On October 7, 1985, in Alexandria, Egypt, four armed members of a faction of the Palestine Liberation Front boarded the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship that was touring the Mediterranean. The hijackers seized the ship’s captain, herded passengers into a dining room, and declared that unless Israel released fifty Palestinian prisoners by three o’clock that afternoon they would start executing hostages. When the deadline passed without satisfaction, the hijackers separated Leon Klinghoffer, a sixty-nine-year-old Jewish American whose history of strokes had left him mostly confined to a wheelchair. They moved Klinghoffer to a deck outside, where Youssef Majed Molqi, the hijacking team’s leader, shot him in the head and chest. Molqi then ordered two of the ship’s crew to throw Klinghoff...
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