Summary of My Hijacking by Martha Hodes :A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering E-Book

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• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

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Summary of My Hijacking by Martha Hodes :A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering

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Martha Hodes, a historian, recounts her experience as a passenger on an airliner hijacked in 1970. She and her sister were flying back to New York City from Israel when their plane was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Despite being too young to understand the gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Martha suppressed her fear and anxiety. Nearly a half-century later, her memories of the six days and nights as a hostage are hazy and scattered. Through archival research, childhood memories, and conversations with relatives, friends, and fellow hostages, Martha aims to re-create what happened to her and those at home. The story sheds light on the hostage crisis and her own fractured family and childhood sorrows.

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Summary of My Hijacking by Martha Hodes :A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering

Martha Hodes, a historian, recounts her experience as a passenger on an airliner hijacked in 1970. Despite being young, she suppressed fear and anxiety. Through archival research, childhood memories, and conversations, Martha aims to recreate the six days and nights as a hostage, shedding light on her fractured family and childhood sorrows.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

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Summary of

My Hijacking

A

Summary of

Martha Hodes’s book

A

Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering

GP SUMMARY

Summary of My Hijacking by Martha Hodes: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering

By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.

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What Happened?

In 1970, the author and their sister Catherine were on a flight from Tel Aviv to New York. Their mother lived in Israel and their father lived in America. They were hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and their sister and I were held inside the plane for six nights and six days. After their return home, there was no debriefing by authorities, and no one sent us to a school guidance counselor or therapist. The author continued flying, shrugging off their unease.

Then, on September 11, 2001, the author was starting his eighth year as a professor at New York University. The students in his class were shocked by the explosions from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The author began to write books and articles about other people's lives, often in one way or another about grief and loss. Nearly forty-five years after their return from the desert, the author broached the subject with her sister, who had struggled as grown-ups to maintain the intimacy that helped them survive back then.

The author's memories of the hijacking were murky and jumbled, with fragmented images coming to mind. They saw hazy pictures and faint voices, such as someone apologizing to them, a Palestinian doctor walking down the aisle, and the copilot carrying dynamite onto the plane.

On the first day in the desert, the author could only recall a single disconnected picture. On the second night, a commando at the front of the plane looked at the passport my sister and I shared, asking why we were in Israel. The man asking if we were Jewish, Catherine saying yes, and the commandos boarding the hostages into vans, then making us get off the vans. Standing huddled together in the darkness and cold, the commandos surrounding us in a circle, holding guns, wondered if they would shoot us.

Straining to recall our days and nights on the plane brought random, floating images of two friendly young grown-ups sitting behind us and the old rabbi sitting in front of us. The author recounts their experiences during the hijacking of a plane in the desert, describing the joys and anxiety they experienced as a young woman and a Palestinian man. They also recall the fear and confusion they felt when they were taken off the plane, leaving only women and children as hostages.

Upon returning home, the author reflects on their own memories and the events that occurred during the hijacking. They discuss their father's stories, stepmother's nuanced versions, and mother's misty memories. They also consult with childhood friends, teachers, and high school friends to gather information about the hijacking.

The author's journey as a historian has allowed her to explore her own memories and connect the events to the lives of her family. She has visited archives, read news coverage, and watched television broadcasts, as well as read the manifestos of her captors and their narratives. She has also met and conversed with fellow hostages and visited the places where everything happened.

The author acknowledges that a seamless story of the hijacking would be impossible due to the vast differences in experiences and perspectives among different people. The author's journey serves as a reminder of the importance of understanding and connecting the experiences of those involved in such events. The author, Martha, is a hostage who struggles to tell her own story of the 1970 hijacking. She reads David Raab's book Terror in Black September, which focuses on the international negotiations. She suspects that her limited memories may be due to the long-term nature of the events, her childhood, or the potential for human memory to erase trauma. She also questions what memories could tell her about the hijacking, particularly the sense of fear that seemed appropriate to the circumstances.

The author is interested in understanding how the hijacking may have affected her life, and she contacts David Raab to ask about how the hijacking may have affected her. The author finds a telegram mentioning the hijacking and the names of Catherine and the author, which sparked the idea of recovering the feelings that accompanied the hijacking. Two documents, the diary and the tape, are crucial to her quest. The diary contains over a thousand words written during their desert sojourn, while the tape contains a conversation between the author and Catherine. The diary and tape help answer the questions she wants to solve about why she remembers so little and what memories could tell her.

