Best Idea I’ve Heard In A While
“Here’s one of the ideas currently being batted around, with utter seriousness, by the political and military decision-makers: The countries of the European Union, in coordination with Egypt, will convince Yasser Arafat to leave the region and to let his successor, whoever that may be, run the affairs of the Palestinian people. Europe and Egypt will vouch for Arafat’s welfare, while also ensuring that he refrains from active involvement in what happens in the territories.”
I think it sounds like anti-democratic thuggery or murder. Too bad the writer can’t bring himself to face facts and say “assassination” he wimps out and uses “neutralization”
I also think that some Israelis are projecting all the problems of the mid-east conflict onto Arafat. I really don’t think that removing him will remove all the obstacles, or it may not remove any at all.
How would they “convince” Arafat to leave ? He has already said he will die in Palestine and I doubt anything will change his mind. If the “convincing” comes in the form of an Israeli special forces squad in black ski masks and submachine guns then I don’t think that’s going to make the Palestinians want peace more. I think that would set the process back considerably.
He’s the elected leader of the people in an internationally observed election. What right does the EU or Egypt have to tell the Palestinians that they cannot have their democratically elected leader ? If they’re going to charge him with a crime – like Milosevic – then do that, but that’s totally different – that’s a legal process, not coercion. Why don’t the Israelis push for another Palestinian election and hope that Arafat loses ? At least that wouldn’t be anti-democratic.
dude, arafat is a vile terrorist thug that people are forced to support for fear of their lives .. he is the biggest obstacle to progress in palestinian leadership .. that’s like saying saddam didn’t deserve to be deposed. he should have. it just shouldn’t have been bush to do it.
i agree with babylonian. israelis are projecting all of the region’s troubles onto arafat. they’re doing this because it’s easier than actually dealing with their problems. it’s so much easier to blame and point fingers and then look inside, take responsibility, and make the necessary changes.
mo1, there’s no doubt that arafat was and is a terrorist. but so what? yitzhak shamir, menachem begin and george washington were insurgents, militants, revolutionaries, terrorists, illegitimate leaders too.
we’d be much more well-served by stopping this blame game with arafat and starting to develop real solutions either unilaterally or with partners that we can talk to. and there are plenty of them out there. if yasser dies or leaves, what will be the difference? the sharon gov’t doesn’t have any solutions other than to continue beating the sh*t out of the palestinians, do they?…
Arafat supports the Geneva agreement along with Shimon Peres, Amram Mitzna, Abu Mazen etc.
if anyone is standing in the way of peace it’s Ariel Sharon and Likud
But by the anti-populist logic of this editorial, it would make sense to kill them rather than to let Israelis make their own democratic choice.
Furthermore – what if assassinating Arafat did NOT make things better ?
It seems like Likud thinks its a scientific fact that assassinating him would result in a better leader and more willing Palestinian public.
Or, what if Likud assassinates Arafat and then Sharon still doesn’t want to make peace until the Palestinians meet his totally unrealistic demands (which the PAlestinians will not meet) ? What then ?
What if it set back the peace process 20 years and built up whole new levels of violence and resentment that would result in the unnecessary deaths of thousands?
How is this better than the Geneva agreement
arafat orchestrates terror attacks .. he supervises palestinian security forces, and he mobilizes attacks. expelling him will definitely have an undeniably visible effect, and i do not believe it will be the negative one you’re anticipating.
“well, he’s a bloodthirsty tyrant and a killer, but we may as well leave him there cuz well, they like him.”
no.
hopeist, what you wrote both sickened me and disgusted me. “arafat was and is a terrorist. but so what?” So what? try and explain this to the toddler walking around with peices of shrapnel in his body all because he wanted to eat a peice of pizza with his family.
and to compare Arafat to Washington, Begin and Shamir ????? you gotta be kidding. they never deliberately targeted innocent men, women and children to further their cause.
as for Babylonian you might have a point if the Palestenians actually were free to make an informed decision on who to vote for. as of now their form of democracy is just like any other arab country’s. (See Iraq in Saddam Hussein’s era). If “arab democracy” would make it’s way to america you would not be allowed to voice your opinion as you can now.
yeah…it’s easy for arafat to be democratically elected when he’s the only one on the ballot. some democracy.
muflager,
give it a break with the toddler bit. toddlers and lots of other categories of human beings are being killed, maimed and made miserable on both sides of this conflict — many more on the palestinian side, if you really want to get into it.
focusing on arafat as the reason and cause and blame for all that is happening is utterly unhelpful and a total distration from dealing with the real issues. focusing on arafat is not a way of solving problems and stopping the killing and beginning to treat each other with human dignity and equality. it’s a way of stalling and blaming and maintaining the status quo. if and when arafat goes, we’re still going to have terror and warfare and maimed toddlers. because arafat is not really, truly the issue.
begin and shamir and washington were all considered terrorists and all used guerilla tactics to achieve nationhood. deal with it.
finally, the way our current, minority-elected president came into office makes “arab democracy” look halfway decent.
