Terrorist Training and Left Wing Alliances

German Terror Groups and Palestinian Groups

The RAF along with two other German terrorist organizations, The Movement 2 June (M2J), and The Revolutionary Cells (Revolutionaere Zellen, RZ) eventually developed ties with Palestinian Organizations.[1] Little is known about how the initial ties between these groups and Palestinian organizations were established. However, it is clear that Germany had a large Palestinian student population heavily influenced by Al Fatah, the main Palestinian terrorist organization founded in 1957 and led by Yasir Arafat from June of 1964.[2] In 1969 and 1970 numerous Germans from terror groups were allowed to attend training camps in Beirut and Jordan camps, until the infamous clash with Jordan in September 1970 that helped create the Black September organization.[3]

With Baader and Ensslin fugitives again and Meinhof in tow, the renegade attorney, Horst Mahler, who was totally committed to the cause, aided the urban guerilla ménage a trios with funds and fake passports. Via East Germany they flew to Beirut to be trained in terrorist tactics by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the PFLP is one of two constituent groups of the Palestinian Liberation Organization). The East German Secret Police, Stasi (Staatssicherheistdienst), may have aided them in their efforts to get to Palestine. After the collapse of Soviet communism in 1989-90, it was discovered that the Stasi, the secret police of the communist regime, aided the successors of the Baader-Meinhof Gang with training, shelter, and supplies.[4] Stasi penetrated every aspect of life in the East Germany's Deutsche Democratic Republic (DDR) with up to half a million informers. They kept files on one-third of the population of DDR.

On June 8, 1970, Gang members Baader, Ensslin, Mahler, and Meinhof, and two others flew to Beirut, a trip organized by Mahler. Under the direction of Abu Hassan, the Germans were trained in the use of high-powered weapons, bank robbery techniques, and explosives. Hassan's real name was Ali Hassan Salameh, son of the celebrated Arabian leader Sheikh Hassan Salameh, one of the major players against the British policy of settling Jews in Palestine. Abu Hassan was gladly welcomed into the Al Fatah sect of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1967. Hassan's first assignment was to find Israeli agents in Palestinian training camps. Later he would link with Dr. George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)[5] working with a special group of terrorists named after a deadly encounter between the Al Fatah and Jordanian troops in 1970 - the group known as Black September.

The Germans trained outside of Beirut and then in Jordan.[6] The women shocked the Arabs with their sharpshooting skills and fearless attitude toward training. They also shocked the Arabs by nude sunbathing on the roof of their house. They all slept with Kalishnikov rifles at their sides. Eventually the group drifted back to Germany ready to fund their activities through bank robbery with the knowledge gained from their Palestinian comrades in arms. During this time Palestinian terror camps attracted not only Communist-based groups like the Baader-Meinhof Gang but neo-Nazis as well. Advertisements in German papers tried to attract "courageous and audacious young Germans . . . to study the liberation war of displaced Palestinians . . . financial consideration should stop no one . . ."[7]

In 1971 the group forged a new identity and name through a manifesto written by Meinhof, Das Konzept Statguerilla (The Urban Guerrilla Concept). Meinhof recognized that the origins of the Baader-Meinhof Gang stemmed from the student movement of the late sixties. Then she equated the actions of the group to a term usually reserved for artistic movements: avant-garde. "We maintain," she wrote, "that without revolutionary initiative, without practical revolutionary intervention of (this is our own concept) the avant-garde . . . there can be no unifying process."[8] The document called the group, for the first time, the Red Army Faction, RAF for short. One member considered the name "a joke." With its association with both the British (Royal Air Force) and the Soviet's Red Army that crushed Germany in the 1940s, the name had a strange ring to its members as well as to Germans who considered the Red Army Faction a criminal gang of the worst sort. Both the British Royal Air Force and the Soviet Red Army were arch-nemeses of the right-wing Hitlerian Reich, and now the new RAF was the enemy of the old Third Reich and the new, democratic Federal Republic. The title page bore a drawing of a Kalashnikov rifle over a star; later it would be replaced with the logo of a German-made Heckler rifle and Koch machine pistol.[9]

Madmen to Arms

The RAF found alliances in most unexpected places: Palestinian terrorist groups and a group of mental patients. The Socialist's Patients Collective (SPK) was a group of mental patients who were under therapy of psychiatrist Dr. Wolfgang Huber. Huber believed capitalism was the basis for his patients' mental disorders. He prescribed Marxism as the cure.

