George Habash's 1970, true quote
... there are only 1,600 or so members. Yet those 1,600, for ill or for good, are attracting the world's attention with acts of terrorism. "Why?" is what I went to ask Dr. Habash. We met at night in the suburbs of Amman, in a building attached to a refugee camp.The room contained one desk and a few chairs; outside the closed doors, armed fedayeen stood guard...Let me explain: the attacks of the Popular Front are based on quality, not quantity. We believe that to kill a Jew far from the battleground has more of an effect than killing 100 of them in battle; it attracts more attention. And when we set fire to a store in London, those few flames are worth the burning down of two kibbutzim...
"The PFLP's so-called Department of Information (I say 'so-called' because it never showed up during my stay with the fedayeen) evidently ignores the existence of a machine known as a tape recorder. My interview with Dr. Habash was recorded on such a machine. The tape is at his disposal to refresh his memory if he has forgotten, or wants to forget. I would like to believe that Dr. Habash is not informed about this letter of his associates or he would have prevented them from writing so many useless idiocies and senseless insults. Dr. Habash knows .very well that what I wrote was said by him into a microphone.The word "terrorism" might not have been used often by me. This was out of politeness which I now regret. But J did use the word, and I even commented that when we Europeans were fighting for our freedom we did not kill children or civilians. Dr. Habash did not react in anger; he explained his theory."I obviously edit my interviews. But I did not need to edit much in this one because it was good as it was. It opens as it opened. It ends as it ended and it reports faithfully, all that Habash said in a 90 minute interview in English.The words on the tape are clear, the sound excellent. Mistakes are impossible, except for the pronunciation of the year 1957, which I might have understood as 1967, due to his slight lips. The only thing that the tape did not record is Dr. Habash's tears and his mouth's trembling , a human reaction that helped me to like him a lot. In this I might have been wrong."The PFLP's so-called Department of Information also insinuates that I am a fascist. To such vulgarity I will only answer that when Dr. Habash was doing nothing against fascism, and his people were getting along very well with the Nazis, I was a little girl with pigtails fighting fascism in the resistance in Italy. I recall that there were no Palestinian journalists to interview us or to sympathize with us at the risk of their lives."
* In 1975, an Arab author M. Hussain has still quoted Habash as the original quote re targeting Jews internationally.
'The Palestine Liberation Organisation: A Study in Ideology, Strategy and Tactics,' Mehmood Hussain, University Pub., 1975, p. 46 https://books.google.com/books?id=MbZtAAAAMAAJ&dq=&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=Quantity
* But by 1991, another one, J.R. Nassar has conveniently replaced the word 'Jew' with 'zionist':
'The Palestine Liberation Organization: From Armed Struggle to the Declaration of Independence,' Jamal Raji Nassar, Praeger, 1991, p.89
Prior to 1972 , George Habash , leader of the PFLP, defended these acts... https://books.google.com/books?id=U9KPAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22battleground%22
The Protocols of the Euphemisms of Zion. What anti-Semites really mean when they complain about “Zionists.” By Sreven Lubet, July 15, 2019:
...The discrepancy between the actual quote and Nassar’s version was jarring, especially given some other passages in the interview. Remarking on the PLFP skyjacking of a flight from Rome, for example, Habash said, "The Arabs have a right to use Italy as a base against the Jews...which Abu-Lughod clearly acknowledged had been accurately transcribed by Fallaci.
https://thebulwark.com/the-protocols-of-the-euphemisms-of-zion/
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Related:
Habash, PFLP Anti semitism:
Overlooked Palestinian terror group returns with a vengeance, Ben Cohen, JNS.org
November 24, 2014
...the rescue operation mounted by Israel to free around 100 hostages from an Air France plane that had been hijacked seven days earlier by Palestinian terrorists and diverted to Uganda, then under the boot of the brutal dictator Idi Amin. After a week of sheer hell, during which the German leftist hijackers separated the Jewish from the non-Jewish passenger...
If the Entebbe episode failed to convince outside observers of the PFLP's hard-wired anti-Semitism, then its bombing of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris in October 1980 should have set aside any lingering doubts...
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/florida-jewish-journal/opinion/fl-jjps-cohen-1126-20141124-story.html
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Related:
Habash, as student:
Arab nationalist planned hijackings - Los Angeles Times - By Kim Murphy, Jan. 27, 2008
...He studied medicine at the American University of Beirut, founding a series of radical student organizations that called for unifying the Arabs’ military might to annihilate Israel. After Israeli forces crushed an Arab assault and moved into the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East War, Habash formed the PFLP to continue operations against Israelis. It became the second-largest faction within the PLO, after Arafat’s Fatah organization. In one of its first operations, an Israeli El Al airliner was hijacked to Algiers in July 1968, forcing the Israelis to free 16 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of the plane and its passengers.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jan-27-me-habash27-story.html
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