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My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering
In this moving and thought-provoking memoir, a historian offers a personal look at the fallibilities of memory and the lingering impact of trauma as she goes back fifty years to tell the story of being a passenger on an airliner hijacked in 1970.
On September 6, 1970, twelve-year-old Martha Hodes and her thirteen-year-old sister were flying unaccompanied back to New York City from Israel when their plane was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and forced to land in the Jordan desert. Too young to understand the sheer gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Martha coped by suppressing her fear and anxiety. Nearly a half-century later, her memories of those six days and nights as a hostage are hazy and scattered. Was it the passage of so much time, or that her family couldn’t endure the full story, or had trauma made her repress such an intense life-and-death experience? A professional historian, Martha wanted to find out.
Drawing on deep archival research, childhood memories, and conversations with relatives, friends, and fellow hostages, Martha Hodes sets out to re-create what happened to her, and what it was like for those at home desperately hoping for her return. Thrown together inside a stifling jetliner, the hostages forged friendships, provoked conflicts, and dreamed up distractions. Learning about the lives and causes of their captors—some of them kind, some frightening—the sisters pondered a deadly divide that continues today.
A thrilling tale of fear, denial, and empathy, My Hijacking sheds light on the hostage crisis that shocked the world, as the author comes to a deeper understanding of both what happened in the Jordan desert in 1970 and her own fractured family and childhood sorrows.
On September 6, 1970, twelve-year-old Martha Hodes and her thirteen-year-old sister were flying unaccompanied back to New York City from Israel when their plane was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and forced to land in the Jordan desert. Too young to understand the sheer gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Martha coped by suppressing her fear and anxiety. Nearly a half-century later, her memories of those six days and nights as a hostage are hazy and scattered. Was it the passage of so much time, or that her family couldn’t endure the full story, or had trauma made her repress such an intense life-and-death experience? A professional historian, Martha wanted to find out.
Drawing on deep archival research, childhood memories, and conversations with relatives, friends, and fellow hostages, Martha Hodes sets out to re-create what happened to her, and what it was like for those at home desperately hoping for her return. Thrown together inside a stifling jetliner, the hostages forged friendships, provoked conflicts, and dreamed up distractions. Learning about the lives and causes of their captors—some of them kind, some frightening—the sisters pondered a deadly divide that continues today.
A thrilling tale of fear, denial, and empathy, My Hijacking sheds light on the hostage crisis that shocked the world, as the author comes to a deeper understanding of both what happened in the Jordan desert in 1970 and her own fractured family and childhood sorrows.
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First published June 6, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
June 24, 2023
MY HIJACKING
Martha Hodes
Interesting, but it seemed certainly very personal. I found it often redundant, with a degree of macabre.
3 stars
Happy Reading!
Martha Hodes
Interesting, but it seemed certainly very personal. I found it often redundant, with a degree of macabre.
3 stars
Happy Reading!
August 1, 2023
Less a book about a hijacking than a meditation on memory, on how we construct our worlds, reconfigure our pasts to protect ourselves, and those around us. There are plenty of process-y details about the hijacking, and the week in the Jordan desert that followed, and some great revelations about why she doesn’t remember much, but it’s less about that than it is about a historian coming to terms with her inability to reconstruct her own history.
June 19, 2023
Martha Hodes was a year ahead of me from elementary school through HS graduation, and a good friend during the latter years. The book succeeds on many levels. It’s personal, informative, and thought provoking. Buy it, read it, recommend it.
July 17, 2023
Both a personal memoir and a historian’s painstakingly reconstructed history of the 1970 multi-plane hijacking and hostage-taking in the Jordanian desert. A highly respected historian, Hodes delves back fifty years into her and her sister's childhood experiences as hostages. In doing so, she provides both analysis and reevaluation of the events and emotions suppressed at the time...and over time. This is a powerful and insightful read, especially as the Israeli/Palestinian turmoil continues, and if possible, worsens even half a century later. I highly recommend this book.
David J. Kent
Author, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius
President, Lincoln Group of DC
David J. Kent
Author, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius
President, Lincoln Group of DC
September 20, 2023
This was not the book to read before a flight …on sept 11, no less, but I couldn’t put it down. (At least I had the good sense not to read it during the flight.) Twelve-year-old Martha and her 13-year-old sister were flying in 1970 as unaccompanied minors when their plane from Tel aviv to NYC is hijacked and rerouted to the Jordanian desert where the passengers spend almost a week in hot, cramped, scary conditions. Decades later, Martha, now a historian, pieces together what happened and tries to understand why she remembered so little. She has high hopes for the diary she kept during the ordeal but it turns out to be of limited value, which for me - and my odd focus on the diary aspect of the story - was eye opening, especially as I try to understand why my long ago diary accounts of my A-list events don’t always jibe with the stories or memories I share today. Beyond this, the story of the hijacking is fascinating, (including the author’s growing awareness of the Palestinian cause) examined by the author from many angles, with many sources.
