By Debbie Schlussel

Jordan’s King Abdullah needs to take a page out of his late father’s playbook. He needs to repeat Black September, the 1970 massacre King Hussein led against Palestinians–most of whom supported the PLO. The ISIS crisis has its roots in that portion of the Palestinian rebellion that his father failed to snuff out. But the son simply doesn’t have the guts or the resolve of his father.

So, this morning in Jordan, two Al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists were executed in response to the brutal, savage murder of Jordanian pilot Moaz Al-Kasasbeh by ISIS, in which he was burned alive. But two executions is not enough. That’s hardly the “earth-shaking response” King Abdullah promised yesterday. Nor is the total six executions Abdullah has reportedly ordered. Yes, the Jordanian King is said to have quoted Clint Eastwood’s character in “Unforgiven,” yesterday, while meeting with Members of the U.S. Congress. Reportedly, the King said, “Any man I see out there, I’m gonna kill him. Any son of a bitch takes a shot at me, I’m not only going to kill him, I’m going to kill his wife and all his friends and burn his damn house down.” But talk is cheap. Action–and it needs to be the action on the scale of Black September–is what sends a message. And it’s a message only Arab Muslim leaders can undertake because anyone else in the world who legitimately performs the task will be accused of “genocide.”

As I’ve repeatedly noted on this site, the vast majority of Jordanians are actually Palestinians, unlike their Hashemite rulers, including Kings Hussein and Abdullah. In the late 1960s through early 1970, the Palestinians, headed by PLO terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat fomented rebellion in Jordan. This had always been simmering in Jordan when it possessed the so-called West Bank, and Hussein always feared a Palestinian State or enclave in the West Bank (how prescient he was about that). When Israel captured the the “West Bank” from Jordan in 1967’s Six Day War, the Palestinians moved their entire operation to another part of Jordan–to places like Karameh, and from there they planned to overthrow the Hashemites and make Jordan into their Palestinian State.

At Arafat’s direction, the Palestinians acted just like ISIS. Beginning in 1968, Palestinian Fedayeen kidnapped and/or murdered hundreds of Jordanians. They engaged in hundreds of violent attacks against Jordanians. They repeatedly tried to assassinate King Hussein. The Palestinians committed a brutal murder close to the depravity level in the murder of the Jordanian pilot in yesterday’s video. They captured a Jordanian soldier, cut off his head, and then played a soccer game with his head, publicizing it. Yes, savagery is in the blood in this region, in this people, in this religion.

But the brutal murder of the Jordanian soldier didn’t spur King Hussein to fight back. He tried to make nice with the PLO and the Palestinians. He declared, “We are all Fedayeen,” in February 1970, even after his troops had to fight and kill 300 Palestinians who were part of the rebellion.

Finally, though, after a number of PLO hijackings of planes and continued violent Palestinian uprising, Hussein realized that nothing would stop the Palestinians other than a massacre of large swaths of them. At long last, in September 1970, King Hussein decided to put an end to the PLO’s state-within-a-state in Jordan and push the group out of the country. He sent his troops to places like Karameh and Zarqa, swarming with anti-Hashemite Palestinians who followed Arafat. Thousands of Palestinians were snuffed out by Hussein’s minions. Some estimates say 10,000-20,000 Palestinians were killed at Hussein’s direction. There was so much blood, it became known as “Black September,” a name adopted by the PLO faction who perpetrated the 1972 Munich Olympic terrorist massacre of the Israeli Olympic Team (which also took place during September).

The Black September massacre worked. Yasser Arafat ended most of the violence against Jordan for a while. He signed a peace treaty with King Hussein (slightly effective, despite the fact that peace treaties with Palestinians are meaningless), moving many of his terrorist minions to Lebanon and wreaking havoc there, instead.

And Zarqa–one of the Palestinian enclaves to which King Hussein sent troops to “quell” the rebellion–has connections to Jordan’s Palestinian terrorism problem in the ’70s and the current ISIS crisis. Zarqa, Jordan is the location to which the PLO sent a plane it hijacked from Bahrain in 1970. ISIS, as I’ve noted, was Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was founded by a Palestinian Jordanian from Zarqa, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi (his adopted surname means, “the Zarqan”), born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh. Born in 1966, Zarqawi was among the progeny of the hateful, terrorist-supporting Palestinians King Hussein failed to snuff out. Yes, Hussein may have killed at least ten thousand Palestinians. But like cockroaches, there were many more left, including Zarqawi, the father of ISIS.

