A new form of what you could call “politics by other means” came into fashion about 40 or so years ago.

Adherents of varying groups pursuing a particular ideology or national liberation got themselves into the extremely unpleasant habit of barging into aircraft cockpits brandishing guns and demanding that the pilots take them someplace other than their original destinations. For many in the United States, that destination was Havana.

For anyone on a plane commandeered by a bushy-haired, bandana-clad, slogan-spouting figure packing a loaded pistol, it was a terrifying experience indeed. But airline and law-enforcement officials quickly learnt an important lesson — when faced with such a situation, keep calm, follow the hijacker’s instructions and everything would turn out

all right.

There was a price to pay, of course, but it was only in disruption, dislocation and actual dollars and cents. For the most part, no one lost their life or even suffered physical injury. The hijackers of those days weren’t interested in dying: all they wanted was to make a political statement and escape to a place beyond the reach of the laws of their country. The authorities across national boundaries devised strategies to combat this practice and it soon went out of fashion, only to be replaced, alas, by a much more dangerous variation.

Instead of a fanatic promoting a particular agenda, the new protagonist was quite willing – even eager – to give up his own life to further the chosen cause. The fuel for this new cause was a radical, grotesquely distorted form of Islam which fed on iniquities – real or imagined – committed against the Muslim world in the past or even contemporarily.

These grievances are not without foundation but some radical Islamists talk about the crimes committed against Muslims by the Crusaders, although these crusades began nine centuries ago.

These were a series of holy wars by the Christian states of Europe against the Muslim countries at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The Saracens, as they were known, were the focus of the holy wrath of the Pope’s followers who were hell-bent on regaining the holy places in Palestine. Since then there have been numerous instances where the two dominant religious/political/cultural camps clashed. The rampant Europeans who spread their influence across the globe also inflicted many humiliations on the Muslim nations.

Out of this came a breed of young men fired up with serious feelings of grievance, visions of an idyllic life beyond this one, and a willingness to kill themselves to advance what they see as the pure form of Islam and to punish infidels or those lacking religious rigour. That’s what makes this breed of fanatic so dangerous – they want to die and take everybody else around them along, unlike our old revolutionaries who merely wanted to take a short cut to Cuba. Those hijackers caused airlines and airport authorities to institute intensive security measures, but air

travel remained a relatively tolerable affair.

But as the zealots have resorted to increasingly diabolical methods of making their point, those of us who use aeroplanes now face with each trip new forms of discomfort approaching torture. Typically, the over-organised United States responded by creating the most convoluted security machine you could ever think of. The multi-billion dollar Homeland Security apparatus quickly spread its tentacles across the US and – because the world is so interconnected – to every corner of the globe.

But in spite all the multi-coloured alerts, people feel no safer and instead the level of paranoia has grown along with increasing frustration at all the punishing requirements for passengers. To top it off, airline stocks began plummeting like an out-of-control plane, many ended up running for the cover of bankruptcy protection while others merged with stronger carriers and some even figuratively crashed and burned.

A young Nigerian who fell under the influence of tunnel-visioned radicals in Yemen and tried to blow up a plane over southern Canada as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day has really filled the cake with nails. A clearly furious Barack Obama this week castigated his officials who are responsible for monitoring threats. The information was there, he noted, but those who should understand it didn’t “connect the dots”. He has placed 14 countries on a special watch list and airports will now have to spend millions to buy machines which can look through your clothes to see if you are carrying explosives. The US has always loved technological responses to human problems and many other countries have had to fall into line.

But the Israelis, who have lived with the threat of attack since Day One, shake their heads in wonder. Their approach is not to rely on machines but on trained people. Sure, they employ X-ray scanners to examine checked luggage and they do elaborate hand searches. The main airport, Ben Gurion, has a room where the air pressure can be reduced to the same as it is at cruising altitude. Suspicious luggage is run through it in case it contains a bomb with a pressure-sensitive trigger.

Their emphasis is on observing how people behave. When a car drives up to the terminal, personnel ask a few simple questions while watching the traveller’s reaction. Eyes are always on you, either directly or covertly, as the airport and terminals for the national airline, El Al, in other countries are strewn with staff in and out of uniform. They keep waits as short as they can, but still do extremely thorough checks, follow-up checks, and spot checks when the plane is loaded. Armed sky marshals travel on each flight, and El Al employs only former air-force pilots. The cockpits have two sets of doors which can’t both be opened at the same time, and the floor between the passenger compartment and the luggage hold is reinforced.

Ben Gurion airport has never originated a hijacked flight, but there were a couple of terrorist incidents in 1972. In the first, four Palestinians from the Black September group hijacked a Belgian airliner flying out of Vienna and forced it to land at Ben Gurion.

Israeli commandos led by Ehud Barak, who later became prime minister, stormed the plane, killing two hijackers and a passenger and capturing the other two hijackers. Just days later, three Japanese Red Army terrorists came in on a French airliner dressed in business suits and carrying violin cases. In the terminal they hauled out machine guns and sprayed the place with bullets, killing 24 people and wounding 80 others. Two of the terrorists died and one was captured

and imprisoned.

Of 14 countries the US has just singled out for exceptional measures, only one is not Muslim. It seems the US State Department just cannot get Cuba out of its craw, so it’s on the list because they claim it is a source of state-sponsored terrorism. There was a time when Cuba did actively support liberation movements and guerrilla groups in other parts of Latin America. But the only attacks it lobbed directly at the United States were copious quantities of the rhetorical variety. It gave up fostering fellow revolutionaries a quarter-century ago and today the only shock troops Cuba sends anywhere are doctors.

Ironically, it is from the other direction that actual terrorism came. CIA sources admit that the agency organised hundreds of attempts on Fidel Castro’s life as well as numerous other efforts to cripple the Cuban economy. They sabotaged shipments of parts to replace worn-out equipment for Cuban factories. They financed, armed and trained a brigade of exiles to attack Cuba in 1961, an effort which ended in disaster and, ironically, strengthened the regime. They aided and abetted a terrorist attack on a Cuban plane as it left Barbados in 1976, resulting in 73 deaths. The organiser of that attack, Luis Posada Carriles, is still walking around free in Florida while Obama remains immobilised on the Cuban file he made so much about while campaigning for the presidency.

Further irony: revolutionary Cuba, which has never been comfortable with religion, has probably no more than a handful of Muslims in its entire population. Cuba was one of the few countries around the world where the US office (known as the Interests Section, an embassy in all but name) remained open without any beefed-up security in the days immediately after 9/11.

In any case, there is still no free travel between Cuba and the United States, except for Cuban-Americans who can now go back much more freely than they could under Bush II, thanks to Obama. And lastly, it is almost impossible for any Cuban to obtain explosives to smuggle on to an airliner. It shows how extremely difficult it is to dislodge calcified attitudes and behaviours entrenched over half a century.

keeble.mack@sympatica.ca