Last week, Israel’s cabinet voted to “remove” the obstacle of Palestinian President Yassir Arafat, citing that he sponsors and encourages terrorism and has done everything he possibly can to derail the “road map.”
Arafat is a terrorist. He is also a political leader. Rather than straddling both jobs, he has managed to integrate them into one. The United States and Israel see him as both, while the rest of the world – in the form of the United Nations – can only see the latter. They believe he is a proponent of peace. He is not.
That’s not atypical of the United Nations. When an Israeli helicopter destroys a car carrying a Hamas terrorist leader and kills him, his bodyguard and an innocent bystander pulling a donkey cart, the entire world seems to cry foul. When a 16-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up at the Israeli equivalent of a Red Cross station and kills six civilians, the world turns its head. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a double standard.
But back to Arafat. Even if we look past the crimes he and his organizations have committed against Israelis, he must still be reprimanded for the crimes he has perpetrated against his own people. Encouraging and funding “holy martyrs” (that’s Arafat-speak for suicide bombers who deliberately target civilians) breeds a culture revolving around death. To compound this is the current economic crisis in the territories. According to Forbes magazine, Arafat’s current personal fortune is estimated somewhere above $300 million. This he has funneled from aid to the Palestinian Authority. His former treasurer, Jaweed al-Ghussein, has said that he “discovered how he [Arafat] took money given to the Palestinian people by donor countries and put it in his own account.” When Israeli forces raided his West Bank offices some time ago, financial documents confiscated from his compound reveal that he has given Western aid to the families of suicide bombers.
Worse still are the crimes against Palestinian children inflicted by Arafat. Under Arafat’s rule – which is apparently indefinite — children have been indoctrinated to hate Jews and look forward to a future of becoming “martyrs.” Images of children dressed in suicide belts chanting “death to Israel” frequent Palestinian state television. “Martyrdom,” or shattering one’s body into thousands of pieces in the expectation of killing and wounding as many Israeli innocents as possible, is encouraged and respected. It is most cruel that these children are not only taught that suicide and murder are good things, but that they also should target those most vulnerable, i.e. buses of schoolchildren. Clearly, murdering schoolchildren will advance the cause of a people and send one to heaven.
But people turn their heads. Arafat is still respected as a political leader. He is also still a terrorist.
Even the United States, Israel’s closest ally, decried Israel’s decision to deal with Arafat. Colin Powell called for Israel to exercise restraint, saying that if anything were done to Arafat “…there would be rage throughout the Arab world, the Muslim world, and in many other parts of the world.” Is this the same Colin Powell of the Bush administration, whose country invaded and is currently occupying two Arab nations? What were the feelings of Muslims around the world? Is this hypocrisy, dare I ask?
I am not ignorant of or insensitive to the suffering of the Palestinian people. They live in wretched conditions. They deserve their own democratic state alongside of Israel, free of terrorism and indoctrination. But when their leader is a terrorist, Israel must be allowed to do what it must in order to defend its people. No other country would tolerate being told how to defend its people. Why must Israel?