Trego's Mountain Ear

I haven’t traveled to Muslim areas, but a few years at TSJC, with an ESL program (English as a Second Language) and a couple hundred Palestinian students brought me in contact with the Banna family. It is a bit ironic that my experience with the group was in the center of the US. Dib was a student at TSJC, and a bit of a leader of the Palestinians, explaining that his uncle was Abu Nidal, and he could get me a spot on the Abu Nidal group’s hit list. I kind of laughed, until another Palestinian student told me I should take this seriously, and that the Banna family was significant in the terror world. So I did my homework.

Hassan al-Banna started the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt – the year was 1928. After 20 years of being a problem to the Egyptian government, he was assassinated in 1949. From what I read, I could kind of understand the Egyptians’ attitude. Hassan bought into the Nazi schtick and had Hitler’s Mein Kampf translated into Arabic – in general, a man who really did like fascists. (https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2018/06/27/ANALYSIS-The-Nazi-roots-of-Muslim-Brotherhood for more information)

Abu Nidal was Sabri al- Banna – and I’ll take his description from Canada’s Mackenzie Institute at https://mackenzieinstitute.com/terrorism-profile-abu-nidal-organization-ano/ “The Abu Nidal Organization was founded by Sabri al-Banna, also known by his nom de geurre Abu Nidal, in 1974. Abu Nidal means “father of struggle.” The ANO has been on the United States’ list of terrorist organizations for 20 years but is largely considered to be inactive today. However, in the mid 1980’s it was thought to be the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization.

Many point to the ANO as having introduced fledgling terrorist groups and the rise of transnational terrorism to the world. The origins of the ANO are synonymous with Nidal’s life experience. Nidal’s entire experience as a mastermind terrorist can be seen as an extended effort to obscure his past, particularly those elements in it that he finds distasteful.

Nidal’s family was decidedly middle class; however, they had a history with terrorism. A member of the al-Banna family is cited as one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt under President Nasser. Nidal’s radicalization began in 1947 after the vote to partition Palestine. This fight caused his family to fall from great wealth to abject poverty and his time spent as a refugee was foundational to his career as an international terrorist. The Ba’ath party, which had an office in Amman, Jordan, was the beginning of Abu Nidal’s radicalization to political violence. Due to his membership in the Ba’ath party he was expelled from Saudi Arabia. This expulsion serves to explain his later hatred for the country.

After his expulsion, Nidal arrived in Iraq in 1970. As the official delegate of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Iraq he was sent to North Korea and China to study guerilla tactics, the use of explosives, and Marxist-Leninist ideology. He was encouraged by PLO leadership to make connections within the Iraq government. Ironically, by exploiting his Iraqi intelligence service connections he began to build his own independent power base.

On September 5^th, 1973, Nidal took his first independent action. Five of his men occupied the Saudi Arabian embassy in Paris and held 11 members of the staff hostage. The Paris attack created a rift between the PLO central command and the Iraqi faction.

Nidal subsequently left the PLO, and Iraq, first maintaining headquarters in Baghdad, then Damascus, then Libya. At this time Nidal established a trade and investment company with headquarters in Warsaw. Until 1988 it sold East Bloc armaments to both Iraq and Iran. It is said that Libya brought out the worst in Nidal as he began developing extreme paranoia. As a result he massacred more than 150 of his best fighters demonstrating that the previous objective of the ANO – the destruction of Israel – had been supplanted by a greater hate. To this day he so fears assassination that he refuses to eat or drink anything served to him by others and he continues to believe his wife is a CIA-agent.” Admited, this is from an old article – but it does a heck of a job describing Sabri al-Banna.

Anyway, I’m not bothered by Trump declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Hasan and Sabri are both dead – and I figure Dib was more in to pointing out that his family once had major wealth. But Dib brought both groups to my attention when I was teaching in Colorado – and I can’t figure Trump’s decision doesn’t match what I saw.