To Palestinians, peace is the ultimate destruction of Israel

ON JULY 1, 1994, Yasser Arafat entered Gaza to establish the Palestinian Autonomous Region — betwixt-and-between creature of the Oslo peace process that was supposed to become, under the guiding light of the Oslo peace process, the physical base of another ambivalent notion, the Palestinian National Authority. I went as a reporter to Gaza a few hours before Arafat arrived and I stayed there for about five weeks, observing the early days of life and governance under the Palestinian Authority.

Arafat’s entry into Gaza was an object lesson: a purposely uncaring display of brute power. He arrived from the Sinai in a long caravan of Chevrolet Blazers and Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, 70 or 80 cars packed to the rooflines with men with guns. The caravan roared up the thronged roads and down the mobbed streets, with the overfed, leather-jacketed, sunglassed thugs of Arafat’s bodyguard detail all the time screaming and shooting off their Kalashnikovs to make their beloved people scurry out of their beloved leader’s way.

This was the whole of the Palestinian Authority from the beginning, an ugly little cartoon of Middle East despotism, a tinpot’s tinpot of a regime. There was never any pretense of democracy, of rule of law, of a free press, of a working system of taxes or courts or hospitals. There was never any real government. No one ever bothered to build an economy or create jobs or even pick up the trash or pave the streets. There were only security forces — many, many of these — and villas by the sea for Arafat’s cronies, and millions of dollars in foreign aid that seemed to always turn up missing, and prisons and propaganda. And in the middle of it all: “President” Arafat sitting in a room — surrounded by waiting sycophants and toadies and respectful ladies and gentlemen of the press — and complaining.

That summer, I saw only three serious efforts at establishing functioning government: the imprisoning of free-speakers and potential democrats, which began immediately; the likewise prompt establishment of daily anti-Israel broadcasts, and a British-run program to train hand-picked members of Arafat’s Fatah group in riot control.

Of course, there was never any real peace. Arafat had promised to disarm Hamas, Hezbollah and his own Fatah gunmen. There is no evidence he ever seriously tried. The terrorists resumed lethal operations against Israel within a month of Arafat’s arrival. Between the day Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the deal that was to buy peace for Israel, and the day Arafat and Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize for that accord, Palestinian terrorists killed 90 Israelis. In five years after Oslo, Palestinians killed more Israelis than in 15 years preceding the accord.

Meanwhile, Arafat’s government has exploited Israel’s permission to establish a police force to instead build a guerrilla army. Several months ago, some of Arafat’s most senior lieutenants were identified as the architects of an attempt to import an entire shipload of rockets, arms and high explosives into Gaza. In occupying Palestinian Authority offices this week in Ramallah, Israel plausibly claims to have discovered two container-loads of prohibited SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles and more than 200 LAW anti-tank missiles.

There is much that can be conceded in the issue of Israel and the Palestinians: the Palestinians have, in their lost land, a great and real grievance; as a moral and practical matter, Israel should admit this, and should be willing to trade land for peace with its neighbors.

But this is precisely the point: Israel did concede these questions. It has been nearly two years since Israel offered the Palestinians nearly all of the territories occupied in 1967.

Arafat’s response has redundantly proved his harshest critics right. There was never any honest intent on the Palestinian part for peaceful coexistence with Israel, any more than there was ever any honest intent to establish a government in Gaza that would function toward that end and toward the creation of a decent life for the Palestinian people. What the Palestinians seek — what Arafat has encouraged them to seek — is, as is now beyond dispute, the defeat and surrender of Israel.

Arafat and the Palestinians decided to gamble the peace process on a bet for bigger gains through war. They bet — are betting still — that Israel, pushed beyond endurance by an unprecedented level of civilian deaths, would surrender to, in essence, the destruction of the Israeli state. This is an insane bet. It will end in the destruction of the experiment Arafat subverted from the very first day.

Michael Kelly is the editor of Atlantic Monthly magazine and a graduate of the University of New Hampshire.

