Terrorists Storm Voice of Hope : Missionary Going to Lebanon in Wake of Radio Station Attack

Northridge missionary George Otis said Thursday that he will fly to Lebanon today in the wake of a terrorist attack on the Voice of Hope radio station in southern Lebanon.

“Because of the work we do, it’s a little like stabbing Mother Teresa,” Otis said of the early-morning attack Thursday, in which four terrorists and two Lebanese employees of the station were killed and the station’s buildings blown up. The station has been operated since 1979 by Otis’ High Adventure Ministries, which has a Van Nuys mailing address and offices in Northridge.

Less than 12 hours after the raid, the station was broadcasting again, using borrowed equipment set up in a shack, Otis said.

Plans to Comfort Families

“My first priority will be to go to the two families of those who were killed to do what I can to comfort them and to go to the funerals,” Otis said. “My second priority will be to rebuild the station.”

Otis identified the station employees killed as Abu Toni, “about 42” years old, who was apparently a guard, and a 29-year-old engineer whom Otis knew only as Walid.

“Our one guard, bless his heart, fired back,” said Otis. “They came in firing, and, instead of lying down to die, he fired back. He hit one of the explosive boxes, and that set off a chain reaction and the whole thing blew up.” The terrorists, armed with automatic weapons, had broken into the fenced compound carrying explosives.

Otis estimated damage at $500,000 to $1 million.

Interviewed in his Northridge office, Otis, 67, a former Learjet executive, called the raid a “cheap shot.” He speculated that it might reflect the pique of terrorists at the United States in light of its interception of an Egyptian plane carrying four Palestinian terrorists who had hijacked an Italian cruise ship and killed an American passenger.

“The terrorists are smarting,” he said.

The snowy-haired minister said that the radio station’s “mission is to serve the people who have suffered so much in Lebanon. . . . Nobody in America can imagine the fear, the pain and the despair that’s felt by Lebanon.”

Dolly Parton Fans

The Voice of Hope, which had an all-Lebanese staff of 18, broadcasts a one-minute Bible reading every 15 minutes, as well as religious and upbeat music and news reports, Otis said. It also created a southern Lebanese audience for Dolly Parton and other country-western performers featured on the station.

The Christian broadcaster has been a controversial presence in southern Lebanon, Otis said. Lebanese nationalists have accused it of being sympathetic to Israel, which is less than two miles south.

Otis said that the station is “friendly” with the Israelis but that “they don’t do any guarding or help us in any way.” The Voice of Hope, he said, “is not a political organization in any way, shape or form. I love America, but there’s absolutely no political bias in us.”

Otis founded the station over the objections of the U.S. State Department, which apparently took issue with its close ties to the late Maj. Saad Haddad, a commander of the Christian Lebanese forces who was supported by the Israelis.

Otis, who lives in Simi Valley, spoke warmly of Haddad. “He wanted someone to come in and help his people,” Otis said.

Haddad, who died in 1984, told the missionary that he felt abandoned by the rest of the Christian world, Otis said. “He told me: ‘It’s as if everyone’s forgotten us over here. It’s like genocide and nobody cares.’ ”

Otis said that, although Haddad had given the Voice of Hope permission to occupy the two-story stone complex destroyed in the raid, it was probably still the property of the French, who built it as a customs house during their occupation of Lebanon.

The station has been shelled frequently, Otis said. On two recent occasions, automobiles rigged with explosives were left near the complex but neither blew up, he said. “You can’t be in that area without there being people who hate you,” he said of the Middle East.