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Facts and Logic About
the Middle East
P.O. Box 590359
San Francisco, CA 94159
(415) 356-7801 |
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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.
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