Comments on: Fighting Swiss Imperialism?

By: Jon H

Jon H — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:02:19 +0000

The PFLP clearly hit Switzerland in 1970 as a preemptive strike against Switzerland of 2007′s nativist movement against allowing mosques to build minarets.

By: Dave W.

Dave W. — Tue, 29 May 2007 14:39:28 +0000

“Terrorists hit Switzerland because they hate freedom, skiing, and chocolate.”

Switzerland doesn’t hate skiing and chocolate. Just freedom.

By: David T

David T — Tue, 29 May 2007 08:15:25 +0000

“I could be wrong, but weren’t the terrorists back then rather more politically influenced than the more nihilistic Al Qaeda terrorism we see today? It just seems qualitatively different somehow.”

One difference is that the PFLP was not an Islamist group at all but a secular Marxist-Leninist one. Its leader, George Habash, was IIRC from a Christian family.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Tue, 29 May 2007 07:28:51 +0000

Also I’m not sure exactly how useful a nearly 40 year old terrorist act is when looking at likely behavior of today’s terrorists.

I could be wrong, but weren’t the terrorists back then rather more politically influenced than the more nihilistic Al Qaeda terrorism we see today? It just seems qualitatively different somehow.

Note that he’s not drawing any conclusions from the Baader-Meinhof gang.

By: thoreau

thoreau — Tue, 29 May 2007 03:21:17 +0000

In all fairness, Tabin also cites the hijacking of SwissAir Flight 100 several months later, which was part of a campaign of multiple hijackins done on a single day. (Not so different from 9/11, really.)

But even then, the Swiss hostages were ultimately exchanged for prisoners held in a Swiss prison. These prisoners were from the same group that hit SwissAir Flight 330. So there’s a lot more context to this than just “Terrorists hit Switzerland because they hate freedom, skiing, and chocolate.”