Huber was fired from his clinic and his patients formed the group to protest his ouster. The group coalesced three months before Baader's jailbreak. A document written by Huber pronounced, "There can be no therapeutic act that is not previously shown clearly and unmistakably to be a revolutionary act . . . the system has made us sick, let us give the death blow to the sick system!" Several of the patients joined the RAF. Huber's rallying cry for his patients was "Madmen to arms!"[10]

With the knowledge and confidence the RAF received from their PLO training, they quickly went to work robbing banks in Germany to finance their political strikes. Mahler supervised as many as three robberies a day, and though he wore grotesque disguises that included bright red toupees, he was captured and sentenced to 14 years. Robberies proliferated in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich. Meinhof took the funds, which eventually amounted to 1.7 million Deutsche marks, and purchased an arsenal of weapons and ammunition from Al Fatah.[11] The SPK joined in the robberies and car stealing. Chancellor Willy Brandt addressed the nation and warned the RAF by saying "the free democracy, which we have built from the ruins of dictatorship and war, must not be understood as a weak state." Herbert Schoner, a thirty-two-year old policeman with two children, was killed in one of the robberies. Shaken by the murder, one of the RAF members, Ingeborg Barz, announced she was going to leave the group. Meinhof allegedly ordered Baader to silence her. Baader supposedly crushed her skull with a blunt instrument and threw her in a river.

On May 11, 1972, Meinhof, Ensslin, Baader, and Jan-Carle Raspe, a fellow RAF gang member with an explosives expertise learned in the West German Army, planted three bombs in the U.S. Army headquarters in Frankfurt. Proclaiming outrage over the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the RAF was happy to hear that they had injured thirteen soldiers, killed one, and caused over a million dollars of damage. They celebrated in France with champagne. Throughout May of 1972 more bombings caused havoc in Germany. On June 1, 1972, acting on a tip, the police surrounded a garage in north Frankfurt where they trapped Andreas Baader and Holger Meins. The garage was being used to make bombs. During a gun battle, Meins, Baader, and Raspe, who was trapped by police outside of the garage, were all captured. Weeks later Ensslin was apprehended in a Hamburg boutique when a sales clerk noticed her coat contained a machine gun; Meinhof was captured in a Hanover apartment. Though many other members of the Red Army Faction were at large and would cause more violence in Germany during the next few years, the main corps of Meinhof, Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe was in custody and would participate in one of the longest and most expensive trials in German history.

Radical Islamists and Nazi Fraternity

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, spent much of World War II within the Axis domain of Europe "working closely with the Nazi machinery responsible for exterminating Jews."[12] He was influential in preventing Jews from emigrating from Europe in hopes that the Nazis could kill as many as possible. Husseini contacted the prime minister of Bulgaria urging him to send 4,000 Jewish children to Poland where they could be put "under stringent control." Husseini collaborated with the pro-Croatian terror group Ustasha in an effort to recruit a Bosnian Muslim SS division, the Hanjar. The group committed brutalities against the Jews and Serb resistance fighters. That hatred flared up in the Bosnian and Kosovo fighting in the 1990s.

Husseini fled Jerusalem and was an honored guest of Hitler. Husseini broadcast from Radio Berlin where he urged Arabs, "Kill Jews wherever you find them for the love of God, history, and religion." While al-Husseini sent emissaries to Berlin in 1937 and 1939 to discuss ways the Third Reich could help the Arabian fight against Jewish settlements, German intelligence chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris provided support for Arabian revolts against the Jews from 1936 to 1939. Husseini spread his venom into Iraq where a June 1941 riot in Baghdad killed an estimated 600 Jews. He also recruited Soviet Muslims to collaborate with the Nazis, where some of them became part of the SS killing machine, the Einsatzgruppen, which was responsible for massacres of Jews in Belarus and Ukraine. Husseini survived the war and lived until 1974. Though a 1948 New York Post article urged that al-Husseini be brought to trial at Nuremberg, he escaped prosecution.[13]

It is estimated that 20,000 Muslims were part of the Hanjar (Sword) SS Division that fought against General Tito's Yugoslav partisans. Two other SS divisions were created from Yugoslavian Muslims: the Bosnian 13^th Waffen Hanjar (or Handschar) and the Albanian Skanderbeg 21^st Waffen SS division. The London Daily Telegraph reported in 1993 that the Bosnian Muslim Army and the Bosnian Muslim Government made an effort to resurrect the SS-born Bosnian 13^th Waffen Hanjar to fight Serb attackers.