In Europe today, there are chilling echoes of 1938.
The infamous pogrom known as Kristallnacht -- "the Night of Broken Glass" -- rocked Germany's Jewish neighborhoods on the nights of November 9th and 10th. Nazi youth gangs destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and businesses and more than a hundred synagogues were razed.
Item: In Brussels, a synagogue on Monday was firebombed by unknown assailants. No injuries were reported, but there was considerable damage.
Item: In Marseilles, the Or Aviv synagogue was destroyed Sunday night. It was burnt to the ground.
Item: In Lyons, during the wee hours of Saturday morning, over a dozen masked youths, in two stolen cars, crashed the gates of a synagogue, setting the cars ablaze in the inner courtyard. Thankfully, in this instance, firemen arrived in time.
But there's more.
Again on Saturday, a kosher butcher shop in Toulouse was fired upon by a gunman, while in Berlin, on Tuesday, two Jewish American tourists were beaten to the ground by a gang of Mideast assailants who first asked the couple if they were Jewish. The attackers remain at large.
In Strasbourg, arson destroyed the wooden doors to a Jewish prayer house, the fifth such attack in four days.
What's happening here?
For years, Europe had fostered a climate of anti-Semitism with its unabashed support for "Palestinian" nationalism and by its relentless Jew-bashing in the press (always, of course, in the clever guise of criticism of Israel).
Europe is reaping the whirlwind for blatant anti-Semitism -- that's what's happening here.
Yet, Europe still doesn't 'get it'. Despite the mounting evidence -- damning evidence -- implicating their darling golden-boy Arafat as a terrorist, they continue to mouth-off worn platitudes about a "peace process", demanding greater 'engagement' from us.
Meanwhile, Europe continues in its orgy of Sharon-bashing, even as waves of suicide bombers attack crowded Pizzerias, malls, shopping centers, buses and night clubs.
"Nie Wieder" is German for 'Never again'. Survivors of the Holocaust vowed that it would never happen again. Auschwitz -- never again. Treblinka -- never again. Birkenau -- never again. Buchenwald -- never again.
Without this historical background, it is impossible to understand Israel's gallant, dauntless determination to survive. Even in the face of international condemnation and censure, this tiny country remains resolute, unwavering, unflinching. Israel has been blacklisted, upbraided, lectured at, reproached, rebuked, castigated and decried, but her people remain tenacious as ever.
In fact, the louder the fulminations -- the more the world gangs up on her -- the stauncher, the firmer Israel's people become.
Small wonder they're not fooled by Arafat in the least. They know that behind that carefully crafted public persona, lies a terrorist.
And how right they are.
Arafat is a murderer, a cruel and pitiless brute bereft of even a smidgen of human compassion. He is the implacable archenemy of peace, if peace means tolerance or acceptance of Jews, whom he loathes with venom -- the poison of a thousand vipers.
Arafat is an insatiable cutthroat, a serial killer, whose voracious complicity in genocide marks him -- not as a statesman -- but an international war criminal, every bit like the cracked Nazi butchers he emulates.
From Arafat's deathly hands, drips the blood of innocents, spilled by a madman's unfettered hate, his animus to rout from his fiefdom all traces of Jewry.
Arafat is ethnic-cleansing-xenophobia personified, whose zero-tolerance vision is of "Palestine" purged of Jewish "infidels", where Jews are told to "get out, and stay out!"
To Arafat, this callous, caustic, cold-hearted fiend, Jews are not human beings.
You heard right.
I'll repeat: Jews, to Arafat, are not human beings.
Arafat is a preacher of hate. Like Hitler, he poisons young minds with fear -- fear of Jews. Like the Nazis, he wraps his "cause" in the cloak of victimization, of nationalist "struggle" against "Zionist" "oppression" -- the Jewish "menance". From Arafat's paranoid rantings, "Palestinians" are molded to think that Jews are "conspiring" to "rule" the world.
He wields this fear and hate as bridges to action. But before he can muster his stormtroopers into waves of suicide bombers, he methodically dehumanizes the "enemy" -- the Jews.
The process of dehumanization is enabled by Arafat's stranglehold monopoly over the media. In the "territories", the airwaves are saturated with torrents of anti-Jewish hate-mongering, laced in the ferver of radical Islam. Propaganda is everywhere. Radio and television, as well as newspapers, books and magazines all reinforce Arafat's message of hate.
Killing Jews is not only sanctioned, it is elevated to an act of religious duty, with promises of rich rewards in the "hereafter".
Bottom line: Israel followed every jot and tittle of the phony Oslo Accords. Israel offered "Palestinians" almost everything they said they wanted. But what did Israel get for her troubles?
Twenty-one months of murder, mayhem, death and destruction -- that's what.
It's not fair, it's not right, it's not moral.
And it will not stand.
Never again.
My two cents..
"JohnHuang2"

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