November 1, 1998

Getting Attention

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A scholar's historical and political survey of terrorism finds that it works.

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First Chapter: 'Inside Terrorism'

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By RAYMOND BONNER

INSIDE TERRORISM By Bruce Hoffman. Illustrated. 288 pp. New York: Columbia University Press. $24.95.

he tone is temperate, which makes the message of this book even more alarming: terrorism works, and the worst is yet to come. And although the author, a leading academic authority on terrorism and political violence, does not say so directly, it is fairly clear after reading ''Inside Terrorism'' that cruise missile attacks are not likely to be very effective in countering today's terrorists.

Equally disturbing, lest anyone harbor any optimistic thoughts about the war on terrorism, Bruce Hoffman reminds us that it is not a modern phenomenon. ''More than 2,000 years ago the first acts of what we now describe as 'terrorism' were perpetrated by religious fanatics,'' he writes. There were the Jewish Zealots, who fought against Rome in the first century, and Hindu Thugs, who strangled or otherwise murdered perhaps a million people during their seventh-century reign of terror.

In this century, terrorism has been more secular, deployed by groups with definite political objectives, usually independence. One of the most lethal terrorist acts of the 20th century, Hoffman reminds us, was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which killed 91 people and was perpetrated by the guerrilla organization fighting for a homeland for the Jews, under the command of a young Menachem Begin (a reminder that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter).

For its historical and political examination of terrorism, ''Inside Terrorism'' is a valuable work. Thus the publishers have done readers a disservice by producing a book that falls far short of what it could have been. Hoffman, until recently the director of the Center for Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, clearly cannot decide whether he is writing a book for a wide audience or for an academic readership -- repeated use of ''as we saw in Chapter . . .'' leaves us feeling like his students. And a diligent editor would have cleaned up his jarring misuse of parentheses to impart information, some of which is too important to be introduced as an aside and some of which should not have been included at all.

Even though these flaws make reading the book a bit like listening to a scratchy record, ''Inside Terrorism'' falls into the category of ''must read,'' at least for anyone who wants to understand how we can respond to international acts of terror.

Terrorism went global, Hoffman says, on July 22, 1968, the day a Palestinian group hijacked an El Al flight en route from Rome to Tel Aviv. That set off a wave of hijackings and airport shootouts. ''When we hijack a plane it has more effect than if we killed a hundred Israelis in battle,'' said George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. ''At least the world is talking about us now.'' Then came the Palestinians' deadly attack on the Israeli athletes during the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. Soon after, Yasir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization then as now, was invited to address the United Nations, and the P.L.O. was given observer status. ''It is doubtful whether the P.L.O. could ever have achieved this success had it not resorted to international terrorism,'' Hoffman writes.

His point that terrorism produces recognition is underscored by Osama bin Laden, the man branded by the United States as the mastermind behind the recent bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bin Laden is not mentioned in ''Inside Terrorism,'' and few people had ever heard of him -- that is, until the spectacular double bombings put him on the front pages.

Bin Laden's goals are somewhat murky, beyond death to Americans and Jews. But this is the mark of most religious terrorism, which includes, for Hoffman, the white supremacist militias in the United States. The rise of these groups ''shatters some of our most basic assumptions about terrorists,'' and raises ''serious questions about the continued relevance of much of the conventional wisdom'' on how to combat them, he concludes.

Hoffman does not offer any solutions, except in passing, but he does provide an understanding of terrorism, and that is the first step to finding a solution.

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Raymond Bonner is a foreign correspondent for The Times.

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