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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (7635)	11/4/2004 9:15:07 PM
From: steve kammerer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Rruff, The world is not going to stand for a Greater Israel concept no matter how slyly one tries to sneak it in. This from H20STEVE's post "Ariel Sharon’s perception of his disengagement plan as a one-time pullout for the sake or preserving the large settlement blocs on the West Bank. In fact, the White House always regarded the projected Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank as a first step in a more general withdrawal." Ariel wants to move 7,000 and keep 240,000 with his plan The Arab countries are willing to accept an Israel but not one that intends to keep growing. Until that idea stops, there won't be any peace. The Palestinians have more than suffered a little. By putting US soldiers there, the defense excuse disappears. If Israel is honest then, it doesn't need that land for defense. Ergo, back to 67 borders which is still larger than the original mandate half. When final peace happens in however many years, our troops can come home. In the long run it will cost fewer US lives and be cheaper than the method for the last 20 years.

To: rrufff who wrote (7635)	11/5/2004 3:55:23 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Arafat was born in August 1929, in Cairo - and not in Jerusalem or Gaza, as Arab sources often claim. Over the course of his career, which began well before 1964 when he took over the PLO, he has been directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis, untold numbers of Arabs and more than 100 U.S. citizens including two diplomats in Sudan whose brutal murders Arafat ordered by radio from his Beirut headquarters. In 1995, Ariel Sharon said, "I don't know anyone other than Arafat who has as much civilian Jewish blood on his hands since the time of the Nazis." Arafat is also "credited" with turning airplane hijacking into an international terrorist scourge. Over two years ago, after an Israeli plane was almost shot down in Kenya, then-Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned, "Sky-jacking terrorism first began against Israeli targets abroad by Arafat and Fatah in the late 1960's, and it very quickly became an international plague..." As father of the Palestinian nationalist/terrorist movement, Arafat saw nothing wrong with "uniting" the PLO's money and his own personal accounts. He reserved for himself sole signatory rights on the PLO's accounts, and never hid the fact that he often used the money for his own personal use. A special annual issue of Forbes Magazine reported that Arafat controlled $300 million, placing him among the richest in the "Kings, Queens and Despots" category. Some reports are that he controls five times that amount. He also used the money for terrorism. Documents found by the IDF during its Operation Defensive Shield campaign in April 2002 showed that part of the huge budget of the Palestinian Authority - funded to a great extent by countries of the European Union - was diverted by Arafat for terrorism purposes. In one example among many, a letter was found signed by Arafat authorizing the transfer of thousands of dinars to Ahmed Mahmad Iz-A-Din Al-Kassam, a Hamas member who also represented Hizbullah in the PA and was responsible for transferring money for terror attacks and supporting terrorists' families. Arafat turned down this week a request by his wife Suha, who lives in Paris, to write a will granting her his money. Experts say that the fact that he refuses to share his signatory privileges, even now, with anyone else, means that the tremendous amounts of money that were designated for the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza will either support bankers around the world in the best case, or will go to his relatives, or, in the worst-case scenario, will find their way into the Fatah coffers to continue to fund terrorism Published: 09:29 November 04, 2004 Last Update: 17:11 November 04, 2004

To: rrufff who wrote (7635)	11/5/2004 6:17:57 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Arafat, Yasser - Terrorist Leader of the Palestinians usainreview.com arlingtoncemetery.net frontpagemag.com hyperhistory.net Arafat, Yasser - Terrorist Leader of the Palestinians 1929 - by Rit Nosotro ( Last updated: 10/28/2004 20:11:05 ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ed. Note: The verb tense in this article implies Arafat is dead. However, as of Oct. 28, 2004, he was still clinging to life. Who was this shadowy leader of Palestine? Why did the KGB train him at its Balashikha special- ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s?9 As a student, he dedicated his life to freeing Palestine from Israeli occupation. As an adult he applied a mix of Marxism and Jihad to became a notorious international terrorist, staining his hands with the innocent