Before the pager and other digital device explosions as an innovative new form of terrorism warfare, the Isreali miliatry might also be credited with inventing the plane hijacking. And we've been led to think this sort of "retail terrorism" (not the "wholesale terrorism" of carpet bombing and state-sponsored death squads and torture regimes) is mostly driven by "non-state actors." A closer look might show that it's a case of "monkey see monkey do" with the "non-state actors" emulating their bigger already-a-state's violent militaries.
.> In the light of [USA]American beliefs about the history of terrorism, it should perhaps be observed that along with acts of piracy such as these, Israel has also resorted to hijacking of airplanes, and may indeed have initiated this practice. In December 1954, a Syrian civilian airliner was captured by Israeli military aircraft to obtain hostages for exchange with Israeli soldiers who had been captured within Syria. The Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe Sharett, states in his diary that he was informed by the State Department that “our action was without precedent in the history of international practice.” Note that this Israeli action is a direct precedent for much later PLO actions to capture hostages for exchange with captured guerrillas, as in the major terrorist incidents that were widely and properly denounced in the West; at Ma’alot in 1974, for example.
.> See TNCW{Towards a New Cold War], p. 458, citing Livia Rokach’s very important study, *Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (AAUG, Belmont, 1980), based largely on Sharett’s Personal Diary (Yoman Ishi, Hebrew, Ma’ariv, 1979).
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