Arafat:
The Death of a Salesman
by Robert Yoho, Columnist and Senior Editor
"Eye on Conservatism"
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Marking
the end of a long and bloody life. Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, 75, died
last week in a Paris hospital.
Often praised for leading the establishment of a Palestinian state, he devoted his life to violence and the utter annihilation of the Israeli people. A weapons smuggler as a teenager, Arafat would become the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1969.
At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, a number of hooded gunmen, identifying themselves as "Black September"—a covert terrorist unit of the PLO—took several Israeli athletes hostage. In the siege that followed, 11 Israeli athletes, 5 Palestinian gunmen, and a German police officer were killed.
Along with the Olympic terrorist plot and the deaths of untold numbers of Israeli citizens, Arafat is also responsible for the murder of a U.S. ambassador to Sudan.
This is a man, who in a 1974 address to the United Nations, stated: "I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."
Well, the olive branch did not fall from his hand. He threw it down! Arafat laid it aside so that he could have a free hand to reload. Once more, our world turned another page of an ancient story, a man with blood-drenched hands selling himself as a minister of peace. Unfortunately, the bloodstained thugs and weak sisters of the UN General Assembly fell for this pitch and granted the PLO observer status.
When asked about Yasser Arafat, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "You name a terrorist technique -- he has either thought about it or perfected it."
As a young man, he initiated and perfected the practice of airline hijackings to further his cause. In his later years, he embraced the bloody regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Arafat lived only to hate and he longed to kill Israelis most of all. I marveled at the Israelis remarkable restraint in not turning Arafat’s Remallah compound into a huge West Bank bomb crater. Those actions would certainly be justified in the case of one of the most zealous anti-Semites in the past century.
I also find it interesting that when Arafat’s health was fading, he turned to his loyal friends, the French, and was admitted to a Paris hospital. France has increasingly become a haven to those who are hostile to Israeli and American sovereignty. Moreover, I fear it has become a staging ground for Islamic terrorists.
Former Presidents Carter and Clinton had been anxious to negotiate settlements between Israel and Arafat. However with a new marshal in Washington, that willingness dwindled with the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The international community criticized President George W. Bush for his unwillingness to sit down at the bargaining table with Arafat, a man whose words and motives clearly could not be trusted.
In the "Bush Doctrine," the president boldly declared that any nation or group that harbors a terrorist would be regarded as a terrorist. And Bush fervently adhered to this policy with the Palestinian leader. Despite the fact that Arafat was a regular guest to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the Clinton administration, he was never invited in Bush’s four years in the Oval Office.
"I think Chairman Arafat can do a lot more," Bush said. "I believe he needs to stand up and condemn -- in Arabic -- these attacks. And they have got to do a much better job of preventing people from coming into Israel to blow up innocent people."
Bush called Arafat’s death "a significant moment in Palestinian history." What I find most interesting about the president’s statement is what he didn’t say. He expressed no grief over another terrorist’s death; he spoke no praises for a butcher. In short, the president knows that with Arafat’s death, the chance to negotiate a real peace settlement might have taken a giant leap forward.
In the end, Yasser Arafat revealed himself to be nothing more than a sniveling coward masquerading as an ambassador. A man, who had lived his life stirring hatred and encouraging his followers to take their own lives while killing others, chose to die peacefully and quietly in a warm, comfortable hospital bed. He deserved a much more violent fate, since so many of his victims died in a hail of bullets or the flames of a car bombing!
Yasser Arafat’s only redeeming characteristic is that he will no longer
harm anyone else! ***
© 2004 Robert Yoho
COPYRIGHT © 2004 BY THE AMERICAN PARTISAN. All writers retain rights to their work.
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