furore?
The initial hijack, staged by a splinter group of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was undoubtedly a response to the desperate situation in which the Palestinian movement finds itself in Lebanon. Facing a massive onslaught from the Christian rightists, backed by the Syrian regime, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Lebanese left are fighting a last-ditch battle to noid on to their positions.
If courage alone was enough, the alesumans wout nave achieved victory ten times over. But the petty-bourgeois leadership of the PLO has been caught hopping by each new development, its bankrupt pragmatism quite incapable of matching up to the situation (despite the sickening panegyrics or Ivews Linel.
Arafat appeals for help not to the Arab masses, whose action could torce a Syrian withdrawal in 48 hours, but to Kissinger's side-kicks in the Middle East: Egypt's Sadat and King Khaled of Saudi Arabia. Yet these regimes gave the green light for the Syrian invasion and will stand by and watch the resistance sauntered, ust ds it was in Jordan's Black September in 1970. important aspect of the present crisis has been the virulent racism it has and there was no chance that the absolutely legitimate demand for the release of 53 political prisoners would be met ov the ranauca zionist regime. it intransigence on this question is no accident: to yield once would be to demonstrate weakness, and Israel's whole history is one of imposing "facts" on the Arabs by brute force Soldiers and hostages could have been slaughtered wholesale in tne rescue bid ordered by Rabin, but this was of no concern to the 'humanitarians' of Israel and the Western leaders who conaratulated nem on une success ou this particular act of terror. mildly progressive Obote regime? Britain and Israel Why is Amin singled out for special treatment as a petty dictator when his democratic credentials are at least as impeccable of those of the Shah of Iran and General Geisel of Brazil?
And then of course there is that small matter or burunol. where nun dreds of thousands, possibly more than a million Hutus, were completely wiped out by the Tutsi elite. Where were the howls of protest then? But of course Burundi is respectably pro Western, while Uganda is increasingly aligned with the Soviet Union ......
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IDI AMIN is Public Enemy No. 1 to judge from the stream of abuse pour- ed out by TV, radio and press over the fate of Mrs. Dora Bloch. Depicted as a 20th century Genghis Khan, a barbarian and a megalomaniac, Amin is for many the incarnation of "black savagery". Indeed, not the least
brought to the surface in Britain and throughout the West - a mixture of wounded imperial pride and straight racist caricature (I'm the only / gorilla left in Uganda', said 'radical' Private Eye). What lies behind the