The Clarksdale Press Register · 3 January 1967

CP-1967-070

New Blow At Jordan Threatened

Scan 788 × 2048 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

BEIRUT, Lebanon (UPI) — The militant Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said today in a Cairo broadcast it would send one of its brigades to strike at the palaces of King Hussein and the homes of his cabinet members in a bid to overthrow Jordan's monarchy.

The Cairo-based PLO Radio said the "Abdel Kadar al Husseini Brigade" would carry out acts of sabotage in an effort to oust the 32-year-old King who has used his own tough legionnaires to put down unrest stirred up by the PLO. The broadcast said the brigade was responsible for three explosions which rocked the Jordan sector of Jerusalem Monday.

The explosions were heard in the Israeli sector but there was no information from Jordan as to their origin. Damascus Radio—which also leads the anti-Hussein faction of the Arab countries—said the explosions were directed at the office of the governor of Jerusalem, a Jordanian officers' club and a broadcasting station.

The PLO radio broadcast said the "brigade" had made its threat against "traitor Hussein and his ministers" in leaflets distributed in Jerusalem's Jordanian sector. "The road of treason is full of bombs and mines," the leaflets said.

"The house of victory is close at hand." The brigade takes its name from Abdel Kader al Hussein, a Palestinian who died leading Palestinians against the Jews in the 1947 Arab-Israeli war. He is regarded as a martyr by Palestinians. The PLO was set up by Arab heads of state in 1964 to spearhead the Arab "liberation" of Palestine from the Jews.

Last year the Arab heads split into right-and-left-wing factions and Hussein broke off relations with the organization, charging its leaders were Communist tools plotting against his throne. The anti-Hussein propaganda has grown since Israel's retaliatory attack against Jordanian border villages last Nov. 13.

Last Tuesday, Ahmed Shukeiry, chairman of the PLO, announced from Cairo the movement was going underground to strengthen its anti-Hussein efforts. Observers have expressed fears that if Hussein and his moderate government is overthrown by Arab extremists the Israelis will move against Jordan to forestall any attack from militant Arabs.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

THE EARLIEST AND CLEANEST INSTANCE OF THE MOVE MARIA FLAGGED — and it predates the 1967 war by five months.

United Press International, January 1967, in its own voice, unattributed: 'The PLO was set up by Arab heads of state in 1964 to spearhead the Arab "liberation" of Palestine from the Jews.' Two things happen in that sentence. 'Liberation' is put inside scare quotes, so the wire marks the word itself as a claim rather than a description.

And the thing Palestine is to be liberated FROM is given as 'the Jews' — not Israel, not the Israeli state, not Zionism. The wire makes the object of liberation a people rather than a state, and then flags the word as propaganda.

That is precisely the fusion Maria read on slide 112, executed in one clause, two and a half years earlier, by a wire service rather than a headline desk. The same paragraph-and-a-bit also does the opposite thing, which is why this clipping is worth showing whole.

Three sentences earlier: 'The brigade takes its name from Abdel Kader al Hussein, a Palestinian who died leading Palestinians against the Jews in the 1947 Arab-Israeli war.

He is regarded as a martyr by Palestinians.' UPI uses 'Palestinian' as a noun for a person, 'Palestinians' twice as a people, and reports — flatly, without quotation marks or hedging — that they regard a man as a martyr. In January 1967.

Set that against the 1969 Sulzberger column (s099_3), which puts 'Palestine' in quotation marks every single time and never uses 'Palestinian' at all. So the vocabulary did not move in one direction. The same wire service in the same paragraph can call a man a Palestinian and call his cause a 'liberation'.

Cite this clipping

More from the 1960s

• Arabs Call Unity Meeting For Israel OppositionThe Arizona Republic · 2 January 1967
• Middle East Pots Boiling on New Year'sTulsa World · 2 January 1967
• PLO Plans To Strike At HusseinClovis News-Journal · 3 January 1967
• Even in War, Bethlehem Has Air of Tourist TownThe New York Times · 10 June 1967
• JERUSALEM ARABS DIVIDED ON FUTUREThe New York Times · 12 June 1967
• Refugee Crisis Forming On Jordan’s West BankCourier-Journal · 13 June 1967
• All 227 clippings from the 1960s →