Yasser Arafat; Head Leader of Terrorism Against Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

 

Born in 1929, the year of the USA stock market crash, Yasser Arafat was the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO.  He was born in Cairo, Egypt, and became politically active when he was a student at Cairo University.  The Palestinian Arabs were offered their own state in 1947 and they refused it whereas Israel accepted what land they were offered, even though it had now been cut apart and 80% given to King Abdullah of TransJordan.   Arafat died November 11, 2004.

Way back in 1937, The Peel Commission had concluded that the only logical solution in resolving the contradictory aspirations of the Jews and Arabs was the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, so the West had been actively engaged in solving this problem. The Arabs were not compromising in any deal suggested.   Again in 1939, the British White Paper called for the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine within 10 years, and for limiting Jewish immigration to no more than 75,,000 over the next 5 years.  This came at the height of the Nazi regime who were attacking Jews, causing them to need their own state as a refuge, BADLY.  Here, the British were unbendable and non-caring of the conditions in Europe.  Again, the Arabs refused to consider any compromises.

In 1959 Arafat began to organize the terrorist Fatah organization.  After the 1967 Six Day War with Israel, the PLO (incorporating Fatah), headed by Arafat, adopted a worldwide program of terror activities aimed at Israeli, Zionist and Jewish targets. I find it incomprehensible that even one of our top leaders found him "sympathetic" to terrorist organizations and actually admired Arafat, considering him "flamboyant."


One of Arafat's quotes: "

• We shall never stop until we can go back home and Israel is destroyed… The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromises or mediations… the goal of this violence is the elimination of Zionism from Palestine in all its political, economic and military aspects… We don’t want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel’s destruction and nothing else.
  • Quoted in the Washington Post (29 March 1970).

                                                                               

When Arafat made his famous appearance before the UN General Assembly in November 1974 wearing his revolutionary uniform and his holster on his hip,  our president was outraged, like everybody else.  Not everyone agreed with him in his camp, however. 
                                                         

Arafat in 1974 with Castro in Cuba

 One person tried to convince Bill Clinton that Arafat was a "freedom fighter" trying to free his people from their Israeli "oppressors."

“Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun.” he proclaimed to the UN members, “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”  " For the only time in UN history, a non-state representative addressed the Assembly, and Yasser Arafat did so in military uniform, and with a pistol actually displayed on his belt.'

It was a statement which perfectly illustrates the enigma of Arafat, negotiator of complex peace agreements or killer of innocents; a charismatic leader of his people commanding international acclaim, or a ruthless and corrupt demagogue. The ultimate issue, however, continuously assessed and debated by all observers of his leadership, was whether he was genuinely interested in creating a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel, or only in Israel’s eventual destruction.

This attitude is so far from the truth that it appalls me.  To free the Palestinians?  Were they slaves?  No!  They had been the ones attacking the Jews who were back in Palestine, seeking freedom from attacks in Europe themselves, because they had been promised the land their ancestors had lived on, to have as the Jewish Homeland, a much deserved award for 2,000 years of living through deadly anti-Semitism.  It was in their religion, as the Palestinian Arabs saw it, and their leadership who instigated fighting against the Jews. They were not about to allow Jews back in their midst among all the Muslims.  Instead of going along with the Balfour Declaration or the League of Nations or the UN, the Palestinians greeted the Jews with attacks.

Arafat's setbacks included the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan by King Hussein, Abdullah I's son in 1970; and  its ousting from Lebanon in 1982 by the Israel army.  I was living in Safed at that time and read about it daily in our papers and heard about it on the radio.  The Palestinians had camped in Lebanon and were attacking Israel from there.  Major Hadad of the Lebanese Christian Militia, a friend of Israel, helped out by patrolling our northern border.  Hadad asked Sharon if this group couldn't go in and stop the Palestinians and Sharon agreed, not knowing exactly what that meant, but any help was welcomed.  Needless to say, Sharon had to take the blame for the silent attack on the Palestinian terrorists.

Some terrorism Arafat was responsible for are:
"- 22 November 1968 Bomb at Jerusalem market kills 14, including two Arabs.
- 6 March 1969  Bomb at Hebrew University injures 28 students.
- 13 February 1970  47 killed when Swissair plane blown up.
- 22 May 1970 Eight children killed when school bus shelled.
- 10 May 1972 Japanese “Red army” kill 27 Christian pilgrims at Lod airport in Israel.
- 5 September 1972 11 Israeli athletes murdered at the Olympic Games in  Munich.
- 29 October 1972 Lufthansa plane hijacked. Munich killers released by  Germany.
- 11 April 1974 PFLP machine-guns 18 men, women and children in an  apartment house near Lebanese border.
- 15 May 1974 PFLP invades a school at Ma’alot in Northern Israel, killing 20  children."

I moved to Safed, Israel in 1981 to teach English at the junior high. The children killed in 1974 were high school students from Safed on a field trip to Ma'alot.  I saw the cemetery, and heard the story.  It was something hard to forget.  That's why my apartment on the ground floor came with bars on the living room window.  
Arafat also supported Sadddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War.  In 1988, the PLO proclaimed a Palestinian state with Arafat as president.  "

• • "In a speech to Arab diplomats in Stockholm; Quoted in the Jerusalem Post (23 February 1996).

• We will not bend or fail until the blood of every last Jew from the youngest child to the oldest elder is spilt to redeem our land!"
•  The land was originally Israel, and after King Solomon died, the southern part became a separate state of Judah, since the tribe of Judah lived there as it was.  These Palestinian Arabs were wandering nomadic people throughout the Ottoman Empire days, and came looking for jobs from the Jews in the late 1880s.  Where do they get that the land has become THEIR LAND?  From talk by Arafat who was an Egyptian?  

                                                                           

Together with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and President Shimon Peres, Arafat was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in World Peace for his efforts in signing the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. Arafat's legacy has left him highly scorned and villified for leading the Palestinians into the Al-Aqsa Intifada, a war with Israel that lasted nearly five years from 2000 to 2005 and claimed thousands of lives on both sides of the conflict.

                                                                       

Palestinian government of Fatah-Hamas

Again, after much uniting and breaking apart, Fatah and Hamas have united once more to form a Palestine government.

Resource: The New Jewish Encyclopedia, Yassir Arafat, p. 68
Myths and Facts by Drs  Mitchell Bard and Joel Himelfarb, pp 34-35
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat
http://www.ijs.org.au/Yasser-Arafat/default.aspx
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/04/hillarys-desire-to-create-palestine.html?showComment=1429114022202#c292122127945641888
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat       MOST INTERESTING
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/04/hillarys-desire-to-create-palestine.html