International Working Women's Day - Part Four

Hello again - I was travelling most of Friday and working yesterday, so I didn't get a chance to post the fourth part of my International Working Women's Day series. Anyway, here it is.

Leila Khaled has been a hero of mine ever since I saw her speak at an SWP event in London in 2012. She had to give her lecture via Skype from Oman, because due to her activities as a member of the PFLP she had been denied entry to the UK.

The PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) is a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary group fighting for an independent, socialist Palestinian state. Leila Khaled is a founding member of the group, which grew out of the Pan-Arab Nationalist Movement, and she has participated in numerous actions, including being part of the Black September hijackings in 1970.

By 1970, twenty-six-year-old Khaled was no stranger to hijackings - the previous year she had become the first women ever to hijack an aeroplane. That plane had been TWA Flight 840, flying from Rome to Athens, with - so the PFLP leadership thought - Yahtzik Rahman, Israeli ambassador to the United States, on board. Unfortunately, they were mistaken. Khaled had the pilot fly over Haifa, her birthplace, before landing in Damascus - she wanted to see the place where she was born, a place she hadn't been to since she and her family were forced from their country in 1948. The passengers were allowed to disembark (unharmed, I should add) and once they were out of harm's way Khaled and her fellow hijackers blew up the nose section of the plane.

After the hijacking, a picture of Leila Khaled wearing a kaffiyeh and holding an AK-47 was widely publicised. A cross between Audrey Hepburn and Che Guevara, Khaled's image became iconic - this posed a problem for her. If she was to carry out further hijackings, she couldn't afford to be recognised.

For Khaled, the answer was simple: if her face made her a less effective revolutionary, then she would change her face. And that's just what she did - between her first hijacking and Black September, Leila Khaled had six operations on her nose and chin to alter her appearance. Clearly, the operations worked.

Unfortunately, the hijacking was a failure. Israeli air marshals captured Khaled and killed her comrade, Nicaraguan-American Patrick Arguello. She was later released as part of a prisoner exchange with the PFLP.

At the lecture she gave in 2012, Khaled proved that the years have done nothing to dull her intellect, or her commitment to the struggle. She brilliantly broke down the events that were then occurring in Syria, and spoke of the need for Syria - and all Arab countries - to be free from both Western imperialism and their own home-grown tyrants. She also warned of the risk of "further Islamification" (her words) of the Middle East, a warning that, with the rise of ISIS, proved to be accurate.

Leila Khaled was, and remains, an iconic example of someone who has dedicated her life to a noble cause.