The World: Black September's Ruthless Few

THE Black September terrorists take their name from the month two years ago when Jordan's King Hussein opened his campaign to crush the Palestinian guerrillas in his country. The group is the latest and most vicious twist in the tortured search by the Palestinians for some means of revenge against Israel. At the same time, Black September, or Ailul al Aswad in Arabic, attests to the fact that ordinary guerrilla warfare against Israel, once touted as the hope of the Arabs, has been an abject failure.

That failure was starkly evident to guerrilla leaders...