John, I thought you might be interested in an erudite point of view from William Saphire:
Excerpts from William Safire's article in today's New York Times, entitled: Arafat's Arsenal of Missiles .
"In launching a war to drive the Jews from his Palestine, the Arabs' Arafat has come up with an impressive array of weaponry... But the pride and joy of Arafat's arsenal is a weapon of mass terror that has no known defense: the human missile.
"The latest in a series of these, carried by a brainwashed suicide bomber, ripped apart a score of young Israelis last week. These were mainly Russian immigrant women of child-bearing age, a high-priority target for those in Baghdad, Damascus and Jericho who dream of militarily or demographically overwhelming the Jews. Because the human missile that massacred Tel Aviv teenagers so satisfied the lust for casualties, and because the incredible restraint of Ariel Sharon was about to snap, Arafat "condemned" this attack and told a visiting German diplomat he would join Sharon's self-imposed cease-fire "unconditionally." That means only that Arafat will not insist on the
latest reward for violence recommended by the Mitchell commission, Bill Clinton's final vehicle for appeasement: cessation of construction in and around already-existing settlements.
"Sharon had already pledged to build no new settlements, a concession not offered by Rabin or Barak, for which he got no credit. An unnatural "freeze" on the natural growth of existing Israeli settlements would be fair only with an equivalent restriction on the expansion of Arab villages in the disputed territories. Not in the cards.
"Arafat's guilty promise of a cease-fire may stay Israel's avenging hand if he finally takes the steps necessary to stop his war. His word is worthless because he has long specialized in what the poet Milton called "a certain clandestine Hostility covered over with the name of Peace."
"Arafat knows... where the human missiles are being programmed and armed. Such fanatic indoctrination takes time and isolation; it takes teachers of terror skilled in evoking visions of a martyrdom and requires recruits from vulnerably infuriated families who are known to other cells. The brainwashing is reinforced with official broadcasts of films of a dead boy beckoning potential suicide killers to join him in paradise...
"Does anybody still believe that Yasir Arafat is out of the loop in all this? For years, doves have bought the illusion that he was a peacenik at heart who had to bring along the extremists of the "Arab street." Yet, when the moment of decision came at Camp David, he was the man in the street, demanding all or nothing. When nothing was what
he got, he became a hero by launching a war. Because his terrorists are ecstatic at their famous victory over the Russian immigrant youths in Tel Aviv, and because his European allies are a little embarrassed by his bloodletting, Arafat will lower the level of violence - for a while..." |