Nassiri Nasser, the brother of Gamal Abdel Nasser who would eventually become head of Egypt, published Mein Kampf in 1939 in Arabic. Nazi agents encouraged Arab nationalists to travel in Germany to study. Both Egyptian leaders Anwar el-Sadat and Gamal Nasser had Nazi sympathies, Sadat writing in his book Revolt on the Nile, "We made contact with the German Headquarters in Libya and we acted in complete harmony with them. We prepared to fight side by side with the Axis." Nasser told a neo-Nazi editor in 1964 that Egyptian sympathies in World War II "were on the German side." After the war Nasser would employ the advice of the notorious Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny; the infamous Nazi commando would be linked - in many cases with little substantiation - with numerous political leaders, one being Ruairi O'Bradaigh, a Provisional Sinn Fein leader.[14]

Husseini's terror against the Jews was a catalyst in creating the post World War II Zionist terror groups Irgun Zva'i Le'umi and the Stern Group.[15] The terror these groups brought the region has been considered a means in leading to the United Nation's partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Palestinian setting on November 29, 1947. It was the Irgun and Stern Group that joined forces in the murder of 200 Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin in 1948. Menachem Begin, who would become the Israeli prime minister in 1977, took control of the Irgun group in 1943 to fight both the British and Palestinian terrorists. He survived the Nazi slaughter of the Jews of Brest-Litovsk where he lost his entire family, and he survived subsequent incarceration in a Russian slave camp in the Arctic Circle. Future Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Menachem Begin, and other members of the Irgun Group planted a bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killing and injuring over 100 innocent citizens. Another Israeli prime minister (1986-1992), Yitzhak Shamir, who like Begin was born in Poland, was a member of the Stern Group. The Stern Group is considered responsible for the murder of Baron Moyne, Britain's minister of State in Cairo and a United Nation's mediator, and Count Folke Bernadotte, whose plans for the region angered Zionists. Begin would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1978), an honor he would share with another unlikely advocate of terror, Yasser Arafat (1994).

Former SS officers trained Syrian and Egyptian secret police before the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Nasser welcomed Nazi atomic scientists in hopes they could develop an atomic weapon to use on Israel. The Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, actively sought out the scientists and brutally murdered them, which sent the surviving Germans back to Germany and left the Egyptians without a super weapon. In the 1950s British intelligence feared that Nasser would threaten their control of the Suez Canal. MI6 collaborated with Mossad to overthrow Nasser and restore an Egyptian monarch but a double agent employed by the British betrayed the plot to Nasser. An MI6 plot to assassinate Nasser with nerve gas never materialized. Prime Minister Anthony Eden approved the order to assassinate Nasser on November 23, 1956 and immediately left Britain to convalesce from an illness at Ian Fleming's Jamaican home. The British SIS disobeyed the order.[16]

Numerous Nazis made their way to South America after the war, as did others to Syria and Egypt. Along with Nazi stars like Joseph Mengele, Klaus Barbie, and Adolf Eichmann, Al Qaeda[17] operatives are known to have found sanctuary in South America. One of these operatives was a trusted courier of Osama bin Laden, El Said Hassan Ali Mohammed Mukhlis. Mukhlis is believed to have been involved in the 1997 slaughter of 58 tourists at Luxor, which would make him a member of the Egyptian al-Gama'at al-Islaimiyya, one of the terror groups aligned with Al Qaeda. He hid in an Arab community where in an area where Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil meet.[18] Jessica Stern writes that the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay is becoming the "new Libya," where terrorists with widely disparate ideologies meld. It is an area where Marxist groups like the Columbian FARC and ELN, as well as American White supremacists, Hamas, Hezbollah, and bin Laden's International Islamic Front "meet to swap tradecraft." Author John Murphy (Sword of Islam) wrote in 2002 that proof already exists in South America, especially in Argentina, that a "new alliance might be forming between the neo-Nazis . . . and the radical Muslims . . ." and that there is the possibility of an alliance in South America among "Marxists, neo-Nazis, bin Laden's movement, and agents from Iraq and Iran . . ." In 1992 Argentine President Carlos Menem published the names of 3,000 Nazis still known to be living in the country, "a virtual who's who for Islamic terrorists like Mukhlis to forge alliances with."[19]

