November 16, 2004
Dear
Friend of FLAME:
Yasser Arafat was without question one of the greatest evildoers of
this and the last century. He was on a level of evil comparable to
that of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Idi Amin or Pol Pot. The world
is undoubtedly a better place for his having finally left it. It is
sad that our own President would have expressed the hope that his
soul should be blessed and that he sent condolences upon his passing.
Virtually every country in the world is sending high-level representatives
— in the case of some countries, such as Brazil and South Africa,
their presidents — to attend the funeral of this mass murderer.
That the President sent even an under-secretary of state to represent
the United States and honor the world's longest-practicing terrorist
seems a blasphemy. One hoped he might have had the courage to ignore
the occasion.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for the Boston Globe. His excellent
analysis on Arafat's perverse life and legacy follows.
Gerardo Joffe
President, FLAME
By Jeff Jacoby,
Boston Globe, November 11, 2004
YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar
faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims
he sent to early graves.
In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows,
hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg.
In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit
to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would
not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died,
"God bless his soul."
God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of
the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents
to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky,
bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals?
Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the
vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might
stoop to bless a creature so evil — as indeed Arafat was blessed,
with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize — but God, I am quite
sure, will damn him for eternity.
Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists,
and his last two weeks were no exception.
Derek Brown wrote in The Guardian that Arafat's "undisputed
courage as a guerrilla leader" was exceeded only "by his
extraordinary courage" as a peace negotiator. But it is an odd
kind of courage that expresses itself in shooting unarmed victims
— or in signing peace accords and then flagrantly violating their
terms.
Another commentator, columnist Gwynne Dyer, asked, "So what did
Arafat do right?" The answer: He drew worldwide attention to
the Palestinian cause, "for the most part by successful acts
of terror." In other words, butchering innocent human beings
was "right," since it served an ulterior political motive.
No doubt that thought brings daily comfort to all those who were forced
to bury a child, parent, or spouse because of Arafat's "successful"
terrorism.
Some journalists couldn't wait for Arafat's actual death to begin
weeping for him. Take the BBC's Barbara Plett, who burst into tears
on the day he was airlifted out of the West Bank. "When the helicopter
carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound," Plett
reported from Ramallah, "I started to cry." Normal people
don't weep for brutal murderers, but Plett made it clear that her
empathy for Arafat — whom she praised as "a symbol of Palestinian
unity, steadfastness, and resistance" — was heartfelt:
"I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank
more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers
into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing
a military curtain around Ramallah. I remember how Palestinians admired
his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: `Our leader is sharing
our pain, we are all under the same siege.' And so was I." Such
is the state of journalism at the BBC, whose reporters do not seem
to have any trouble reporting, dry-eyed, on the plight of Arafat's
victims. (That is, when they mention them — which Plett's teary
bon voyage to Arafat did not.)
And what about those victims? Why were they scarcely remembered
in this Arafat death watch?
How is it possible to reflect on Arafat's most enduring legacy —
the rise of modern terrorism — without recalling the legions
of men, women, and children whose lives he and his followers destroyed?
If Osama bin Laden were on his deathbed, would we neglect to mention
all those he murdered on 9/11? It would take an encyclopedia to catalog
all of the evil Arafat committed. But that is no excuse for not trying
to recall at least some of it.
Perhaps his signal contribution to the practice of political terror
was the introduction of warfare against children. On one black date
in May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern
Israeli town of Ma'alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom
they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100
boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number
of imprisoned terrorists were released. When Israeli troops attempted
a rescue, the terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on
the students. By the time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21
of them were children.
Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children
have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls
the names of his victims?
So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz.
Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal
Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov
Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah
Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar. The 21 dead children
of Ma'alot — 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command.