December 18, 2023
I loved this so much; came to it after hearing Dr Hodes’ episode of Drafting the Past.
September 1, 2023
Fascinating combination of history and psychology. The author was only 12 years old in 1970 when her flight from Tel Aviv to New York City was hijacked by Palestinians intent on winning freedom for their imprisoned compatriots. Accompanied only by her 13 year old sister, Martha spent six days and nights inside the plane before being released and sent home. The hijacking took place long before anyone was talking about PTSD or trauma-focused therapy; Martha returned to school and downplayed the event, even starting to question if it really happened. After 9/11, memories suppressed for more than 30 years started to surface. Eventually Martha realized she needed to go back and piece together the incident to determine why she remembered so little of such a terrifying ordeal.
Hodes starts with the bare bones of her few remaining memories and the brief entries she made in her diary at the time, then widens the scope to her parents' perspective, diplomatic attempts to free the hostages (Henry Kissinger was preoccupied by Vietnam), and the news media's ghoulish emphasis on the likelihood that the hostages would be killed. Through interviews with fellow passengers and research into historical documents, she is able to construct a comprehensive account of the events and develop a theory of why she was able to repress so much of it .
I've read some reviews complaining that the book is repetitive, but that's the entire point. Each time Hodes tells the story, it becomes more complete and nuanced, a reminder that our memories are far from reliable. You don't have to be Jewish to appreciate it either; its lessons are universal, and Hodes very carefully avoids taking sides in the Israeli/Palestinian crisis.
Hodes starts with the bare bones of her few remaining memories and the brief entries she made in her diary at the time, then widens the scope to her parents' perspective, diplomatic attempts to free the hostages (Henry Kissinger was preoccupied by Vietnam), and the news media's ghoulish emphasis on the likelihood that the hostages would be killed. Through interviews with fellow passengers and research into historical documents, she is able to construct a comprehensive account of the events and develop a theory of why she was able to repress so much of it .
I've read some reviews complaining that the book is repetitive, but that's the entire point. Each time Hodes tells the story, it becomes more complete and nuanced, a reminder that our memories are far from reliable. You don't have to be Jewish to appreciate it either; its lessons are universal, and Hodes very carefully avoids taking sides in the Israeli/Palestinian crisis.
July 19, 2023
Martha Hodes story of her experiences during the 1970 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is…the rememberances of a 12-year old girl, a detailed documentation of comprehensive research into that hijacking and her experiences, and a not-so-positive assessment of her captors/hijackers. There are times you want to scream at the hijackers and times you want to cry at the insensitivity and selfishness of the PFLP terrorists. The odd comments about the terrorists playing jump rope with the hijacked passengers are a contradiction with those same terrorists stuffing the three planes with plastic explosives and dynamites. Similarly the promises of the terrorists to “not harm anyone” while, at the same time, threatening to kill the hostages is angering and hypocritical. The details of plugged toilets, insufficient water, separation of men from women, and the constant death threats are appalling. I was a college student and old enough to remember the hijacking, but have no memories of it any press reports. Read this in chunks, not all at once.
May 7, 2024
Account of 1970 hijackings
Excellent book.
My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering by Martha Hodes is not only a memoir of the author’s experience as one of the hostages trapped upon one of the planes, it is also a rather good account of the 1970 hijackings, or major elements of it. There aren’t a lot of books about it (unfortunately Terror in Black September by David Raab is expensive [not in print?] and certainly isn’t in audiobook form), so this new book by Martha Hodes is important. I actually found it quite insightful in terms of the still unresolved plight of the Palestine people. What is so interesting about Martha’s book is that she sought to uncover her own suppressed childhood memories, through her diaries, her sister’s memories, and an investigation of the nature you’d expect of a historian. There are intriguing facts about memories here as well. Well narrated by Laurel Lefkow. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
If you want to learn more, the hijackings are referred to as the Dawson's Field hijackings in Wikipedia.
Excellent book.
My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering by Martha Hodes is not only a memoir of the author’s experience as one of the hostages trapped upon one of the planes, it is also a rather good account of the 1970 hijackings, or major elements of it. There aren’t a lot of books about it (unfortunately Terror in Black September by David Raab is expensive [not in print?] and certainly isn’t in audiobook form), so this new book by Martha Hodes is important. I actually found it quite insightful in terms of the still unresolved plight of the Palestine people. What is so interesting about Martha’s book is that she sought to uncover her own suppressed childhood memories, through her diaries, her sister’s memories, and an investigation of the nature you’d expect of a historian. There are intriguing facts about memories here as well. Well narrated by Laurel Lefkow. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
If you want to learn more, the hijackings are referred to as the Dawson's Field hijackings in Wikipedia.
