In 1986, Claremont Research and Publications published “Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World”, a book by Noam Chomsky.
Sheila’s review of the book appeared in the next issue of “the Link”, a journal published by Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU):
— From AMEU Link, Vol. 20, No. 1, January-March 1987, p. 14, archived at ameu.org.
Sheila on the roots of terrorism:
Were some diabolical social engineer to design an environment to provide the perfect growth conditions for terrorism, the result would be something very like Sabra and Shatila.
— From “No Place To Call Home“, by Sheila Ryan, New Internationalist, July 1986.
Amusingly, this report was quoted positively in a report sponsored by the Israel Resource News Agency which was critical of UNRWA:
With prescience, Sheila Ryan wrote, in 1986, “Is it any wonder…these dispossessed people listen to the shadowy figures who preach the efficacy of bloodshed…when all else seems to have failed?”
— From “UNRWA: A Report“, by Arlene Kushner, July 2003. (Alternate Draft)
One of Sheila’s book titles prompted a airport-security profiling incident in 1986:
Rema Simon, a 23-year-old citizen of Massachusetts, is of French and Lebanese descent. She works in the Massachusetts State Legislature’s Social Law Library. But on the evening of May 1, she was in Ft. Lauderdale, about to end her vacation and take a Delta Airlines flight back to Boston.
Having passed the usual security check, Simon was on board, waiting for the plane to take off and reading a book, “Palestine Is, but Not in Jordan.” Looking up, she saw a man “carrying a walkie-talkie. He said, ‘Miss, could you please come with me? I have to talk to you.’ ” She followed him off the plane. “We stood outside the door of the aircraft,” she said. “Several flight attendants and airline or airport personnel stood around us.”