Remembering the other victims of Istanbul

The Turkish and Israeli authorities are still investigating the motives and plans of the Islamist terrorist who murdered three Israelis, two of them Israeli-Americans, in Istanbul last week. I can’t help but be reminded of another terrorist attack in Istanbul, 40 years ago this summer, in which Israelis and Americans were murdered.

On Aug. 11, 1976, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the PFLP) opened fire at the El Al Terminal in the Istanbul airport. They murdered four people and wounded more than 30 others, including two American women. One of the dead was 29-year-old Harold W. Rosenthal.

Now, it shouldn’t matter where Rosenthal lived, or what his job was, or even that he was an American citizen.

But the way the world works is that if somebody from a particular city is killed, people in that city naturally are more interested than if the victims were people from other cities. And employees of a particular company naturally take a greater interest in the fate of their fellow-employees than the employees of other companies. And American citizens who are harmed by terrorists abroad are entitled to certain rights and protections from the American government, which they would not receive if they were not Americans.

So let it be noted that Rosenthal was from Philadelphia; he had served on the staff of Rep. Hugh Carey (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.). At the time of his murder, he was a senior aide to Senator Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.).

And here’s why that matters.

The PFLP is the second-largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). And the PLO is still headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the “moderate” chairman of the PA—which receives $500 million in American taxpayers’ money every year from the Obama administration.