On the Electronic Intifada website, As’ad AbuKhalil despairs at the New York Times obituary of George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who died a few days ago.

It’s the description of Habash as a terrorist which bothers him. Habash, says AbuKhalil, was “a kind and gentle man.” When it came to armed operations, Habash apparently insisted on “high ethical and political standards.” And when those standards weren’t met, AbuKhalil adds, it was the fault not of Habash, but of Wadi Haddad, the “adventurist” who planned and executed the PFLP’s grisly operations.

It’s a convenient argument, but not one that really holds any water. What - apart from adherence to the Habash personality cult - leads AbuKhalil to conclude that Haddad, rather than Habash, bore the brunt of the responsibility? And if Habash really was so disapproving, why did he not condemn and oust Haddad?

These questions become all the more important when one recalls what the PFLP actually did. AbuKhalil mentions the PFLP’s hijacking of airliners in the 1970s, something he depicts as rather romantic; the height, if you will, of revolutionary chic.

But there are two stand-out operations which he doesn’t mention. One, prominently noted by Jamal Halaby of the Associated Press, took place at Lod Airport (as it was then) just outside Tel Aviv, on 30 May 1972. On that fateful day, three terrorists belonging to the Japanese Red Army, and acting in the name of the PFLP, opened fire with assault rifles in the departures hall, killing 27 people and wounding 78 more. Among the dead were 16 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico and Professor Aharon Katzir, one of Israel’s finest scientists.

Habash’s PFLP claimed full responsibility for this gruesome, cruel act. His group was also responsible for another jaw-dropping act of terrorism ignored by AbuKhalil, but prominently featured in the BBC’s report of Habash’s funeral: the Entebbe hijacking of June 1976.

Entebbe revealed the PFLP at its most bloodthirsty, in terms of its conduct and its political allies. On 27 June 1976, an Air France airliner departing from Tel Aviv to Paris, via Athens, was hijacked by PFLP gunmen accompanied by German terrorists belonging to a splinter group of the notorious Baader-Meinhoff Gang. After landing in Benghazi, in Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya, the plane flew on to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, a country under the iron fist of the dictator Idi Amin.

At Entebbe, all the hostages were released - all, that is, except for the 83 Jewish passengers, who had already been separated from everyone else. They - along with courageous Air France crew, who remained with them - regained their freedom following a spectacular Israeli raid on the airport.

One of their number, 75 year old Dora Bloch, never made it. Mrs. Bloch had been lying in a hospital in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, after being taken ill. Following the Israeli raid, she was dragged from her bed and murdered, on the orders of the PFLP’s ally, Amin.

There is a grim irony in the fact that, while the PFLP was portraying the hijacking as an act of liberation, Amin’s rule in Uganda was in its deadliest phase. One of the worst tyrants that Africa has known, Amin murdered around 300,000 Ugandans. His campaign of racial persecution against the country’s Asian population resulted in their wholesale expulsion. At precisely the time that the PFLP landed the hijacked airliner in Entebbe, the streets of Kampala echoed to the sound of dissidents being executed by Amin’s thugs.

George Habash and Idi Amin were both fond of railing against imperialism and colonialism. Habash was a terrorist, Amin ruled through terror. Both revered violence. Neither saw the inside of a courtroom. And both ended their days peacefully, Amin in Saudi exile in 2003, Habash in Amman in 2008.

As for the brutally-murdered Dora Bloch, her remains were not discovered until 1979, following Amin’s overthrow, in a field near the Tanzanian border.