December 22, 2023
This book works on several levels.
International politics — she plays entirely fair with the human needs of Palestinians and Israelis.
Psychology— she begins this memoir with a genuine curiosity about why she doesn’t remember significant fear. From there, she remains objective about how the hijacking changed her. She also reaches back to the rest of the stresses on her that summer and how they influenced the way she reacted to the hijacking and its aftermath.
History — she is a historian. There was method to her search for evidence of the true story of these events. There is professional evaluation of the evidence, as she uncovers it.
Nice.t written, with a clear authorial voice.
Some readers/reviewers complained about repetition. Maybe a little. Most of the redundant bits were there, I think, to show the slight differences in memory and perception of the various witnesses to these events, then the author’s reaction to these perceptions.
International politics — she plays entirely fair with the human needs of Palestinians and Israelis.
Psychology— she begins this memoir with a genuine curiosity about why she doesn’t remember significant fear. From there, she remains objective about how the hijacking changed her. She also reaches back to the rest of the stresses on her that summer and how they influenced the way she reacted to the hijacking and its aftermath.
History — she is a historian. There was method to her search for evidence of the true story of these events. There is professional evaluation of the evidence, as she uncovers it.
Nice.t written, with a clear authorial voice.
Some readers/reviewers complained about repetition. Maybe a little. Most of the redundant bits were there, I think, to show the slight differences in memory and perception of the various witnesses to these events, then the author’s reaction to these perceptions.
September 4, 2025
Many of the reviews are spot on, but one thing that isn't mentioned is the complete stonewalling of Martha and her sister, and the forced repression of their experience, when they finally get home to their father in New York. He says, "The only important thing is that you're back safely" and shuts down further discussion. At school, the girls are treated as if nothing happened, despite the hijackings being all over the news.
Nowadays, such an experience would lead a school to schedule therapist-guided sessions with the students, and (I hope) their parents would have sent them to a therapist and tried to talk with them about their experience.
I suppose that one positive thing you can say about our messed-up world now is that the girls would have been handled quite differently -- and better -- if this happened now.
Nowadays, such an experience would lead a school to schedule therapist-guided sessions with the students, and (I hope) their parents would have sent them to a therapist and tried to talk with them about their experience.
I suppose that one positive thing you can say about our messed-up world now is that the girls would have been handled quite differently -- and better -- if this happened now.
September 7, 2023
An important contribution to the conversation around truth and memory. Author Martha Hodes taps her professional skills as a historian to tell the story of September, 1970 when at age 12 she was among hostages held for a week by Palestinian hijackers. She finds her own memory (and that of other passengers) far from detailed. Even the diary she kept is remarkably, frustratingly vague. Her most compelling realization: She was editing her story of the experience in real time, even while held captive. She created a narrative she could tell to her father when she returned home, and live with as she grew up. To critics who thought this story should have been more exciting and more like a thriller, the fiction section is *that* way.
September 27, 2024
My Hijacking “is a story about grown-ups not listening to children because they thought silence would better serve us. By encouraging Catherine and me to forget, the grown-ups silenced us, a silence that also encompassed my mother’s departure.”
“My voyage is a story of empathy for Catherine and a journey of empathy for that twelve-year-old child unable to break the silence, a child who was, in the distance past, me.”
Martha Hodes takes the reader through what she remembered from her experience and the process of piecing together the missing pieces. It is the realization of the consequences of suppressing experiences and the emotions connected to those experiences. I found the book generally interesting, but redundant.
“My voyage is a story of empathy for Catherine and a journey of empathy for that twelve-year-old child unable to break the silence, a child who was, in the distance past, me.”
Martha Hodes takes the reader through what she remembered from her experience and the process of piecing together the missing pieces. It is the realization of the consequences of suppressing experiences and the emotions connected to those experiences. I found the book generally interesting, but redundant.
September 3, 2023
The author is trying to reconstruct and reclaim a memory she has deeply suppressed. When she was 12 and her sister 14, she was a passenger on a flight hijacked in 1970 by Palestinian commandos. In the decades since she has avoided talking about the experience or acknowledging what impact it has on her and her family
She painstakingly reconstructs what happened with the help of many other voices and tries to reclaim what the experience was like for a 12 year old Jewish girl and her sister returning to the US from Israel. The details of the week or so the hostages were held on a plane in the desert and Jordan are fascinating; the passengers had a lot of interactions with the commandos which very much humanized them. Much of the time it was very hot, they had very little food, and were very frightened.
