Terror in Black September: The First Eyewitness Account of the Infamous 1970 Hijackings (Hardcover)

by David Raab (Author)
Key Phrases: armored brigade, new captain speaking, male hijacker, United States, King Hussein, Black September (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Thirty-seven years ago on September 6, Palestinian revolutionaries hijacked four airliners bound for New York. Two of the planes were flown to the desert outside of Amman, Jordan, and held there just as the Jordanian civil war erupted. Raab, a health-care executive, was a 17-year-old hostage on one of those planes, and he recounts the ordeal, which resulted in his being separated from his family and dragged back and forth across Jordan for weeks in fear for his life. Raab also attempts to narrate the larger story, from the tense, fractious multinational negotiations over the hostages to the conflict between the Jordanian army and the Palestinian guerrillas. It is an ambitious undertaking, one that Raab lacks the craft to achieve. While the book is painstakingly researched, the writing rarely comes alive, even in the most dramatic situations. The various sources—including Raab's account that he wrote soon after his release—seem to be stuck together rather than shaped. Still, much of the material is intrinsically fascinating and a sad reminder of how much and how little has changed. Four hijacking attempts in one day was a record that would stand alone for 31 years, until another September day in 2001. (Sept.)
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Review
A hostage recalls his three-week ordeal in the Jordanian desert as Western diplomacy struggled with a new kind of terrorism.In the wake of the cataclysmic attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many have forgotten the grim drama that took place three decades earlier, when Palestinian guerillas hijacked three commercial airliners on a single September day in 1970. Raab, now a healthcare executive, was then a 17-year-old returning from a summer in Israel, heading home to New Jersey aboard a TWA 707 jet that had departed Frankfurt for New York. Raab relates in detail how his plane, later joined by two other hijacked airliners from different points of origin, was taken over and landed at dusk in the Jordanian desert. The guerillas emptied one plane and blew it up, threatening to do the same to the jets with kidnapped passengers aboard if their nations of origin did not cooperate and induce Israel to release a list of Palestinians detained for prior terrorist acts. This all happened against the background of an armed movement by Palestinians living in Jordan to overthrow the regime of King Hussein in the wake of his joining Egypt and Israel in a cease-fire and peace talks. The successful conclusion of negotiations for the release of all hostages from the hijacked airliners coincided with the Jordanian Army's ultimate victory (with Israel's sub rosa assistance) against the guerillas. But it was a grim three weeks for Raab and the nine other American men taken from their plane to a refugee compound in Amman, where they were held by a rogue element among the hijackers who thought their leaders' negotiating stance was too conciliatory. The author cuts between the diplomatic maneuvers and the hostages sweating it out in captivity. Retrospectively instructive on the Middle East, but emotionally flat as a personal narrative. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition (September 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403984204
• ISBN-13: 978-1403984203
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #945,057 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Its in the Details, December 12, 2007

By	Ira Berkowitz (NYC, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was amazed at the level of detail supporting the hostages' point of view narrative. The personal recollections astounded me as to how people could remain so calm for so many days under the terrible and threatening conditions. I would have liked to have known more of what the participants are doing today.

3.0 out of 5 stars The true story of "Black September," by an eyewitness, April 2, 2009

By	Richard Kovar - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Terror in Black September: The First Eyewitness Account of the Infamous 1970 Hijackings (Paperback)

One of the more successful disinformation coups of our time was the depiction by Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian resistance groups of their eviction from the Kingdom of Jordan in September 1970 as a "treacherous massacre" by King Hussein and his loyal army. Almost erased from history is the fact that the undisciplined fedayeen (as the resistance fighters were called) brought the action on themselves after establishing a state within the state in Jordan that defied all government authority and was a constant threat to peace and public safety. The civil war (and the subsequent Syrian invasion of Jordan) was touched off by the daring hijacking of four civil airliners by terrorist agents of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of whom was a strikingly beautiful woman, Leila Khalid. Her hijacking attempt was the only failure; an Israeli sky marshal shot and wounded her companion, and the pilot of the El Al airliner threw the plane into a dive that sent Leila sprawling so that passengers and another sky marshal could subdue her. The author of this excellently researched, first-person narrative, David Raab, was a teenage passenger on one of the three airliners that were forced down at an abandoned airfield in Jordan. He has used his diary from the incident as a thread for a detailed account of the entire episode (which Henry Kissinger later claimed had brought the US and the USSR close to nuclear war). He draws on interviews with passengers and crewmembers who were held captive with him, and uses contemporary news accounts and post-incident articles to present a riveting story and, incidentally, to set the record straight on who was really responsible for "Black September."Terror in Black September: The First Eyewitness Account of the Infamous 1970 Hijackings

3.0 out of 5 stars behind the scenes...hostages & international response, February 8, 2008

By	BABA (Yardley, PA) - See all my reviews

Terror in Black September: The First Eyewitness Account of the Infamous 1970 Hijackings
While some of the descriptions are somewhat uneven in their readability & style, the accounts of what was happening in the behind-the-scenes negotiations in Berne, Switzerland are very interesting. These meetings between the countries whose citizens had been hijacked on 3 airplanes illustrate how the countries dealt with the terrorists. Leila Kaleid was one of the Palestineans in a British jail who was released, & the head of the PLFP, responsible for planning these hijackings, recently died. So even though these events took place 30+ years ago, the story is relevant today.