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carrying pistols and grenades.

“This is your new captain
speaking,” the
woman announced from the cockpit
moments later. “This plane has
been taken over by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. We are taking you
to a friendly country with
friendly people.”
September marked the
50th anniversary of the 1970
Dawson’s Field plane hijack-
ings and the ensuing hostage
crisis, which drew interna-
tional attention and escalated
tensions that led to the outbreak
of the Jordanian civil war. Jerry
Berkowitz, a college professor,
was one of six men held captive
for nearly a month.

Boaz Atzili, an associate
professor of Israel studies,
Jewish studies and Arab studies
at American University, said
hijacking was an increasingly
common tactic for organiza-
tions like PFLP to negotiate
for the release of prisoners and
draw international attention to
their cause after the Six-Day
War in 1967, when Israel
won against Egypt, Syria and
Jordan and took control of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Until ’67, the Palestinians
were basically putting their trust
in the Arab states to eventually
bring the liberation of Palestine,
what became Israel,” Atzili said.

“But the ’67 war was such a
decisive blow to this vision that
the Arabs will somehow win
over Israel. So that’s where we
see this mind shift in Palestinian
operation, and basically they
decided, ‘OK, if we’re not going
to help ourselves, nobody is
going to help us.’”
Berkowitz’s TWA Flight 74
was one of four planes to be
hijacked that day, along with
Swissair Flight 100, El Al Flight
219 and Pan Am Flight 93.

The hijackers landed the TWA
plane and Swissair plane on
Dawson’s Field, a World War II
landing strip in the Jordanian
desert. Three days later,
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Jerry Berkowitz
another hijacker forced BOAC
Flight 775 to land at the field.

Men with guns rushed
Berkowitz’s plane, collected
passports and instructed
passengers to fill out customs
declarations. “That kind of blew our minds,
because you had to be prepared
to have the declarations avail-
able,” said Berkowitz, who now
lives in Buffalo, New York.

The next day, the militants
issued demands for the release
of Palestinian prisoners held
in Germany, Switzerland,
England and Israel. They
included the United States in
the group of governments they
would negotiate with.

The hijackers told all women
and children to get off the
plane. Many, including Rivke
Berkowitz, were afraid to leave.

“I convinced my wife that
I’d feel a lot better if she and
my daughter were safe,” Jerry
Berkowitz said.

The guards separated Jews
and non-Jews before releasing
the non-Jewish passengers, who
were transported to Amman.

The Jewish women and children
were sent back on the plane.

That night, Jerry Berkowitz,
now 81, was called off the plane
along with five other men. Two
Courtesy of Gerald Berkowitz
were rabbis with American
and Israeli passports, and
three were U.S. government
employees. They were loaded
onto a truck and driven
through the desert.

“Every time we stopped
behind a large sand dune, I
figured, ‘They’re going to take us
out here and kill us,’” Berkowitz
said. He had nightmares that his
body would never be found and,
in accordance with Jewish law
when a body cannot be identi-
fied, his wife would never be able
to remarry.

Their guards drove them
to the Jordanian city of Irbid,
where they were dropped at
the house that served as PFLP
headquarters. The men were
kept in a small room and given
a single glass to share for water.

A few days later, the guards
brought the hostages an Arabic
language newspaper with a
picture of their plane being
blown up. Jerry Berkowitz
had no idea that his wife and
daughter were taken off the
plane on Sept. 12 and returned
to the U.S. on Sept. 14. He didn’t
know if they were still alive.

Atzili said the hijack-
ings and destruction of the
planes at Dawson’s Field
brought tensions between
JEWISH EXPONENT
Jerry and Rivke Berkowitz
Palestinians and Jordanians
to a boiling point. After the
Six-Day War, Palestinian
groups in Jordan attempted
to create an autonomous zone
where they exercised control
independently of Jordanian
authorities. When Palestinians
blew up the hijacked planes
on Sept. 16, King Hussein of
Jordan declared martial order
and ordered a concerted attack
on Palestinian forces.

Soon after the captives
arrived at the PFLP headquar-
ters, they heard the mortar
fire between Palestinian and
Jordanian forces that marked
the beginning of the Jordanian
civil war.

On Sept. 21, the Jordanians
occupied Irbid and the guards
moved the hostages to an
abandoned schoolhouse. On Sept.

29, the International Committee
of the Red Cross arrived along
with an official secretary from the
Embassy of Egypt in Amman,
who told the men they were being
released unconditionally.

After flying to Athens to
give a press conference, the
group boarded a flight to
John F. Kennedy International
Airport in New York, where
Jerry Berkowitz was finally
reunited with his wife and
Courtesy of Gerald Berkowitz
daughter. Police cars rushed
them to a family member’s
house, and they made it just
before sundown on the eve of
Rosh Hashanah.

Jerry Berkowitz, who is retired,
said the ordeal left its mark on
his family. He and his wife had
flashbacks and nightmares,
particularly when a hostage crisis
appeared in the news.

“In the 50 years since, I
don’t know if we flew 10 times,”
he said. The couple lived in
Buffalo together until Rivke
Berkowitz died in 2015.

He said he found solace
during his captivity by reflecting
on Jewish education and ritual.

On Sept. 26, the last Saturday
before Rosh Hashanah, he
prayed on the second floor of the
schoolhouse. “And I looked up at the sky
and a sentence from Genesis
came to mind: ‘God told
Abraham to look at the sky and
promised to make his descen-
dants as numerous as the stars in
the heavens.’ And I had the sense
that all over the world Jews were
at synagogue, and even if they
weren’t, they were praying for us
to return safely,” he said. l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
OCTOBER 1, 2020
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