Everything old is new again.
That’s the message of the latest episodes of Danny Liber and Yaron Niski’s series, Enemies, which returns, on June 27, to Kan 11 after the news with the first in a three-episode arc about the legendary terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, which will be available on Kan.org.il after it is broadcast.
The show’s creators managed to do a series of interviews with Carlos from his prison cell in Paris in 2021 and he goes into detail about his life and perspective. While with someone like this – they note that like many terrorists, he is considered a malignant narcissist – it’s hard to know when he’s telling the truth but his story is still interesting.
The Jackal became known for his terrorist acts in the 1970s and 80s, mostly in the service of the Palestinian cause, and he boasts about killing more than 80 people and ordering and overseeing operations, such as bombings and airplane hijackings, in which thousands died, as well as having been the first non-Arab in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The one regret that he expresses in the first episode is that he did not kill more people.
Much of what is revealed in that episode about his early life may surprise you. I had never encountered it described in such detail before. Born in 1949, he was raised in a wealthy family in Caracas, in a villa with servants and a pool. His father was a successful lawyer, but he was also a Communist and a huge picture of Stalin hung on their living room wall. He named his sons Vladimir, Illich, and Lenin, and Carlos was Illich. They were home-schooled.
Carlos joined a Venezuelan Communist youth group and claims to have killed a policeman in a demonstration. His father was afraid he would join guerilla fighters in the mountains, so sent him to Western Europe, where he got caught up in radical politics in the 60s, as extremist groups began to link opposition to the Vietnam War to the Palestinian cause.
In one clip, protesters are seen marching with a sign that says, “Vietnam to Palestine, One War, Many Fronts,” and a commentator points out that, like today’s campus protesters, they wanted to see a Palestinian state that would stretch from the river to the sea, with no Jews anywhere.
Studying at an upper-crust boarding school in London, Carlos was known as a sharp dresser and his father, fearing he was getting corrupted, sent him to study in Moscow at Patrice Lumumba University, where he spent his time chasing girls and selling hard-to-obtain liquor. While he was there, he met Palestinian students and helped them translate their manifestos into Spanish.
Expelled after two years, he went back to London and then to Beirut, joined the PLFP, and trained in a desert camp where, decades later, he still is impressed that he met a woman he claims had been a winner of the Miss Sweden beauty pageant as Western liberals flocked to the cause. Carlos was then active in Jordan, took part in the Black September fighting, and carried out targeted assassinations back in Europe (some of which went awry, such as the attempt on the life of Jewish businessman Joseph Sieff in London) and hijackings.
His exploits in later years, which will be covered in the upcoming episodes, are better known, although part two delves into his contact with Osama Bin Laden.
It’s a fascinating window into the mind of a notorious terrorist who rode a wave of Western approval to become one of the most famed killers of all time.
What else is on Israeli TV?
A DIFFERENT KIND of fame will be on display in 2024: 100 Days that Rocked the Royals, which will be shown on Hot 8 at 9:15 p.m. on July 1 and will also be on Hot VOD and Next TV. This documentary, which was not released in advance to reviewers here, gives a glimpse into the challenges the British royal family has faced this year. While not long ago, the rift between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and the rest of the family seemed like a crisis, this year they have been tested more seriously, with King Charles and Kate Middleton fighting cancer. The Crown made many of us feel closer to this family and this documentary will look back on how they coped with the tumultuous first three months of this year.
IF YOU WATCH the new movie on Amazon Prime Video, Foe, starring two of today’s most in-demand young actors, Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn, Little Women) and Paul Mescal (Aftersun, All of Us Strangers), you’ll get an odd message: The future will be boring. I had high hopes for this movie, based on the promo, which made it look like an interesting human drama set in a dystopian future. But it turns out that life on Earth won’t just become more difficult as climate change worsens; it will become duller as well. Ronan and Mescal play Hen and Junior (I tried to figure out what these names meant but then gave up), a couple who live in what remains of the Midwest after many unspecified disasters in a crumbling farmhouse. But they cannot farm anymore, so Junior works in an industrial facility where they clone chickens or something like that, and Hen is a waitress in a diner. They seem happy enough, communicating through lots of meaningful looks and wandering through desert landscapes in tasteful silk and denim that look like they come from the pages of an upscale catalog.
One day, a mysterious stranger, Terrance (Aaron Pierre), shows up to try to entice them to move to an outer-space colony, which they aren’t interested in, although why they aren’t is never explained. Next, it turns out that Junior is being forced to go, but Hen will be given a robotic facsimile of her husband, which makes him jealous. This may be the first movie about a man whose rival is a non-human version of himself but that’s not a distinction that makes it worth watching. As it dragged on, I entertained myself by imagining the hyper-serious meetings about the script and what an important story this was – but you can imagine them without actually sitting through the movie If it makes you nostalgic for Blade Runner, the classic about humanoid robots, or even its underwhelming sequel, you can see these on AppleTV+, along with director Ridley Scott’s recut version of the original film.
IF YOU’D LIKE something a little livelier, try the second season of DI Ray on Yes VOD, Sting+, and Yes London, as well as CellcomTV. It features Parminder Nagra reprising her role as a British police detective who is brilliant but gets into conflicts at work, especially in matters regarding her Indian heritage. Even if you didn’t see the first season, you can enjoy the second, which features Ray coming after her suspension, to investigate the fatal shooting of a young nurse and the leader of a notorious crime syndicate. While this show isn’t as good as the legendary Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren, it does bring that show to mind with its tough female protagonist and twist-filled story.