Part One

No Memory of Knowing

1

In this text, the author describes their journey from Tel Aviv to New York City on a plane. They are accompanied by their mother, who helps them close their suitcases and is wearing a long nightgown. The author's mother is crying as she has to say goodbye to them for a long time. The author recalls reading The Little Prince, a book about a young boy who bids farewell to a temperamental flower. The author's sister, Catherine, takes the middle seat in the nonsmoking section near the front of tourist class.

The author's mother buys her sister a pair of bell-bottoms from Bloomingdale's during a visit to New York. The author recalls the night before the flight, which was jinxed due to a calamity at Frankfurt airport. The author and Catherine board the plane and record the flight number, time, and stops before landing in New York.

At 11:02 a.m., the plane takes off from Frankfurt on schedule. As they soar over Belgium, a commotion occurs, with a woman and a man shouting. The passengers believe the couple is fighting, but Catherine sees the man's gun and finger inserted through a hand grenade. The old lady warns Catherine to take off the Jewish star hanging on a slim gold chain around her neck.

The author and Catherine are alarmed by the commotion and the hijacking. The hijacker directs one of the stewardesses to the flight deck, demanding to be let in. The flight engineer opens the door to find a rattled stewardess crying out, claiming it's a hijacking. The hijacking is nearly synonymous with Cuba, referring to American protestors or Cuban exiles seizing airplanes as stunts or pranks. The author wonders if they will take a Caribbean detour, where inconvenienced flyers compensated with lavish dinners and Cuban cigars in fancy hotels.

In this text, the author describes a TWA flight that is hijacked by a male hijacker. The passengers are worried about their destination and the potential consequences of their actions. They are unsure of where they might be heading and are unsure of the safety of their fellow passengers. The hijacker orders everyone out of first class, obliging crew members to pull out armrests between tourist-class seats. The hijacker instructs the crew to keep calm and put their hands behind their heads, but she does not want the passengers to draw weapons.

The author and Catherine are excited about starting seventh grade at Hunter High, an all-girl public school with an admissions test, and Catherine has auditioned for the acting program at the High School of Performing Arts. As the plane turns back in the other direction, the cabin becomes quiet, and the author pleads with God to save their lives and Catherine's.

The author and Catherine are excited about the new school year and their future. They are excited about starting seventh grade at Hunter High and Catherine's acting program at the High School of Performing Arts. The author is also excited about starting a new school year and is eager to watch a Hollywood remake of the 1950s musical Paint Your Wagon.

A stewardess shepherds Catherine and the author into an empty first-class row, shielding her younger sister from any activity in and around the cockpit. The author sees the copilot emerge from the cockpit with his hands up and the barrel of a gun against his neck, a scene that will remain in their minds for the rest of their lives.

The captain faces the challenge of landing the aircraft in unknown territory in rapidly falling darkness. The pilot is able to convince the male hijacker to take a seat and fasten the seat belt, and the landing is smooth and safe. The author and Catherine are relieved to be on solid ground, but the absence of real runway lights and airport terminal buildings is unsettling.

Amidst the fear, a celebration takes place outside the plane, with a crowd clapping, dancing, and firing weapons into the air. The man and woman who took over the flight are welcomed by their comrades, melting into the outdoor throng. In this text, the author recounts their experience on a hijacked plane, where they are accompanied by their captors and a group of passengers. The captors, including a woman named Hallah Joseph and a man named Bassam Abu-Sharif, apologize for the inconvenience caused and discuss their motives of liberating their country from Israeli occupation. The pilots distribute landing cards, and the author and Catherine share a booklet with their captors. The captors declare their cause through slogan cards, which include messages from Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong.

As the plane lands, a loud thunder pierces the nighttime sky, and the captain puts his engines in reverse to avoid crashing into the passengers. The stewardesses serve dinner and distribute milk and water, with a Palestinian doctor from the Red Crescent assisting. The cabin crew, who serve as both hostages and airline staff, make everyone comfortable. The copilot, a kind and earnest man, assures the passengers that they will not be harmed, and the author is reminded of the promise of no bodily harm.

The author's memory of the situation is a dynamite, with the commandos carrying thick yellow cables and the expressionless faces of the men. The author vows to never let the two of them be separated, as she fills out their landing cards and helps her sister settle in for the night.