Larry Elder
August 3, 2006

"If other people in al Qaeda are really as sadistic as this guy seems to be, then we're really in for a long and awful war." National Public Radio's Daniel Schorr made this comment about the anti-American courtroom tirade of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. Yes, Mr. Schorr, the Islamofascists -- the ones who want us dead -- are, indeed, that "sadistic."

This shows that a lot of people, who should know better, still don't get it.

Nelson Mandela, one of the world's foremost symbols of political moral authority, recently met with a Palestinian "activist." The BBC report about this encounter read as follows: "Former [South African] President Nelson Mandela was having a low-profile meeting with Palestinian activist Leila Khaled because he was 'not involved' in the Middle East conflict and does not wish to be dragged into it." Who is this Palestinian "activist"?

Leila Khaled's march toward fame began in 1969. She served as part of a team that hijacked TWA flight 840, a plane they assumed carried Yitzhak Rabin, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States. Rabin, however, was not on the plane. So the hijackers forced it to land in Damascus, and after the passengers and crew deplaned, the terrorists blew the plane up.

Khaled then underwent a series of plastic surgeries. Having successfully altered her appearance, Khaled, in 1970, boarded El Al flight 219 in Amsterdam for yet another hijacking. This time, onboard security foiled the hijacking by overpowering Khaled and killing her accomplice. The plane landed safely in London, although Khaled's co-hijacker managed to shoot a member of the flight crew. She spent a whopping 28 days in jail, before Britain released her as part of an exchange for hostages taken by other terrorists.

Khaled, please understand, rejects the label, "terrorist." "A terrorist, in my opinion," says Khaled, "does things just to bring harm to human beings with no political reason." Oh. Obviously, she and the BBC use the same dictionary. How many planes must one hijack to be elevated (or lowered) to the status of "terrorist"? Things could be worse. The BBC could have called her a "frequent flyer."

But maybe that isn't sadistic enough. How about Miriam Farahat? Farahat, known as Um Nidal -- Mother of the Struggle -- serves as a Hamas member of the Palestinian Parliament. Her claim to fame? Three of her six sons died in campaigns to murder Israelis. A Hamas recruitment video features Farahat showing her 17-year-old son how to kill Israelis, and telling him not to come back. Mission accomplished. In 2002, that son murdered five Jewish students. Another son was killed when the Israeli Air Force blew up his vehicle, which was carrying Kassam rockets. Farahat celebrated his death, "I am so proud. I wish I had more sons to offer."

What about Nizar al-Hindawi? In 1986, Hindawi, a Jordanian, and his pregnant Irish Catholic girlfriend made arrangements for marriage. They discussed plans for an immediate flight from London's Heathrow airport to Tel Aviv, Israel, followed by a trip to Jordan for the marriage ceremony and a honeymoon. But Hindawi booked a separate flight for his pregnant fiance, explaining to her that -- oops! -- his employer had already paid for him to travel to Israel on a later flight. He bought her a ticket to Israel on El Al, giving her a wheeled suitcase to use. An alert Heathrow airport El Al screening agent, suspicious of an unmarried, visibly pregnant Irish woman traveling alone to Israel for a vacation during Passover, ordered her luggage searched. Security discovered a false bottom in the suitcase -- clearly unknown to the young pregnant girl -- underneath which lay 3.5 pounds of the same type of plastic explosive later used to blow up a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland. The suitcase also contained a trigger mechanism disguised as a functioning calculator.

In the book "Victory in Tripoli," Joshua London writes about the Muslim Barbary pirates. They attacked American shipping vessels in the 18th century, often boarding ships and enslaving crewmembers. Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. ambassador to France, and John Adams, then ambassador to Britain, visited the resident ambassador from Tripoli (modern-day Libya) in London to negotiate a treaty to protect American ships from Barbary pirates. Why, asked Adams and Jefferson, is your government so hostile to the fledgling United States of America? After all, we have no quarrel with you, nor you with us.

The Tripolitan ambassador told them -- as reported to the Continental Congress -- "that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise."

Yes, they are that "sadistic." And yes, we are "really in for a long and awful war."