Daily Alert Archives

Arafat Must Be Stopped

(U.S. News) - Mortimer B. Zuckerman It took Yasser Arafat just 100 days to torpedo the hope of President Bush that the Palestinians could be served by a new leader. Israeli intelligence, using sources and intercepts, has concluded that Arafat is a central factor in the resumption and escalation of terrorist acts that blew up the peace process. Four months into the intifada, on Feb. 12, 2001, Arafat asked a group of Palestinian senior officials, "Why don't the Israelis have more dead?" Then he added, "You know what you have to do" - a statement that marked the beginning of the suicide bombing onslaught. Since the cease-fire was officially announced on June 29, 2003, there have been no fewer than 240 terrorist attacks on Israelis, an average of three per day. Arafat has never dropped the mentality of the "national liberation organization" - formed before Israel was in the West Bank, whose purpose is to liberate all the land of Israel from the Jews. As the Washington Post summed up in an editorial: "It is obvious that he will never renounce violence against Israel or agree to a final peace settlement with a Jewish state." When I met with him at his request two years ago, he had the nerve to tell me that the terrorist bombing of a discotheque on the Tel Aviv beach that killed 21 youngsters was an Israeli sting operation organized to inspire sympathy for Israel around the world. This is not the "cycle of violence" that the media keep mentioning, only the continuous and gratuitous murder of Jews. The Palestinian militants' hatred of the Jews is open, unapologetic, and unrivaled on the world stage since the Third Reich. This is the Palestinian export to the world: suicide terrorism. Suicide terrorism cannot be appeased but must be defeated and destroyed. The Israelis understand that terrorism involves the collaboration between the bomber and his controller; those behind the suicide terrorist can be deterred by inflicting unacceptable damage on them through targeted killings and by occupying their sanctuaries. President Bush in a speech on the Middle East on June 24, 2002, made two things clear: One was that Arafat and his gang of thugs tainted by terrorism must go; the second was that the obstacle to a Palestinian state is not Israel but Palestinian tyranny, corruption, and terrorism, and until that is ended, there will be no progress to a Palestinian state and no American support for it.
2003-09-24 00:00:00
Full Article