The real Arafat

With the recent capture of a fishing boat loaded with a massive quantity of advanced arms and ammunition all headed for the Palestinian Authority-controlled Gaza Strip, the world has one more opportunity to see the real Yasser Arafat.

The Lebanese vessel contained a cargo of Katyusha and anti-aircraft rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, explosives charges, anti-tank mines, assault rifles, hand grenades and lots of ammunition. It was intercepted by Israeli Defense Forces May 7.

This is one more blatant violation of the Oslo Accords signed by Arafat.

This brazen attempt to smuggle weapons of war into Gaza should be enough to show the world that the leopard has not changed its spots. Arafat is still a terrorist — an unrepentant, bloodthirsty, single-minded, hate-filled terrorist.

How many times will Arafat be allowed to get away with murder on an international stage?

My friend James J. Welsh, who served as Palestinian communications analyst for the National Security Agency from 1969 through 1974, and who recently charged Arafat with direct complicity in the murders of two U.S. diplomats in 1973, poses the same question.

“Why is it that most everyone is willing to state what the problem is regarding the Palestinian Authority but no one is willing to go to the necessary solution?” he asks rhetorically. “The leadership of the Palestinian Authority (Arafat and his thugs) have never really renounced terror. We all pretend he has so we can feel good, but we really know he hasn’t.”

Welsh served in his post 28 years ago when the NSA monitored communications between Arafat and his Black September terror gang as they planned and executed a deadly operation in Khartoum, Sudan. On March 1, 1973, eight members of Black September, part of Arafat’s Fatah organization, stormed the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, took U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel, diplomat Charge d’Affaires George Curtis Moore and others hostage. A day later, Noel, Moore and Belgian Guy Eid were machine-gunned to death — all, Welsh charges, on the direct orders of Arafat.

The NSA knows it. The Israeli government knows it. Every U.S. administration since Richard Nixon has known it. Yet we pretend it never happened.

The Central Intelligence Agency reportedly also has more recent secret recordings of telephone conversations in which the voices of the head of preventive security in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan, and his deputy, Rashid Abu Shabbab, can be heard ordering the execution of anti-Israeli attacks in the area. The information was passed on from Washington to Jerusalem, according to a report published by the Independent Media Review and Analysis.

And now Israel has intercepted an arsenal that could only be used by Arafat to conduct an all-out guerrilla war inside Israel.

It’s time for the Israelis and for Washington to say: “Enough is enough.”

“At some point, serious thinkers and doers must begin the process of considering Arafat’s removal from the political scene,” says Welsh. “I would call it a ‘political assassination.’ That action can only come with a political act, which will effectively kill any possible continuation of U.S. financial support for the Palestinian Authority. The government of the United States holds the means to effect this removal.”

Welsh is right. If most Americans understood that Arafat not only has Israeli blood on his hands, but the blood of American diplomats, too, they would be appalled. They would be even more shocked to learn that their tax dollars provide Arafat his political sustenance.

Welsh has been frustrated in his attempts to get Congress thinking along these lines. He muses about a recent form reply he received from one of his own senators in the state of Oregon — Gordon H. Smith. Welsh had shared secret information to which he was privy as an NSA operative about Arafat’s role in the murders of two U.S. diplomats and calling for congressional action to unearth and disclose the still-secret tapes and transcripts of that 28-year-old incident.

In response, Welsh received a letter thanking him for his “comments regarding Yasser Arafat,” and inviting him to share his “views” in the future.

Welsh was dumbfounded. Here he was providing evidence in high-profile murders of U.S. diplomats and it is treated like a routine constituent letter.

Nevertheless, Welsh says he will not relent in his efforts to expose the perpetrator of this and other heinous crimes — Yasser Arafat. And, for what it’s worth, neither will I.