And, now, we have ISIS. Now, we have videos showing the charcoal remains of a Jordanian pilot brutally burned alive by the group founded by a Palestinian whose parents King Hussein forgot to eliminate. Now, we have different technology, allowing this same ilk of terrorists to broadcast their brutality and use it to recruit.

Now, King Abdullah has the same task his father faced. And, yet, I’ll bet his Clint Eastwood talk is just that. There won’t be the necessary Black September necessary to blunt this war. The world won’t allow it. They won’t allow even an Arab Muslim leader to do this contrary to the way they allowed his father to do so. You see, because Abdullah is in a cold peace with Israel and because he’s a Western ally, he’s considered “not Arab Muslim enough” by the mainstream media. And they won’t allow a “Western proxy” to do what needs to be done, just as they won’t allow the West to do what needs to be done. They don’t realize that this isn’t “genocide.” It’s called fighting a war to win.

Even if King Abdullah responded with a Black September-style vengeance, you might ask how would he locate the ISIS supporters in his country and in the ISIS-controlled swaths of land that border it? King Hussein, in that respect, had it easier. He knew where to send his troops, and his troops were better equipped than the PLO. It was an easier fight. Today, ISIS has American weapons–some captured and some given to “moderate” terrorists we helped equip and train who joined and/or merged with ISIS. ISIS even has plenty of American money, funneled from our soil to the terrorist group. And it’s harder for Abdullah to find the ISIS-enablers in his country. But Jordanian intelligence is far more sophisticated today, and he knows where to find the ISIS aiders and abetters on his soil. Here’s a hint: they are in Zarqa and all of the same Palestinian enclaves his father faced in Jordan. It’s the same terrorists, the same group of people, though now they recruit from all over the world for their efforts in Iraq and Syria.

King Abdullah does have it easier in another respect. Back in 1970, most of his Arab neighbors were supporters of the PLO and took the side of the Palestinians against him. Today, although many of the Gulf states, including a few Emirates, were until recently funding ISIS, major players like the Saudis are at least now nominally against ISIS and some more than nominally. He wouldn’t face the problems his father faced in fighting back against the Palestinians. Syria, for instance, tried to intervene and help the Palestinians against King Hussein. You wouldn’t see that now, as Bashir Al-Assad is largely toothless and is mostly sitting back, letting the West fight off ISIS for him.

Still, despite the tough talk and a few executions that should have already happened long ago, my bet is against Abdullah to do what is really necessary to beat back ISIS and send the group a message.

Clint Eastwood can utter a lot of lines in movies. But, in real life, few leaders have the guts and the gumption to carry out the brutality terrorists need to get the message, or at least, to be demoralized.

The Muslim world doesn’t respect tough talk. It respects blood on the streets. When Muslims are faced with death and destruction, that’s when they know allah isn’t with them.

ISIS doesn’t care how well King Abdullah can recall Clint Eastwood lines. What they respect–and what he probably won’t do–is Dirty Harry justice. King Hussein justice. Black September justice.

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By the way, King Hussein Bin Talal of Jordan had, for most of his reign, designated his brother, Prince Hassan Bin Talal, as the Crown Prince to take over upon Hussein’s death. But when Hussein was near death and likely not of sound mind, he changed that designation to his eldest son, Abdullah. This was apparently the machination of Hussein’s then-wife, wife #4, Lisa Halaby a/k/a Queen Noor. She hated Hassan and she believed this move put her own eldest son a step closer to ruling the kingdom.

The move was a disappointment for those in the know, like me and my late father. Hassan was very pro-Israel and he was far tougher and wise than Abdullah. Hassan had resolve. Abdullah had Western education and upbringing, which made him far less likely to do what had to be done and what has to be done now.

I wonder if ISIS would have dared brutally murder a Jordanian pilot if Hassan had been king. Or if ISIS would even exist.