Leila Khaled: Hijacker

The woman over there,

with the cases, is a terrorist.

With two hand grenades

taped to her waist

and a pistol tucked

into her panties

she became the first woman

ever to hi-jack an airplane.

That's why she became my idol.

Supposing during any of these

operations she was killed

- what would you think then,

your own sister?

Yes, I would feel proud for that she is...

she's one of a freedom fighter...

for their own land and

for their own country...

There is no way how to use

terror against civilians.

You can't justify it.

There is no way.

They trained for it and

went for it.

And I don't think it has helped

them at all, to tell you the truth.

I really don't think it

has helped them at all.

From a distance you

could tell that they were young.

She especially was

young and attractive.

I mean, she was a striking individual

that you wouldn't associate

with a hijacking.

A not unattractive girl, the Palestinians feels

she gives the movement a touch of glamour.

War is war.

We have to fight our enemy

until we go back to our country.

Our demands and

conditions are very clear:

The release of comrade Leila Khaled.

What are they going to do...

when they'll be free?

This young lady will go to a convent?

She will get married and raise children?

If it does good for my cause,

I'll be happy to accept death.

The story of Leila Khaled

begins in Haifa.

An lsraeli port

on the Mediterranean Sea.

She was born here

on the 9th of April 1944.

At that time, Haifa

was part of Palestine.

This is the earliest photo

of Leila Khaled.

She's the one to the left

of her brothers and sisters

standing in front of the family

home on Stanton Street.

Far away from

what's going on in Europe...

Just one month

after this photo was taken

Leila turns four and becomes a refugee.

Palestine becomes lsrael.

The victims of the Holocaust have,

after years in exile,

a country they can call their own.

Journey's end.

The first of ten thousand Jewish

refugees arrive at Haifa.

Reunions between long lost relations

now write a happy ending to a tragic story.

But the situation in

the new nation is untenable.

These men are members of

the Jewish terrorist group

known as the Stern Gang,

best known for the assassination

of Folke Bernadotte,

the Swedish UN negotiator.

On Leila's fourth birthday,

they kill hundreds of people

in the village of Deir Yassin.

The Palestinian population

is in panic.

Leila's family does

what everybody else does.

They leave their home

in fear of their lives.

Leila's father stays in Haifa to fight

in the Arab-lsraeli war,

to get his home back.

The rest of the family flees to Lebanon.

Life in Lebanon is about endurance.

And waiting.

Everything will be fine

if they can Just return.

This photo was taken in 1967.

It's one of the few photos

in which Leila is smiling.

Maybe because she has just

packed her bags

and bought a one-way ticket to Haifa.

She's convinced she will at last return.

This is the man who raised her hopes.

The Egyptian president,

Gamal Abdel Nasser.

He has promised that

the Palestinians will return.

Today, the President said:

if lsrael threatens war, we are ready.

At last he has come, the leader

that would demand their return.

To many outside Egypt he became

a symbol of resistance

to western colonialism and imperialism.

He's defied lsrael and its

powerful allies in the West.

The world holds its breath.

And Leila Khaled believes him.

Exile will soon be a distant memory.

The time has come.

On June the fifth lsraeli planes struck

the Egyptian air force on the ground.

Hero today of the Jewish people,

general Mosche Dayan, defense minister

and architect of the swiftest, most

overwhelming victory of all times.

The dream is smashed to pieces.

lsrael occupies the rest of Palestine.

The mighty leader's

promise meant nothing.

It is now Leila realizes;

no one else is going to help them.

She'll have to do it herself.

Nice day, nice Mediterranean day.

Clear weather. We just passed

the Italian port of Brindisi

and one of the flight attendants had asked

permission to come in to the cockpit.

When she opened the door, the gentleman

who was accompanying Leila

trust her aside and came in.

"This is the Palestinian movement

taking over your airplane."

And he was armed with a pistol.

You Just looked at them and:

"What's going on?"

She was very fashionably dressed,

all in white...

A white floppy hat, white tunic and

white trousers and also a...

Yes, she was pretty young and

she had a man with her as well.

They were both wearing

sunglasses, I think.

She took out a hand grenade which

she took the pin out of

to demonstrate that it was a real weapon

and if we decided to overtake her

it would of course detonate and would

probably have severe consequences.

I think the captain first said,

"We have been hijacked."

We sort of looked at each other and,

you know, is this real or not?

Then they told us all

to sit in our places

with our hands behind our heads.

And then people started to...

to feel uncomfortable and

some started crying.

Mom turned to us and calmed us

down and gave us rosaries.

I forgot that until she mentioned it,

but I do remember holding the rosaries

that we had gotten in Rome.

And we said, "What do you want to do?"

"Well just fly."

So we talked to air traffic control:

"This is TWA flight 840 and..."

"Oh no, you are not flight 840 anymore..."

Ladies and gentlemen,

your attention please...

This is your new captain speaking

Shadia Abu Ghazali...

The Che Guevara command unit of the

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

which has taken over command

of this TWA flight.

Then they flew over lsrael.

Fighter planes came up on

both sides of the plane...

And then they also talked to the ones

on the ground, saying:

"Well, we're here... ha ha...

like, what can you do about it?"

And now we are becoming a little insistent

that they tell us were they would

ultimately like to land.

Because in a not too far distant

future we were going to land

whether they wanted to or not,

because we would be running out of fuel.

So finally they said:

"Well, let's go to Damascus."

And ultimately we did.

We landed at the brand spanking new

piece of concrete at Damascus.

I remember at the very end

when we had landed, come to a halt

that she came over the

loudspeaker and said:

"Please get out,

there's a bomb on the plane."

Everyone was calm and

there was no problem.

The plane made a nice landing

and all the passengers got out.

There was an lsraeli assassin on board

who was responsible for the deaths of

many Arab women and children, and all

they wanted to do was to bring this

assassin to a friendly Arab city

and give him a fair trial.

That's all they wanted, really.

But the lsraeli assassin

wasn't on the plane.

At the last moment,

he decided not to take Flight 840.

The assassin was the lsraeli

ambassador to the United States

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