Method in madness

Injustice, hatred and violence are bound together in a vivid account of global terrorism through the 1970s.

- BY PETER GRACE

Hatred is a cycle: a feedback loop of venom and violence. Often it intensifies over time; sometimes it dampens down only to bite quickly and savagely, like a woken dog. And it is precisely because hatred and injustice usually go hand in hand that we struggle so hard to deal with it. Injustice seems to justify hatred, and therefore tolerates violence. It’s a logic that fits uncomfortably. And none more so than the case of Israel and Palestine, where Jason Burke’s book begins.

The Revolutionists details the story of the mostly amateur extremists of the 1970s and their links. It begins with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Black September faction, tracing the ties to the international “armed struggle” that included the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Japanese Red Army, Sandinistas and Carlos the Jackal (named after Frederick Forsyth’s book). Burke has sidestepped labelling these people as terrorists or freedom fighters.

Terrorism is usually defined as the calculated use of violence to create fear and to bring about a political objective. Yet, as Burke shows, the Palestinian movements did not set out initially to provoke fear or to kill people. They wanted to attract attention to the cause and did so by blowing up the planes they had hijacked. As hijacking became more everyday and less impressive, the levels of violence spiralled. This was done on a global scale, which was a marked contrast to historical terrorism, usually aimed at the population of the state you were trying to change.