Stripes

Not to be tedious, or tendentious, but let us remember that the Palestinians who took over the Achille Lauro in 1985, and threw Leon Klinghoffer overboard, on account of he was the worst thing possible, that is, a Jew, were not Islamicists, not members of al Qaeda, or ISIS, or the Al-Nusra Front.

They were Marxist-Leninist-Fanonists of one stripe or another.

They were secular, no Koran implicated or involved.

What am I trying to say? Let me say it clearly: the assassins responsible for the Achille Lauro massacre, like those responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics of 1972, were not Islamicists.

They were Palestinians of a certain stripe, a stripe that has changed its stripes from secular to Islamist, and will mutate further.

This is not yawn yawn to excuse Israeli land grabs of the West Bank, only to inform the discussion,  in the unlikely event that any such is possible.