor's story) -were British soldiers or officials...
...It is some 44 years now since the emerging movie musical gave 42nd Street its distinctive reputation...
...They flew the 2500 miles to Uganda, fought their way into the place of imprisonment, killing the criminals and a few Ugandans troops, and successfully rescued almost all the hostager within hours of their scheduled deaths at the hands of the criminals with the approval of Amin...
...At no time did he make any effort at all to bring these international criminals to justice, despite the ease with which that might have been done while they slumbered, their guard duty taken by his troops...
...On the contrary, Amin allied himself with the criminals from the first and remained in that alliance until the end...
...they were just handy-would be killed in cold blood...
...The 20th century was officially begun with an act of terrorism, the assassination of the Hapsburg Archduke by the Serbian patriot, Gavril Princip...
...In the meantime, the principal difference between the east end and the west end of 42nd Street is that on the west end, the men and women engaged in their varied activities look like people so engaged...
...The Archduke, for example, was the exponent and the future of the dynastic Hapsburg oppression of Slavs and other non-Germans in the Balkans...
...The Palestinians have changed all that...
...The Palestinians seized a civilian aircraft bound from France to Israel while it was stopped in Athens...
...Ironically, it is against just such international criminal activities that an international organization such as the United Nations just might be effective...
...For lack of anything else, attention went off to the United Nations, where at least there was some semblance of action, if only of the tragic-farce variety we have come to expect from Babble-On on the East River...
...If the United States, for exactly the same reason, decides to invade Indochina and spend an entire decade bombing the Indochinese, again the UN is helpless...
...Terrorism is, of course, a classic and in many circumstances legitimate political method...
...The criminals issued their demands: a long list of their fellow criminals now awaiting trial or serving sentences in Israeli and European prisons would have to be released or the hostages-all of whom had no known connection with the imprisonment of the criminals...
...The UN is located on the former site of one of the city's great abattoirs and is in the process of deciding whether or not to revert to that heritage...
...In classical terrorism, however, the act of terrorism is addressed against government or class figures having some, usually a very close, relationship to what is perceived by the terrorists as an unjust state of conditions...
...Only at the other end of the street, along the East River, have property values increased and there they have done so in response to the presence of the United Nations...
...As far as keeping the peace among powers determined to make war goes, the UN has long demonstrated its impotence...
...At no time did he remotely suggest there was anything reprehensible in the kidnapping, extortion and threats of murder...
...The president of Uganda, the military dictator Idi Amin, inserted himself into the case as a self-styled "mediator," whose only perceptible act of mediation was to repeat the demands of the extortioners and warn against making them angry...
...Grand Central Terminal, once the grand gateway to the city is so no longer...
...The street has lost a lot in the intervening decades...
...As the deadline set by the criminals approached, the Israelis mounted a daring and successful raid against the gang...
...FRANK GETLEIN...
...In addition to such random, pointless and certainly ineffective killing, the Palestinians have for a long time specialized in the highjacking of airplanes which are then held, along with their "innocent" passengers as hostages against the payment of large sums of cash or, in the case at hand, the release of previously captured members of the criminal band...
...Only in the United Nations could the question arise and certainly only in the United Nations could there be a serious doubt as to the answer...
...President Ford went off to Reaganland, discerning at last in that candidate the presidential qualities he so short a time ago was blind to...
...The Queen went off to New York, thence to Boston and Canada, after occasioning the only completely boring British import in the whole, Limey-laden history of American public television...
...But one would think that international crimes, such as those of the Palestinian terrorists against "innocent" civilians engaged in international travel could indeed be the subject of some sort of international control under UN auspices...
...Terrorism is the weapon of the otherwise politically impotent...
...To this day, until very late indeed, the objects of IRA assaults in the North of Ireland have more often than not been connected with the occupying power or the local force perceived as usurping, unjust or both...
...If Russia decides to invade any of its Eastern European neighbors to demonstrate to itself that it is, after all, a major power, the UN is helpless to do anything at all, even to deplore the action...
...Puzzle: who were the criminals...
...On the east end, though the activities are much the same, the people manage to look like diplomats...
...Since, in sharp contrast to the classic variety, Palestinian terrorism is totally public, the facts are not in dispute...
...The neighborhood that Ruby Keeler had in mind and in her tapping toes has been reduced hideously to the porno capital of the city and the scene of sleazy transactions in sleazy movie houses...
...It is to be distinguished from Terror, which is a somewhat similar policy applied by the state against its citizens, as happened in imperial Rome, Inquisitorial Spain, Star Chamber England, par excellence in Revolutionary France, and, of course, in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under both Lenin and Stalin, to a lesser degree since...
...On the contrary, the impulse of the majority of the organization is to see to it that anyone interfering with the criminals is punished...
...it is merely the end of a commuter line, the most elaborate horse parlor in the world and the rather overbuilt home of a good oyster bar...
...Possibly for the first time in the long history of political terrorism, they have, as a matter of consistent policy, attacked third parties, "innocent" ones, with a heavy stress on unarmed civilians, young men stripped down for athletic endeavor, civilian passengers on civilian air flights or in civilian airports, audiences in movie shows, children in schools and dormitories...
...The implication is unmistakable that the patriotic freedom fighters feel a lot more comfortable shooting kindergarten toddlers than they do taking on, even from ambush, a single armed Israeli soldier, a government official whose death might actually influence the policy the terrorists deplore...
...Precisely for foiling the latest such foray, Uganda proposed, Israel should be condemned and made to pay reparations for damages inflicted in the course of saving the lives of the innocent parties held hostage by the criminals...
Vol. 103 • July 1976 • No. 16
