There’s a certain tragic irony to Yasser Arafat’s plight, as he finds himself facing an intifada of his own in Gaza and elsewhere.
His policemen are now vilified for killing stone-throwing youngsters in the same way Israel Defense Forces have been attacked over the last year.
This time, the demonstrators and rioters are not carrying pictures of Arafat, but pictures of Osama bin Laden – their new hero.
Arafat’s Palestinian Authority has been so embarrassed by the uprising that it has closed Gaza universities and schools, barred foreign reporters from the protests and even asked Israel for help in containing the violence.
One would almost feel sorry for Arafat unless you realize that this crisis is a mess he, himself, has created through years of actively promoting hatred – not just of Israel and Jews, but of the United States, as well.
I could go back years, of course, and dig up the most inflammatory anti-U.S. rhetoric. But, instead, let’s just look at what was disseminated to Arafat’s people from official sources in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
- On the very day of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Al Hayat Al Jadida, the official daily of Arafat’s PA, had this to say: “The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of their noble predecessors … the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson in [Lebanon] … These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history … They are the most honorable [people] among us.”
- Not quite two weeks earlier, on Aug. 30, in the Palestinian publication Al-Ayyam, Omar Helm Ghul, said: “[The Palestinians must] … harm American interests in the Arab world, with all possible means, in all places, at all levels, because the United States does not understand the language of logic and wisdom, but only the language of interests and force.”
- In Al-Ayyam, Sept. 2: “The Zionist Movement is an American invention. … The American leaders are nothing but priests, obedient to their Hebrew High Priest.”
- In Al-Quds, Aug. 30: “Saher Habash, a member of the central committee of [Yasser Arafat’s PLO faction] the Fatah. … said that the body goes but the spirit of the martyrs lives on. Habash expressed his hope that the Arab and Islamic world will act against America and Israel. … Habash demanded to strike and to threaten the American interests in the Arab world.”
- In Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 29: “[George] Bush Jr. [who] suffers from a psychological complex in regard to Arabs in general, whose details we don’t know, even though we don’t serve alcohol to his two daughters, and there is no Arab who is involved with their alcohol addiction or with their pursuit by the U.S. police. … What is astounding and surprising is to find a series of articles in American newspapers by columnists, infected with moral AIDS and … who call on Israel to deal fast blows to the Palestinians. … These writers, who are Charles Krauthammer, William Safire and Michael Malley [sic] try to portray us as if we are threatening New York and as if fighting us is an American need and that a good Palestinian is like a good Indian – dead. This is the culture of the Zionist Lobby that rules even over the bedrooms of the senior Members of Congress and the White House. It whips them in the morning and evening for fear lest they awaken from their servitude. It castrates them and supplies them with ‘Viagra Monica.’ … And the last to judge us in this area is the pathetic scoundrel Thomas Friedman who called upon NATO to conquer the [West] Bank and Gaza in order to protect his beloved Israel. … These examples of beastly writings which surpass Nazism, require that their authors be tried in an international court, for they are considered inciters who have committed crimes against humanity.”
- In Al Hayat Al Jadida, Aug. 28: “[Maher Taher] a member of the political bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine … said in a press conference in Damascus: ‘We say to the Arab nation: Hit American interests and threaten them. United States is a fundamental enemy which takes part and holds responsibility to the elimination of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian villages.’ He asked the Arab countries to take a clear and strict position towards USA, which is the a fundamental enemy of the Palestinian people and Arab Nation.”
- In an op-ed in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 6: “…History presents political regimes that were governed by political and economic greed, and that conquered other lands and peoples with the intent of robbing and exploiting their resources. Thus did Columbus … who carried out collective extermination of the original peoples of Latin America, laying the basis for the Western Colonialism which embraced Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection [Survival of the Fittest -ed] -theories which presume the technologically primitive nations to be evolutionary vestiges of the apes. … “… This is the same ‘Philosophy’ that the Zionist Movement adopted in Palestine, against the Palestinian people. … This is [the essence of] racism itself, for racism stems from exaggerating a certain race’s value as opposed to that of all other races combined, as Hitler did by raising the banner of Arian blood and the doctrine of blue blood flowing in the veins. … The United States of America and the Zionist State are two identical cases of historical development. Each of them came into existence by invasion and mass extermination of the original residents, and [each] still occupies land belonging to others.”
How could this be? Why is it that we don’t hear about these virulent anti-American condemnations in the West? Arafat appears so reasonable when he talks to Ted Koppel on “Nightline.”
As I’ve pointed out many times, you need to judge Arafat and his people not by what they say in English for western propaganda purposes, but, rather, by what they say in Arabic when speaking to their own people and, most importantly, by their deeds.
Here’s one more example of Arafat’s double-talk. On Sept. 20, Arafat was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying the following: “I have issued strict instructions for a total commitment to the cease-fire.” The very same day, here’s what Amin Maqbul of Arafat’s Fatah World Leadership was saying in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: “This [cease-fire] declaration is nothing more than a tactical initiative and a political maneuver on the part of the [Palestinian] Authority, so that the Palestinians won’t be perceived as hostile towards the peace process.”
Now, who are you going to believe – Arafat, or your own eyes?
Editor’s note: For more by Joseph Farah on the culpability of Yasser Arafat in terror attacks on America, see the November issue of Whistleblower magazine.