blood of thousands of men, women, and children.1 He masterminded countless terrorist acts in his religious vendetta against Israel. His terrorist background ignored, he was accepted as a legitimate political leader. Yet despite his official charade, Arafat opposed Israeli statehood and provided decades of leadership to kill and maim Israeli citizens. According to his birth certificate, Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt, on August 24, 1929.2 As the son of a prosperous merchant and a devoutly religious mother, Arafat earned his lifetime nickname, Yasser, meaning "easy-going."3 Little is known about his childhood, except that his mother died when he was five, whereupon young Arafat's father sent him to Jerusalem to live with his maternal uncle. After four happy years, he moved back to Cairo to live with his older sister. His mother's early death and his father's basic desertion of him affected young Yassir, leaving him feeling abandoned and betrayed. His unstable childhood translated into emotional instability and inherent mistrust of people. At age seventeen, Arafat entered Faud University in Cairo. As a student, he started his infamous involvement with the Palestinian cause by smuggling arms into Palestine for use against the British and Jews. During the war between the Jewish and Arab states, nineteen year old Arafat temporarily deserted his studies in order to fight against the Jews in the Gaza Strip. Returning to Faud University, Arafat involved himself heavily in the Muslim Brotherhood and became leader of the Palestinian Students League. Arafat graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1956. He immediately joined the Egyptian army and fought in the Suez Crisis. Once discharged from the army, Arafat moved to Kuwait and opened a successful engineering business. In the late 1950s, Arafat and twenty Palestinians secretly formed al-Fatah, an acronym standing for Harakat Al-Tahrir Al-Watani Al-Filastini-the Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine.4 Through this new organization, Arafat became a "full-time revolutionary," recruiting terrorists and personally leading raids of murder and sabotage into Israeli territory.5 To help his early claim to leadership, Arafat and the KGB propagated the false legend that he was born in Jerusalem on August 4, 1929, in the elite Jerusalem Husseini clan. However, this claim was discredited by the discovery of Arafat's birth certificate, other documents, and the admission of his official biographer, Alan Hart. Although at first forming an unimportant part in the Palestine Liberation Organization or the PLO, al-Fatah appeared from the underground after the Six Day War as the "most powerful and best organized of the groups." 5 In 1968, Yasser Arafat became chairman of the PLO, which he has since politically dominated. Carrying out Article 15 of the Palestinian National Charter, Arafat killed innocent Israeli civilians in his racist attempt to exterminate Zionism in Palestine. "The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine."6 Arafat supported the murder of US Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. Under his leadership, the PLO became a military state which conducted numerous plane hijackings, bombings, and other acts against Israel. Specifically, the PLO was responsible for the Maalot High School Massacre on May 15, 1974, when Palestinian terrorists infiltrated an Israeli school, massacring twenty-six children and adults and wounding sixty-six others. Black September, a fellow organization of the PLO, caused the infamous Munich Massacre, the kidnapping and killing of eleven Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics. Finally, Arafat's own voice is heard on tape giving the order to murder two Americans and one Jordanian during the Khartoum Assassination.3 As the mastermind behind these and numerous other acts of hatred, Arafat gained his reputation as a ruthless terrorist during those twenty years bathed in Israeli blood.1 Leaving no room for doubt about Arafat's key part in Palestinian terrorism, Arafat's senior advisor admitted in 1994, "The person responsible on behalf of the Palestinians people for everything that was done in the Israel-Palestinian conflict is Yasser Arafat..."3 However, in 1988, Arafat changed his terrorist tune, extending the olive branch of peace in a United Nations session in Geneva, Switzerland. In a special announcement, Arafat declared that "the PLO renounced terrorism and supported 'the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to live in peace and security, including the state of Palestine, Israel and other neighbors. '"5 More diplomatic maneuvering between Yasser Arafat and the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. After much negotiating, the Israeli government recognized the PLO as "the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." In turn, Arafat promised that the PLO "recognized the right