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munist lawyer who became wealthy through real estate speculation ,
named each of his three sons after Lenin: Vladimir, Illyich, and
Nickolai . Illyich Ramirez Sanchez, later to be called "Carlos," was
educated according to a terrorist script. Pampered in his pleasures
during childhood, he was later sent by his father to Cuba to be
schooled by a KGB expert , then to Moscow's Patrice Lumumba
University, and he eventually had his education refined by Arab in–
structors in a Palestinian camp in the Middle East.
On the surface , such instruction is, of course, deadly serious,
"real" in any sense of the term . On the other hand, part of the educa–
tion of the terrorist inclines him or her toward fiction; for the ter–
rorist must be motivated by his own fictions , as well as learning to
manipulate the fantasies of others . As the psychoanalyst Frederick].
Hacker has written, "Many terrorist acts are demonstratively thea–
trical , carefully staged and choreographed for maximal dramatic im–
pact . The emphasis on intimidation and publicity blurs the distinc–
tion between falsehood and truth , guilt and innocence , show and
reality ; the terrorist show is the reality and the provocative scandal ."
Brian Jenkins, research analyst in terrorism at the Rand Cor–
poration and advisor to the U .S. State Department on political con–
spiracy and violence , phrased this more succinctly: "Terrorism is
theater." He argues convincingly that this is so because "terrorism is
aimed at the people watching," usually on television , "not at the ac–
tual victims." The most striking example of terrorism conceived,
planned, and executed so as to achieve maximum theatrical effect
occurred on September 5, 1972 , when eight Black September ter–
rorists galvanized an estimated eight hundred million spectators by
taking eleven Israeli athletes hostage at the Olympic Games in
Munich. While the declared demand was that the hostages be ex–
changed for two hundred detained Palestinians, that concrete object
was far less important than the psychological effects aimed at. One
Arab terrorist explained:
We recognize that sport is the modern religion of the
Western world . We knew that the people of England and
America would switch their television sets from any programme
about the plight of the Palestinians if there was a sporting event
on another channel. So we decided to use the Olympics, the most
sacred ceremony of this religion , to make the world pay attention
to us . We offered up human sacrifices to your gods of sport and
television . And they answered our prayers . From Munich on–
wards nobody could ignore the Palestinians or their cause .
