We are grateful to The New Yorker and to Jeffrey Goldberg for reminding readers of this "supreme truth." The goal of Israel's fanatic enemies, endorsed in polls by over two-thirds of the surrounding Arabs, is the destruction of the state of Israel. And, those "peace groupies" who still endorse the theory of territorial compromise are their accomplices.

Arafat's Strange Trajectory

The Western media and human rights organizations are consumed with meting out justice to Augusto Pinochet and Slobadan Milosevic, but are reverential toward Yasser Arafat, responsible for the wanton murder of thousands of innocents, from diplomats to random victims in airports, synagogues, schools, airplanes, ships, markets, restaurants, beaches, and roadways all over the globe.

In its obsessive quest for moral equivalence, the leftists coined the expression "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist," and made into received wisdom the absurd notion that the most vicious trampling of human rights could only be addressed by attacking the "root causes." Although, on such premises, many terrorists won international "understanding" of their goals, most governments severely punished terrorists operating within their boundaries. In the United States, terrorists involved in Weathermen murders and heists are still serving long prison terms, and when their names come up for parole there is a proper and loud protest. The same is true of Japan, Germany, several Latin American countries, and indeed many Arab nations. In fact, the harshest response to Arafat and the PLO occurred in Jordan in 1970. Two thousand PLO fighters and several thousand civilians were killed, and an even greater number were expelled by King Hussein when the PLO hijacked Jordanian airplanes and threatened to destabilize the fragile kingdom.

The PLO regrouped in Lebanon, from where it conducted unrelenting terrorism against Israelis as well as civilians in Germany, Cyprus, Holland, Belgium, Argentina, and Italy. Teaching camps set up in Lebanon included Japanese, American, and German terrorists-in-training. There is direct evidence that Arafat ordered the murders of an American ambassador and a Belgian diplomat taken hostage in Khartoum in early 1973. There is also evidence linking Arafat to the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane and the brutal execution-style murder of an American serviceman. By the summer of 1975, the PLO had brought upon Lebanon a civil war in which tens of thousands of innocent civilians were killed. Since their forced exodus from Lebanon, the PLO has conducted freelance terrorism in Turkey, France, Argentina, and Africa.

Thanks to Prime Minister Rabin, Shimon Peres, ex-President Clinton and a gaggle of Western officials, this sewer rat, who should be executed for multiple murder, is accorded all the respect due an international leader. To his credit President Bush has not yet invited Arafat to the White House.

Since the Oslo process, PLO carnage against Israelis has escalated into daily murders. Even an obdurate apologist for the PLO such as Dennis Ross has thrown in the towel. Our State Department, the media, spokesmen for the American Jewish Reform movement, and other assorted jackasses continue to press for continued negotiations with a demon.

Ruth King is a member of the executive committee of Americans For a Safe Israel.

Arutz-7. Are the settlers and Arutz-7 merely political fodder for you?

2. My friends and I paid a heavy price when we fought the Rabin government. You became Prime Minister partly because of us, and now you are again turning to this same public. But when you reached power, you rushed to warmly shake Arafat's hand. Why do you hold us in such disregard and yet expect that we will trust you once again?

3. Despite all the warnings, you gave Arafat weapons and the areas [in Hebron] from where the baby Shalhevet Pass was shot and killed. From where do you draw your brazenness to again appear before the communities of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, which pays bodily for your actions every day?

In this publication, we have repeatedly said that reliance upon the existing leadership of either major party is a sure-fire recipe for failure. In the November 2000 Outpost, before Sharon's election as Prime Minister, with Labor still ascendant, your editor wrote that "the probability that a Likud-led government will change anything is virtually nil." Israel, we said then and repeat now, needs a wholly new leadership brought to power on the basis of public rejection of "everything and everyone associated with Oslo, those who brought it and those who continued it."

S.Y. Agnon on the Jewish Public

During the 1930s, in his book Shira, Nobel Prize winner for literature S.Y. Agnon wrote about the Jewish reaction to Arab terror in Mandatory Palestine. He would have been horrified to discover he was also writing about

August 2001               - 11 -               Outpost