of the state of Israel to exist." Declaring the anti-Israeli articles of the Palestinian National Charter null and void, Arafat also stated that the PLO "renounced terrorism, violence and its desire for the destruction of Israel."7 Thanks to this supposedly huge milestone toward Middle Eastern peace, Yasser Arafat received one third of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, which he shared with Israeli ministers Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. However, Arafat never amended the anti-Israeli articles of the Palestinian National Charter, and the "terrorism, violence, and… desire for the destruction of Israel" dragged on through the 1990s, officially recommencing with the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000. Having raised a generation of youth on school textbooks and other propaganda that deny Israel territory, Arafat achieved a huge political victory in 1996, Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian-controlled territory, with an overwhelming 87% majority. Since then, Arafat escalated terrorism, in hopes of causing enough mayhem to accomplish his lifelong goal of establishing a Palestinian state, its capital in Jerusalem, replacing Israeli territory.8 It is no wonder that he was confined to his headquarters in Ramallah for his last two years by the Israel Defense Forces. Little is known about Arafat's private life, which was carefully shrouded in secrecy. In 1990, he married Suah Tawil who lives in France with their daughter, Zahwa, who was named after Arafat's mother. As a practicing Muslim, Arafat performed the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, and wore a pendant engraved with a Qur'an verse.3 This religious devotion to Islam, coupled with his negative childhood experiences, partially explains his anti-Zionist bias and his mad desire to eject the Israelis from their homeland. However, nothing can fully explain the desire for vengeance noticeable in Yasser Arafat's words, "They will fight for Allah, and they will kill and be killed, and this is a solemn oath. . . . Our blood is cheap compared with the cause which has brought us together and which at moments separated us, but shortly we will meet again in heaven. . . . Palestine is our land and Jerusalem is our capital."3 To accomplish his bigoted dream, Arafat has lived a strict, ascetic life. He has successfully escaped death in combat, survived an airplane crash, eluded the assassin's knife, and recovered from a serious stroke.5 However, he has also made a fortune off the unsuspecting Palestinians. By diverting about $900 million in public funds, Arafat ranked sixth in the 2003 Forbes' annual list of the wealthiest "Kings, Queens and Despots."2 Unfortunately, Arafat has successfully deceived the Palestinian people, concealing his sins by his status as the icon leader who will recover their precious territory. At first, Arafat climbed into power by simple gangster techniques of killing innocent Israeli people. Later masking his reputation as a terrorist, Arafat repainted his international image as that of a diplomat and world leader. Attempting to cover his vile acts with a veil of statesmanship, Arafat made flowery promises to stop Palestinian terrorism. However, he just as easily broke those promises whenever it is advantageous to his purposes. Whether by olive branch or machine gun, Arafat still intended to wrest Jerusalem and its surrounding territory from its Israeli owners and give it to the Palestinian minority. His all consuming focus was best expressed in his own words, "The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is liberated." 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Endnotes: up1 Murphy, Thomas W. "Yasser Arafat - The Forgotten Terrorist ." World History. 16 Apr. 2004 < middleeastinfo.org; up2 Wikipedia.com. "Yasser Arafat." World History. 16 Apr. 2004. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat> up3 The Peace Encyclopedia. "Arafat, Yassir." World History. 16 Apr. 2004. < yahoodi.com; up4 Palestine Facts. "How did Yasser Arafat become involved with the PLO?." World History. 16 Apr. 2004. <http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_plo_arafat.php> up5 NA. "Yasser Arafat - Biography." World History. 16 Apr. 2004. <http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/1994/arafat-bio.html> up6 NA. "The Palestinian National Charter: Resolutions of the Palestine National Council July 1-17, 1968." World History. 16 Apr. 2004. <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/plocov.htm> up7 Wikipedia.com. "Oslo Accords.." World History. 16 Apr. 2004. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Oslo_Peace_Accords_between_Palestinians_and_Israel> up8 Bossie, David N. and Gray, Christopher M. "Yasser Arafat: Architect of Terror." World History. 16 Apr. 2004. <http://www.citizensunited.org/arafatpaper.html> up9 OP-Ed By Ion Mihai Pacepa - Wall Street Journal Sept. 22, 2003