July 4th, 1976. Sayaret Metkal, Israeli special forces, parachute into Entebbe airport. The objective: rescue over a hundred hostages on a hijacked Air France plane. For over a week, the terrorists had demanded the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Israel's response was to send in a team. All the terrorists were killed, and the Israelis lost one man: the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The terrorists were from two groups: The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Baader-Meinhoff, a German Red Army Faction.
Those of you who have read the description of A Pius Man have seen that it involves a Red Army terrorist. There were dozens of “Red Armies”-some of them were spin offs of each other, some went by slightly different names, but they were usually Communist in ideology, and Soviet in monetary backing. One popularly known member of these Red Armies was Illich, Ramirez Sanchez, popularly known as Carlos the Jackal.
In Italy, which is the focus of A Pius Man, the Brigate Rosso—the Red Brigade—had a habit of killing policemen, kidnapping, bombing, and generally making an all around nuisance of itself. They rose in prominence on the world Terror scene during the 1970s. By the end of the decade, they had murdered two politicians—a Christian Democrat and a Union leader.
This was more or less the beginning of the end of the Red Brigade. In the 1980s, there was a major crackdown, bordering on all out war, between the Italian police and the Red Brigade. By the end of the decade, they were dispersed. Many of the arrested...
So, it does sort of makes you wonder why, in A Pius Man, one of their former gunman has been hanging out with a Vatican priest. Or, why he was busy shooting a respected academic researching the Vatican archives. Or what he was doing being blasted out of a hotel window to land on the hood of a passing car.
Israel's response was to send in a team. All the terrorists were killed, and the Israelis lost one man: the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The terrorists were from two groups: The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Baader-Meinhoff, a German Red Army Faction.
Those of you who have read the description of A Pius Man have seen that it involves a Red Army terrorist. There were dozens of “Red Armies”-some of them were spin offs of each other, some went by slightly different names, but they were usually Communist in ideology, and Soviet in monetary backing. One popularly known member of these Red Armies was Illich, Ramirez Sanchez, popularly known as Carlos the Jackal.
In Italy, which is the focus of A Pius Man, the Brigate Rosso—the Red Brigade—had a habit of killing policemen, kidnapping, bombing, and generally making an all around nuisance of itself. They rose in prominence on the world Terror scene during the 1970s. By the end of the decade, they had murdered two politicians—a Christian Democrat and a Union leader.
This was more or less the beginning of the end of the Red Brigade. In the 1980s, there was a major crackdown, bordering on all out war, between the Italian police and the Red Brigade. By the end of the decade, they were dispersed. Many of the arrested...
So, it does sort of makes you wonder why, in A Pius Man, one of their former gunman has been hanging out with a Vatican priest. Or, why he was busy shooting a respected academic researching the Vatican archives. Or what he was doing being blasted out of a hotel window to land on the hood of a passing car.
Somehow I suspect the second and third events are connected ...
ReplyDeleteThose Swiss Guards don't mess around.
Believe it or not, the Swiss Guards didn't have anything to do with the war on the Red Army... at least, nothing official. :)
ReplyDelete