KIRKUS REVIEW
The terrorist novel reductio-ed to the far reaches of absurdum. El-Wasi, head honcho of the PLO, arrives in N.Y. with six aides to address the UN. Security, of course, is super-tight, but nobody searches the speaker himself, so once on the podium el-Wasi whips out a machine-gun from under his robes, commandeers the TV network airwaves, and holds the entire General Assembly hostage. Not only will all the ambassadors die, but unless the Assembly votes for the annihilation of the state of Israel, el-Wasi's far-flung comrades will rampage the world with terrorism. The Assembly refuses, so sure enough--there's water poisoning in Chicago, then the S.S. Rotterdam is blown up, then there's plague in Brazil, fires in Cairo, and an assassination attempt on the Pope. The President's advisory panel on the emergency--an implausible crew of bozos if ever there was one--realizes that the outbreaks of terrorism parallel the Biblical Ten Plagues, and spends its time trying to predict what sort of attack will come next. So it's up to Israeli Intelligence superstar Avram Tal to go into Entebbe-ish action--kidnapping a N.Y.C. top cop and disguising his men as policemen to storm the Assembly Hall. The mechanics involved in this snazzy assault (including a familiar but nice trick with TV cameras) generate the only animated stretch in a talky and inane scenario that offensively trivializes the realities of terrorism.