The Hashashins and Black September

The terror wrought by the secret societies and later-day terrorist organizations of the Middle East is nearly as old as Islam itself. In 1009 Al-Hakim, the son of the caliph Al-Aziz and a fanatical Muslim who ruled part of Egypt in his father's footsteps, was determined to demonstrate the supremacy of Islam over Christianity. In one of numerous acts persecuting Christians and non-Islamic groups, he razed the Church of the Holy Supulchre in Jerusalem, one of the most sacred sites in Christendom being the alleged site of Christ's tomb. This act naturally created friction between the Byzantine Christians and the Muslims, a relationship that had previously been without rancor.

Hakim wasn't the first Muslim to try to impose the will of Islam on Jerusalem. To commemorate Muhammed's ascension to heaven the Caliph 'Abd al-Malik began construction of the Dome of the Rock on Mount Moriah the Temple Rock, a site originally associated with Abraham. "Its new association with Muhammed's night journey," wrote Byzantine historian Michael Angold, "emphasized the claim that Islam was the true religion of Abraham, which the Jews had distorted."[20] The building of the Al-Aqsa Mosque over the site that once contained both the Christian Byzantine basillica of St. Mary and the Jewish Temple that contained the Holy of Holies, demonstrated Muslim superiority over Jerusalem. Anti-Christian and anti-Jewish inscriptions are written on the mosque walls: "God had no son," and Qur'anic verses claiming that Ishmael (Abraham's son and proclaimed Arab progenitor) not Isaac (Abraham's son and proclaimed Jewish progenitor) was the son to be sacrificed by Abraham.

In the year 1094 an Islamic secret society with beliefs based on murder for political ends flourished in Iran and Syria and became the forerunner for similar societies in the modern Middle East. Hassan ibn Sabah, a religious teacher, founded the Hashashins. Sabah recruited young men who killed in groups of three at Sabah's command with daggers tipped with poison while the men were intoxicated with both hashish and the promise of a life after death in paradise. Sabah, a member of the Shi'ite sect of Islam, intended to overthrow the majority Islamic authority of the Sunnis by political murder. For centuries Sunnis called their enemies, anyone lacking in their view of morality, hashishiyyun, literally "hashish taker." Based on older Islamic sects of Al-Hakim, Fatima, and the Batinis, the Hashashins, also known as the Society of Assassins, taught the doctrine that "Nothing is true and all is allowed," as well as the "end justifies the means," a philosophy that many sects of violence have taken to heart throughout the years.[21]

Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat at one time had close associations with the Secret Organ, a terror group involved in assassination.[22] Sadat was assassinated, October 6, 1981, by Egyptian fanatics during a military parade celebrating the October 6, 1973 strike against Israel. The Egyptian fanatics worked under the sacred terrorist group called The Islamic Group to Egypt. One of the masterminds of Sadat's assassination was the Islamic extremist Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri (a pediatrician by trade) who was arrested with hundreds of other men in a national search for suspects. However, Zawahiri served only three years imprisonment in Egypt. Upon release he linked with Osama bin Laden and became one of his most trusted and powerful aides. Another plotter in the Sadat assassination, though eventually cleared of charges, was Omar Abmad Abdel Rahman, also known as Sheikh Omar, the blind leader of the 1993 bombing on New York's World Trade Center and a close associate of Ramzi Yousef, known as one of the most heinous terrorists of the twentieth century.[23]

Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini was devoted to destroying any kind of Jewish settlement and made his point by provoking riots in 1929 [24] Husseini, taking the Qur'an's command against infidels to heart ("Slay them wherever you find them." 4:89), led the 1947 jihad (holy war) against Israel that led to a Palestinian disaster. An Arabic alliance against Israel in 1967, the Six Days War, ended in another defeat for the Palestinians. Israel attacked Egypt on June 5, 1967, which brought Syria and Jordan into the battle. In only a matter of days Syrian, Jordan, and Egyptian armies were crippled and their governments humiliated. Israel captured Jordan's West Bank, which sent 300,000 West Bank refugees into Jordan. The PLO set up its own government much to the dismay of Jordan's King Hussein. The PLO was determined to attack Israel from their new Jordanian base but Hussein would have nothing to do with it, though he had established an agreement with Arafat in July 1970 allowing the PLO to work in Jordan.

When PLO terrorists hijacked an Israeli plane and flew it into Jordan, Hussein had enough. The hijacking was part of the infamous Dawson's Field hijackings that included the unusual use of a PFLP woman, who strangely was not a Muslim and was inspired by Che Guevara. Leila Khaled, who claimed to be a member of the Che Guevara Commando Unit of the PFLP, attempted to hijack a plane by hiding grenades in her bra."[25] September 6, 1970 four airliners were hijacked by the PFLP. Khaled was overpowered by El Al security guards and taken to Heathrow. Three days later she was released when another PFLP hijacking allowed her freedom. She would become a mother and a member of the General Union of Palestinian Women.

Hussein declared martial law on September 16, 1970 and within 24 hours fighting broke out in Amman when the Jordanian army closed in on Palestinian military personnel. To inflame the situation further Palestinians occupied the city of Irbid, Jordan and declared it a Palestinian republic. Hussein's army attacked the PLO camps on September 20, 1970. On September 28, 1970 Egypt's President Nasser died of a heart attack, which threw the region into further turmoil. Syria then attacked Jordan with Soviet weapons. Syria withdrew its forces under pressure from the Soviets, who feared the situation would lead to wider war in the Middle East bringing in the United States and other Arab countries. It appeared Syria had the upper hand in the confrontation but without Syria in Jordan, Hussein was able to drive the PLO forces into Syria and Lebanon. Hussein came out on top in this strange confrontation but then on he and Jordan were enemies of the PLO terrorists. The terror group Black September was born to avenge the humiliation.

On November 28, 1971, the Prime Minister of Jordan, Wasfi Tell, was murdered at a Sheraton Hotel in Cairo as he attended an Arab conference. The murderers, six in all, were the first Black September terrorists.[26] Libya's Muammar Qaddafi led a movement to defend the killers and then pressured Egypt to release them. Eventually Egypt released them on bail of one thousand Egyptian pounds. They were never placed on trial. Khalifa occasionally returned to the Sheraton to reminisce about the murder, literally standing on the spot where he killed Tell.

Black September's terror had only begun and they would inspire other groups to engage in other atrocities. In early 1972, the PFLP organized a meeting of terror groups, which "had distinguished themselves by their fanaticism in their own national spheres." The IRA, Baader-Meinhof, Japanese Red Army (aka Anti-Imperialist International Brigade, Arab Red Army, Nipon Sekigun, and Rengo Sekigun)," "Liberation Front" of Iran, Black September, and the Turkish "People's Liberation Army" attended. The groups agreed on an attack system that would pool their resources for hate. Black September would aid other groups in their fight against whatever oppression they targeted.

The new alignment of terror wasted no time striking with a deadly combination of terrorists. Earlier Black September had suffered a humiliating defeat when it failed to hijack an Israeli plane at Lod Airport. Now the Japanese Red Army was called upon to strike revenge, and to show their resolve and solidarity they temporarily renamed themselves the Arab Red Army.

See Japanese Red Army and Black September, Baader-Meinhof to Al Qaeda, Part 3 - The Red Alliance, The Japanese Mata Hari, Willy Brandt and Black September, Terror for the 1972 Olympics, Baader and Sartre, Death Night at Stammheim

[1] M2J (Movement 2 June or June 2 Movement) sprung from the June 2, 1967 riot, was an anarchist organization with no Marxist leanings, and no published ideology. M2J was founded from members of the Tupamaros West Berlin, a group inspired by the Uruguayan guerillas, Tupamoros, named after the Incan chieftain Tupac Amaru and a name that the 1990's recording star Tupac Shakur adopted. The Tupamaros West Berlin eventually disbanded and became M2J. Many members of M2J eventually joined the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

[2] Along with the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Al Fatah is the other constituent group of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

[3] Karmon, Ely. "German and Palestinian Terrorist Organizations: Strange Bedfellows - An examination of the coalitions among terrorist organizations," Politisch Studien, No. 368, November,/December 1999.

[4] Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2000, Red Army Faction.

[5] George Habash was a medical doctor, Christian, and Marxist. He used his PFLP to bridge the gap between the Middle East and Europe by aiding groups like ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia formed in 1975) and the Lebanese, Marxist-Leninist group FARL (Fractions Armies Revolutionaires Libanaises) created by Lebanese Christians and eventually absorbed into the PFLP's mission to fight Zionism. Bennett, Richard M. Espionage - an Encyclopedia of Spies and Secrets, Virgin Books, London, 2002, pp. 275-6.

[6] For details on the daily routine of this kind of training camp see Sterling, Claire. The Terror Network, The Secret War on International Terrorism, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Reader's Digest Press, New York, 1981, p. 279.

[7] Parry, Albert. Terrorism from Robespierre to Arafat, Vanguard Press, New York, 1976. p. 541. The right-wing newspaper Deutsche National Zeitung ran an advertisement that read "Courageous and audacious young Germans are wanted to study the liberation war of displaced Palestinians . . . Financial considerations should stop no one from participating . . . If you are attracted by proposed venture contact us."

[8] Wright, Joanne. Terrorist Propaganda, The Red Army Faction and the Provisional IRA, 1968-86, St Martin's Press, New York, 1990, p. 171.

[9] Aust, Stephen. (Trans. From the German by Anthea Bell) The Baader-Meinhof Group, Hoffman und Campe Verlag, Hamburg, 1985, pp. 142-3.

[10] Ibid. , pp. 146-152.

[11] Horchem, Hans J. West Germany's Red Army Anarchists, Conflict Studies, Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1974, no. 46, June 1974.

[12] Hirszowicz, Lukasz. The Third Reich and the Arab East, London, 1966, pp. 312-3.

[13] "Ex-Mufti, Criminal Ally," New York Post, February 23, 1948.

[14] Alexander, Yunnah and O'Day, Allan. Terrorism in Ireland, Croom Helt Ltd., Kent, England, 1984, p. 5.

[15] Green, Elliott A. "Arabs and Nazis - Can It Be True?" Midstream, October 1994, pp. 9-13. Irgun was founded in 1938 and responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in July 1946 killing 90 people. The Stern Gang was founded in early 1940s and responsible for the 1948 assassination of United Nations mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Berndotte, and the Deir Yassin massacre the same year.

[16] Murphy, John. Sword of Islam, Prometheus, Amherst, New York, 2002, p. 214.

[17] Al Qaeda (The Base). Established by Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden in the beginning of the 1990s. Members were recruited from Arabian fighters of the Afghanistan/Soviet war in the 1980s. Believed to be responsible for bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Africa; Dares Salaam, Tanzania, and the U.S.S. Cole as well as the attack on the World Trade Center of New York City and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

[18] Murphy, John. Sword of Islam, Prometheus, Amherst, New York, 2002, p. 212.

[19] Stern, Jessica. Terror in the Name of God - Why Religion Militants Kill, Harper Collins, New York, 2003, p. 227.

[20] Angold, Michael. Byzantium, The Bridge From Antiquity to the Middle Ages, St. Martin's New York, 2001, p. 62-4. Abd-al-Malik's son al-Wadid completed the work on the Dome.

[21] Marrs, Jim. Rule By Secrecy, Perrenial, New York, 2000, p. 280-85.

[22] In 1928 Hassan el Banna in Ismailia created the Moslem Brotherhood, a society based on the Qur'an that eventually claimed two million followers well into the 1950s. Most of the members were peaceful but there were a few fanatical leaders that created a terrorist branch, the Secret Organ, which carried out assassinations of leaders who did not follow the Brotherhood's orders.

[23] Ramzi Yousef masterminded the 1993 bombing of the New York World Trade Center where eight people were killed and scores injured. Yousef was captured in Pakistan by the FBI but not before he plotted to bomb twelve airliners in a scheme known as the Bojinka Plot.

[24] For details concerning the 1929 Hebron massacre see Parfey, Adam, ed. Extreme Islam - Anti-American Propaganda of Muslim Fundamentalism, Feral House, Los Angeles, Ca., 2001, p. 47.

[25] Parfey, Adam, ed. Extreme Islam - Anti-American Propaganda of Muslim Fundamentalism, Feral House, Los Angeles, Ca., 2001, p. 100.

[26] As Tell lay dying, one of the terrorists, Monzer Khalifa, knelt and licked the blood of the prime minister, an act, wrote author Christopher Dobson, which "symbolized Black September's absolute rejection of normal standards of behavior." Hussein, well-schooled in the harsh reality of Arabian violence, saw his grandfather, King Abdullah, assassinated July 20, 1951 as he stood by his side; Hussein was sixteen-years old at the time. Dobson, Christopher. Black September, Its Short Violent History, Macmillan, New York, 1973, p. 3.