She painstakingly reconstructs what happened with the help of many other voices and tries to reclaim what the experience was like for a 12 year old Jewish girl and her sister returning to the US from Israel. The details of the week or so the hostages were held on a plane in the desert and Jordan are fascinating; the passengers had a lot of interactions with the commandos which very much humanized them. Much of the time it was very hot, they had very little food, and were very frightened.
February 19, 2024
The most depressing thing about this book is how contemporary the issues are. Hodes as a historian goes back to revisit an incident when she was on a plane held for several days in a 1970s hijacking. It was hard not to read with despair as the war goes on in Gaza. It seems like the primary thing that has changes is that everyone is angrier and more violent. An interesting read, for sure. One point (and this is why I marked the spoilers box), one of her great questions is why the memories are so dim for her and for many others. Very close to the end of the book she reveals that everyone was being given sleeping pills regularly. Well that explains it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 19, 2024
Very good book, especially relevant in light of events of October 7, 3023. The author, a historian, has done a remarkable job of research regarding her abduction as 12 year old child flying with her sister from Tel Aviv to New York City. She tells the story from every conceivable angle: her own, that of her 14 year old sister who was with her, her parents’, her fellow passengers, the plane crew, the hijackers, the US state department, the news media, and more. The story is riveting even though we know how it ends. A bit too many questions from the author’s favorite book at the time, “The Little Prince.” And the names got confusing.
August 16, 2023
A memoir by a woman who, at 12, was a passenger on one of the 5 planes hijacked in Sept 1970 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian. She was traveling with her slightly older sister. She had to do extensive research to reproduce the days of captivity as she had repressed all memory of them. It was depressing to read, but an impressive compilation of facts about the events. I did get a bit tired of the quotations from The Little Prince scattered throughout, and felt that some of the repetitiveness could have been edited out.
November 30, 2023
It was good, a bit repetitive and a bit disjointed at times. On the one she's detached from that time in her life when she was involved in such a major incident. On the other hand she keeps bringing up the Little Prince quotes from that time she was 12 when she was obsessed with the book. Constant introspection about the memories and feelings she may or may not have had. I listened to the book and the reader was great but a very soothing voice, kind of like an elementary school teacher. Weird for hazy memories of being hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.
December 6, 2023
A very interesting reconstruction of the events of a September 1970 hijacking mingled with a reconstruction of their effects on the author's psychology and memory. Apt quotes from "The Little Prince" enrich the narrative. Unfortunately, so does reading it while the world is rocked by another outbreak of the Israel-Palestine conflict. By the time it caused the events described in this book it was already considered intractable, and only feels more hopeless now.
August 12, 2023
A treatise on memory wrapped in a hijacking in September 1970, “My Hijacking” by Martha Hodes makes for contemplative reading. Languidly written, the reader can’t help ask, ‘What would I remember?’ in the same circumstances as Hodes. This is not a Hollywood, stylized version of real-life events. Rather it is Hodes working through what happened to her and her sister. It’s an engrossing read.
October 16, 2023
Incredible timing that I listened to this the October weekend when the 2023 Israeli-Hamas War started. Hodes does a phenomenal job reconstructing every detail of the days she and other passengers sat on a 747 in the Jordanian desert. All parties get a fair shake and it made me start searching for literary accounts of the 1948 Nakba.
August 2, 2023
A gripping account of Hodes' memories of a hijacking she was involved in back in 1970, and a larger exploration of the persistence, and inconsistencies, of memory. Martha Hodes bolsters this wonderfully told story with rigorous examination and research.
September 5, 2023
A book I won't forget, engaging and thought-provoking on topics ranging from the nature of sisterhood to divorce to 20th-century geopolitics to communication technology. Recommended.
excerpted in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/per...
excerpted in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/per...
September 30, 2023
I have to confess that I didn't finish this book. The subtitle "A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering" describes it well. I was really gripped at first, but about halfway in I stopped reading. It was too upsetting to read about the seemingly hopeless plight of the Palestinians.
January 9, 2024
4.5 stars - This book helped articulate so clearly for me why I conceptualize historians’ work as inflected by care and generosity. It truly embodies how to do cultural/social/microhistory, why they matter, and demonstrates very clearly the tools available to go about them.
June 23, 2024
Fascinating to read and I think was perhaps fascinating to write as the author basically had to re-create her memory of being part of the historic hijacking from 1970. A study of that event as much as a study of how memories are made and the impact of outside influences. So so interesting.
December 11, 2023
Less a memoir and more of a search of all that she forgot.
January 9, 2024
I learned a lot but it was repetitive and I didn’t end up finishing it.
April 21, 2024
Audiobook
June 4, 2024
I knew nothing about this hijacking, so I appreciated the author's insights and research. It just felt a little detached at points.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews