(2001-12-15) Love Vs Terrorism

Bruce Hoffman on Dealing With Terrorism through love/sex/marriage. *Systematically identifying the most attractive young Palestinian women they could find, they put before these women what they hoped would be an irresistible proposition: Your fatherland needs you... So approximately a hundred of these beautiful young women were brought to Beirut. There, in a sort of PLO version of a college mixer, boy met girl, boy fell in love with girl, boy would, it was hoped, marry girl. There was an additional incentive, designed to facilitate not just amorous connections but long-lasting relationships. The hundred or so Black Septemberists were told that if they married these women, they would be paid $3,000; given an apartment in Beirut with a gas stove, a refrigerator, and a television; and employed by the PLO in some nonviolent capacity. Any of these couples that had a baby within a year would be rewarded with an additional $5,000... without exception the Black Septemberists fell in love, got married, settled down, and in most cases started a family... not one of them would agree to travel abroad, for fear of being arrested and losing all that they had—that is, being deprived of their wives and children.

The authorities in Northern Ireland, for example, pursued a somewhat similar strategy during the years before the current IRA cease-fire.*