The PLO openly sent snipers to fire on the Jews (Ma'ariv, May 16). Israeli Arabs in Nazareth attacked police (ibid). Israeli Arab students had a Naqba Day rally right under my window at Haifa University, with PLO flags and with the usual pusillanimous response from the leftist university authorities. The Palestinian Authority's Minister of Communications, Hamas veteran Imad Falouji, called on Palestinians to kidnap and snatch Israeli civilian hostages and hold them (Ma'ariv, May 16). Shimon Peres broke into Barak's office in tears and demanded he stop the shootings at once (by Israel in response to the pogromchik attacks).

The Israeli Left responded as you'd expect. The >military (which is part of the Left) moaned about how Arafat was "losing control of his people," despite the obvious fact that Arafat was in full control. Even far-leftist Ha'aretz (May 16) reports that the riots were run on the streets by members of Arafat's own Fatah. Ha'aretz also reports that on Radio Palestine Abu Mazen, Arafat's second-in-command, openly took credit for the pogrom and explained it as a necessity for getting imprisoned Palestinian murderers released.

The Israeli leftist press and TV stations warned about the imminent threat of violence, not from the PLO's Gestapo, but from participants in an anti-Oslo rally in Zion Square. The police, under orders from McCarthyite Police Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, officially asked the Knesset to end its deliberations early due to the clear and present danger from having so many "Rightists" in the capital. Never mind they were in a square three miles away.

The Leftist press repeated over and over again that these were the very same anti-Oslo dissidents who murdered Rabin by holding an anti-Oslo rally in that very same square. After all, everyone knows Rabin was murdered by the exercise of free speech. And some Peace Now folks used a projector to shine messages on a wall of the same Square during the rally, reminding everyone that all those who oppose Barak were collectively guilty of murdering Rabin by exercising free speech. It was, after all, at that 1995 rally of the "Right" in Zion Square where a poster of Rabin in SS uniform was spotted and we all know this is what produced the assassination. Except it turned out the poster was prepared by two 14 year olds and was in fact distributed to the press by the Secret Services' agent provocateur Avishai Raviv as part of his "dirty tricks" to discredit the Right. In any case, at the rally, which the press says had tens of thousands (this means there were hundreds of thousands there), much to the disappointment of the McCarthyite left, there was not so much as a shoving match.

The pogrom was all part of the PLO's newly declared national holiday of mourning, protesting the creation of Israel and demonstrating its intention to erase this historic error. The official excuse for the murderous rampage was that Israel has still not released some Palestinian "prisoners." In fact, Israel has already released almost all the Palestinian murderers and terrorists it ever held. It has released all those who "only" wounded and maimed while attempting murder, and all those who "only" murdered Arabs accused of collaborating with Israel. Those few left in prison are those who actually murdered Israelis. They are not "political prisoners" any more than is Sirhan Sirhan. They are common murderers and criminals. They should have been executed long ago (let us note how unambiguously and enthusiastically Jewish tradition favors capital punishment). They should never be released under any circumstances. And in the name of these jailed murderers of Jewish children, Arafat personally and directly ordered a pogrom.

The pogrom involved not merely assaults on Israeli troops and cars, but terrorist assaults on Jewish shrines: Joseph's Tomb in Nablus and Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem. It was indeed a Post-Zionist Kristallnacht, and the lemming forces of Oslo are directly and personally responsible for it.

Instead of taking it as a wake-up call, the Israeli Left responded in character. So what if the PLO was admitting it ordered the pogrom? Arafat had merely wanted violent riots, you see. He did not intend to have his forces open up with live fire. They simply got carried away!

And then came the piece de resistance. On the very day when Arafat's stormtroopers had perpetrated yet another pogrom, on the day the PLO had dedicated to the eradication of the Zionist entity once and for all, on the day when PLO officials were not only boasting of having ordered the pogrom but also openly calling for kidnappings of Jewish civilians, on this very day, the Knesset voted to hand over parts of Jerusalem to the thugs of Yassir Arafat. The timing was just in case the PLO had missed the message that the Jews are on the run and will soon be in the sea and so violence is always the best policy when dealing with Israel.

Now I would ask you to imagine the United States voting to hand over Georgetown and Arlington to

Outpost               - 8 -               May 2000