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              Our recurring concern about assassinations in recent years has finally led me to a half-hour trip through the dictionary, a remarkable trip that tells a story of drugs, religious wars, and political manipulation of national boundaries.

            “Assassin” is an Arabic word. My casual inquiry about it provided insights into our present struggles with the Arab world, their natural suspicion of more powerful nations, and motivation perhaps for why they have finally exploited their oil to gain a place in the modern world.

            Persia was an ancient empire that extended from Egypt and the Aegean Sea to India. Between 334 and 331 B.C., Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, an ancient country which included parts of Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, conquered Persia. Part of the conquered land, of course, included the Holy Land, whose Biblical name was Canaan, also called Palestine.

            Over the years, the lands of Southwest Asia have been manipulated either by religious or political interests of foreign powers. During the 11^th and 12^th centuries, the Christians of Europe perpetrated devastating wars against the Moslems to acquire the Holy Land. These were the military expeditions called The Crusades.

            In more recent times, various parts of the area have been consigned to the charge of powerful European nations. Syria with Lebanon, for example, became French mandates from 1920 to 1943, and Palestine was mandated to the British. Palestine was finally divided in 1940 among Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Republic, only to be completely occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. By 1935, Persia had shrunk in size to within the boundaries of Iran.

            This incidental history lesson from an unabridged dictionary provides some understanding of the arrogance of the Palestinians in their efforts to reclaim their lost country. It also provides some understanding of the Arab suspicion of more powerful nations, and finally their use of oil to gain for themselves some of the power which has exploited them for so long.

            But what does this have to do with the Arab word which has caused us so much anxiety of late?

            Indian hemp, called hashish, is a plant indigenous to the Middle East.  If the flowering tops are dried, they can be smoked, chewed, or drunk as a narcotic and intoxicant.  During the Crusades of the 11^th and 12^th centuries when the European Christians were warring to recover the Holy Land from the Moslems, many Persians and Syrians got themselves in a properly murderous state by chewing hashish.  Such murderers in those ancient days were called “hashshashin” or “hashish-eaters.” The word entered Medieval Latin as “assassinus” and so into English as “assassin.”

            Today, the cigarette called a “reefer” is made out of that same hemp plant, and those who smoke it experience varying degrees of intoxication. I am not suggesting that all those who attempt assassinations of today’s leaders are addicted to drugs, but they are all intoxicated by some vision which differs from what they see around them.

            It is not too extreme an analogy, I think, to see that those who are disillusioned by the system, or who want desperately to change what they see as gross exploitation and repression will strike out as the ancient Muslems did, to assassinate in order to protect their Holy Land from those who would take it from them.

               Bill Reynolds