Several Blame Israel for Precipitating Crisis : Friends, Relatives, Ex-Hostages Angry

Former hostages and relatives and friends of hostages still in Beirut reacted Monday with numbed anger to the fact that the Bush Administration, like its two predecessors, seems trapped in a hopeless dilemma: Inaction consigns hostages to continued imprisonment, while action dooms them.

A number of them also blamed Israel for precipitating the current crisis.

A pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim faction said Monday that it had executed Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins and a second group vowed to kill another hostage today if its demands for the release of Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a reputed Hezbollah leader seized by Israeli commandos, were not met.

“God almighty,” American University of Beirut President Frederic Herter sighed in his New York office when he learned that Islamic extremists have declared that their next victim will be Joseph J. Cicippio, deputy comptroller of the university when he was seized nearly three years ago.

“Reagan almost fell because of the hostage situation, and Carter did fall,” Herter said. “We haven’t seen much about the hostages in almost a year, but something like this, if true, brings it back to the consciousness of everyone.”

He added: “I have reason to think the government knows exactly where they are, geographically, and perhaps knows who is holding them. But it is powerless to do anything without risking lives.”

Former hostage Jeremy Levin, who was the Cable News Network bureau chief in Beirut when he was kidnaped early in 1984 and who escaped to Damascus, Syria, about a year later, pointed out that there have been persistent but unconfirmed reports that Higgins actually may have died in captivity months ago.

He speculated that this may have been a factor in Israel’s decision last week to seize the reputed Hezbollah leader.

But Levin put the blame for the present crisis squarely on Israel.

“The blood of Col. Higgins and perhaps of other hostages in the future is as much on Israeli hands as on the hands of the Hezbollah,” he said, adding that then-President Ronald Reagan should have been held responsible for hostages killed in the aftermath of the 1986 U.S. bombing raid on Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi’s headquarters near Tripoli.

“I do not condone acts of terrorism. I’m a victim of it myself,” said Levin, now a free-lance journalist in Washington. “But violence only leads to violence. The surest way for the hostages to come home is for all parties in the Middle East to push hard for peace at the bargaining table, not try to force it through violent means.”

Thomas Cicippio, brother of hostage Joseph Cicippio, also found prime fault to lie with the Israeli commando attack that precipitated the present crisis.

Hoping for Calm

“I’m very disappointed that Israel went ahead and did this,” he said soon after the Israeli raid. He added Monday: “When they first kidnaped the sheik, I was very disturbed. I was hoping everything would remain calm.”

Cicippio said that he was called earlier Monday by Joseph Mahoney, a State Department liaison officer who maintains contact with families of hostages. Mahoney was unable to confirm the execution of Higgins, nor was he aware of the subsequent threats to kill more hostages.

“We still don’t know what took place,” Cicippio continued. “The threats against my brother, Joseph, we are taking very seriously. We just pray. My biggest hope is that they can stop any more killing, because my brother is next in line.”

Former hostage David P. Jacobsen charged that the Israeli military operation may have scuttled the release of another American captive in Lebanon.

Jacobsen, who was freed in 1986 after 17 months of captivity by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad, said “good sources” in London had informed him that Terry A. Anderson was to be released last Saturday as a gesture of good will by the new Iranian government. Anderson, an Associated Press correspondent, was captured in 1984.

Jacobsen, a former hospital administrator from Huntington Beach, Calif., also criticized the State Department for what he termed its “paralysis” since the Iran-Contra scandal in any effort to win release of the Americans still held in Lebanon.

“These men have been forgotten and not a damn thing has been done for them in two years,” Jacobsen, 59, said in a telephone interview from Colorado, where he now resides. “I’m very angry about that. My friends should be home and they would have been home if they hadn’t had some partisan politics in Washington D.C.”

Another former hostage, Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, in a telephone interview from his home in Los Angeles, also was critical of Israel for having kidnaped Obeid.

“I think it was a horrendous mistake to kidnap the sheik,” Jenco said. “It’s crazy. It will just boomerang with more violence. I feel sorry for the Higgins family and the other families who are now facing the same thing.”

His voice subdued, Jenco said he went to bed “discouraged” Sunday night and woke Monday to find his fears confirmed.

“I was in Philadelphia for last St. Patrick’s Day and I was walking with Thomas Cicippio in the parade, and he had this look of weariness,” Jenco recalled. “It seems we have to have these tragedies to remind people that the hostages are still there.”