To the Ends of the Earth: The Hunt for the Jackal

Last year, Patrick Seale argued in Abu Nidal: A Gun For Hire (reviewed in ORBIS, Summer 1992) that the most demented Palestinian terrorist of them all actually works for Israel. This year, Yallop makes the same argument for Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a.k.a. "Carlos" or "the Jackal." According to him, the CIA, MI6, and Mossad built a petty terrorist into a global media figure. Why? "To make the Cold War between East and West even colder; to ensure that a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian issue remains an unattainable dream; to spread the seeds of suspicion and hostility across borders; to create and evil mischief." In other words, we have met the enemy and he is us.

Curiously, both Seale and Yallop got their inspiration from Salah Khalaf ("Abu Iyad"), the PLO's chief of operations. Thinking themselves in possession of a hot tip, both authors then galloped around the Middle East (and beyond) in search of proof. Neither of these British writers supposes that Khalaf used them to distance the PLO from its most unsavory allies. They prefer to become instruments of his disinformation.

Beyond its meretricious argument, To the Ends of the Earth suffers from a host of other problems. Superfluous details about his father-in-law and his lost luggage, plus pages and pages on the background of the Arab-Israeli conflict inflate a small book into 571 rambling, self-indulgent pages. Yallop's ignorance of Arabic produces a steady stream of howlers (my favorite: arch-terrorist Wadi Haddad turns up as Wadl Haddad). The absence of even a single footnote speaks to both the author's arrogance and his indifference to proof.

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