The Air: Terror on the Ground

“Suddenly everything started flying,” said one of the victims of the hand grenade that shattered El Al’s downtown Athens passenger terminal last week. “The ceiling seemed to fall in, and there was broken glass all over the place.” Caught soon after the explosion, two young Jordanian terrorists proudly owned up to the attack. “We do not deny our acts, ” they boasted. “We are hitting the enemy where we find him.” In all, they injured three Americans, one Briton and eleven Greeks—one of whom, a 2½-year-old boy, died after a half-dollar-sized fragment was removed from his brain.

In the Swiss town of Winterthur, where three terrorists went on trial last week for the machine-gunning of an El Al jet in Zurich last February, an Arab spokesman warned darkly that the Athens blast and the Swiss trial were “all connected.” The Arab terrorists seemed totally uninterested in defending themselves. Backed by a claque of Arab lawyer-spectators from Algeria, Jordan, Libya and Egypt, the three denounced their court-appointed Swiss attorney and refused to answer all questions.

One Israeli is also on trial—ex-El Al Security Man Mordechai Rahamim, who jumped from the plane and shot one of the raiders. While free on $23,000 bail, he has been serving as Premier Golda Meir’s personal bodyguard. Advised by a battery of lawyers that includes one of the Eichmann prosecutors, he denied charges of manslaughter “under extenuating circumstances,” maintaining that he had fired in self-defense. Witnesses claim, however, that the Arab had already been disarmed.