Jillian Becker

Jillian Becker
Jillian Becker in 1972
Born	(1932-06-02) 2 June 1932 (age 92) Johannesburg, South Africa
Nationality	British
Citizenship	British American
Education	University of the Witwatersrand (BA)
Notable works	Hitler's Children
Notable awards	Pushcart Prize
Website
www.theatheistconservative.com

Jillian Becker (born 2 June 1932)[1] is a South African-born British author, journalist, and lecturer, who specialises in research about terrorism. Her work includes Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang (1977).[2]

Early life and move to London

Becker's father was Bernard Friedman, a South African surgeon and politician who co-founded the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. Becker attended Roedean School in Johannesburg before graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Becker left her first husband, Michael Geber, in South Africa to live in Italy with her second husband, Gerry Becker, later moving to Mountfort Crescent, near Barnsbury Square in London. It was here that Becker's friend, Sylvia Plath, came to stay with her young children in the days immediately before Plath's suicide; Becker's book Giving Up is based around Plath's last days there.[3][4] Becker became a British citizen in 1960.[1][5]

Career and political advocacy

Becker's best-known book, Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang, is about the German Red Army Faction. The book was chosen by Golo Mann as Newsweek (Europe) book of the year 1977,[6] and serialised in newspapers in London, Oslo and Tokyo.

The PLO: The Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization was commissioned by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and published in 1984. Becker spent months in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War, which Israel entered to confront the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). She claimed to have retrieved secret documents from the ruins of bombed PLO office buildings and to have interviewed Lebanese of all denominations and Palestinians who had experienced PLO oppression, as well as supporters, members and leaders of the PLO.[7] The book was heavily criticized by the Journal of Palestine Studies as "facile and tendentious," as well as the lack of any PLO members being interviewed.[8]

In the 1980s, Becker served in a multi-party working group to advise the British Parliament on measures to combat international terrorism. She was also consulted by the embassies of several countries affected by domestic terrorist organisations, some of which were supported by foreign nation states. In many of these cases, terrorist activity was an aspect of proxy wars, which Becker called "the hot spots of the Cold War".[9] In 1985, with Lord Chalfont, a former minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Becker founded the Institute for the Study of Terrorism (IST), becoming its executive director from 1985 to 1990.[9]

Becker is on the council of The Freedom Association,[10] and is the manager and editor of The Atheist Conservative blog.[11] She lives in California.[12]

Books

Selected fiction

• Becker, Jillian (1971). The Keep. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-003204-8.
• Becker, Jillian (1971). The Union. London: Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0-7011-1625-0.
• Becker, Jillian (1986). The Virgins: A Novel. Cape Town: David Philip. ISBN 978-0-86486-050-7.

Non-fiction

• Becker, Jillian (1977). Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. ISBN 978-0-397-01153-7.
• Becker, Jillian (1984). The PLO: The Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-78299-1.
• Becker, Jillian (2002). Giving up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. London: Ferrington. ISBN 978-1898490319.

References

1. "Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the poet's last days". BBC News. 10 February 2010. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
2. Spender, Stephen (19 June 1977). "German Terror From the Left". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 October 2021.
3. Gladwell, Malcolm (2 November 2019). "Sylvia Plath's Final Goodbye". The Sunday Guardian Live. Retrieved 28 October 2021.
4. "Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the poet's last days". BBC News. 10 February 2013.
5. "New Penguin Modern Classic: The Keep by Jillian Becker". Penguin Books South Africa. 29 September 2008.
6. Alvarez, Alberto Martin; Tristán, Eduardo Rey (5 August 2016). Revolutionary Violence and the New Left: Transnational Perspectives. ISBN 9781317291374.
7. "The PLO: The Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization". Authorhouse.
8. Egan, John P. (1986). Becker, Jillian (ed.). "Bashing the PLO". Journal of Palestine Studies. 16 (1): 138–140. doi:10.2307/2537028. ISSN 0377-919X. JSTOR 2537028.
9. "Becker, Jillian (Ruth) 1932-". Archived from the original on 14 November 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
10. The Freedom Association - Council and Supporters Archived 7 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine
11. "1. About us". The Atheist Conservative. 6 May 2009. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
12. "Jillian Becker | Authors | Macmillan". Us.macmillan.com. Retrieved 20 June 2015.