I’m pretty sure this is a joke 🙂 but it might not be:
Arafat Calls for Democratic Elections in the United States;World Reaction Mixed
Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat stunned the world yesterday by demanding that the United States hold democratic elections for a new Chief Executive before it attempts to continue in its role as broker between Israel and Palestine.
“Mr. Bush is tainted by his association with Jim-Crow-style selective disenfranchisement and executive strong-arm tactics in a southeastern province controlled by his brother,” said Mr. Arafat, who was elected with 87% of the vote in 1996 elections in the West Bank and Gaza, declared to be free and fair by international observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. “Our count shows that he would have lost the election if his associates hadn’t deprived so many thousands of African-Americans, an oppressed minority, of the right to vote. He is not the man to bring peace to the Middle East.”
Hugo Chavez, elected president of Venezuela with 62% of the popular vote, concurred with Mr. Arafat. Chavez has long been a victim of Bush’s anti-democratic attitude, as the Bush administration funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars through the “National Endowment for Democracy” to anti-Chavez forces and reportedly gave the go-ahead for an attempted military coup by those forces. “After it was over and I was back in power,” said Chavez, “his administration actually told me ‘legitimacy is not conferred by a majority vote.’ Unless, of course, it’s a majority of the Supreme Court. I respect the local traditions, however quaint, of the United States, but he hardly sets the best example for the Middle East, does he? Why don’t we get back to that idea of an international conference to settle the question of Palestine?”
Bush was not without his supporters, however. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, elected head of a country that legally discriminates among its citizens on the basis of religious belief, forbids political candidates from advocating an end to that discrimination, and disenfranchises an entire people through military occupation, dismissed the call as “absurd.”
Hamid Karzai, recently “elected” head of Afghanistan by a grand council, or “loya jirga,” in which a foreign body, controlled by the United States, selected delegates; unelected warlords who had ravaged the country were permitted to control the meeting and to threaten delegates who refused to vote their way; and the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, refused to allow at least two other candidates to stand for election, added his support for Mr. Bush in his hour of need. Said Karzai, “In Afghanistan, we have the loya jirga. In the United States, you have your own process — as we understand, it’s traditional over there for corporations to play a large part in electing officials and writing legislation. We’re very interested in looking into that kind of system ourselves.”
Vojislav Kostunica, chosen head of Yugoslavia in an election where the United States spent an estimated $25 million to influence the results, was also keen to rush to Bush’s defense, indicating that he saw no procedural problems with the 2000 elections.
And Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, long derided for his claim that “Asian culture” is at odds with universal human rights, added, “The elections are strictly an internal matter, and should have no bearing on the status of the United States as a broker. The Palestinians’ high-handedness is a serious threat to national independence.”
In a surprise move, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, long an ally of the United States, supported Arafat’s call, saying, “While we’re at it, let’s take another look at our agreement on American independence. George Washington was not only unelected, he did rather associate with terrorists. Benedict Arnold would have been a much more suitable partner for peace, n’est ce pas?”
Arafat, busy working on a plan to find a new Israeli leader not tainted with the massacre of hundreds of innocents in Sabra and Shatila to negotiate with, could not be reached for further comment.
focusing on arafat as the reason and cause and blame for all that is happening is utterly unhelpful and a total distration from dealing with the real issues. focusing on arafat is not a way of solving problems and stopping the killing and beginning to treat each other with human dignity and equality. it’s a way of stalling and blaming and maintaining the status quo. if and when arafat goes, we’re still going to have terror and warfare and maimed toddlers. because arafat is not really, truly the issue.
dude…george bush is a piece of ish, agreed? now–if we want to make change and progress in this country, we need to get george bush out of office, right? now, if george bush stays in office and controls our military forces for 25 years or so, we don’t have much of a chance for change, correct?
arafat is a HUGE problem.
begin and shamir and washington were all considered terrorists and all used guerilla tactics to achieve nationhood. deal with it.
begin, shamir & washington did not target civillians. to liken arafat to these men is an attrocious and underhanded thing to do. begin did not brainwash children into killing themselves. shamir did not tell the world he wants peace, and then go home and tell his entire community “by the thousands we will go as martyrs.” washington didn’t send snipers to shoot children through their bedroom windows.
i agree that the israeli government and military have done some reprehensible things, but there is absolutely no excuse for palestinian terrorism, and there is no justification behind labeling their ‘struggle’ a war of ‘independence.’ when your slogan is “palestine will be free from the river to the sea”, that doesn’t mean you want an independent state. it means you want to destroy israel.
“Qureia currently heads an emergency Cabinet whose term expires Nov. 4. There had been some uncertainty over whether Qureia, upset by arguments with Arafat over control of the security forces, would agree to continue in the job.”
that’s two prime ministers in a row arafat will not hand control over to. what if howard dean were elected president and george bush wouldn’t hand over control of the u.s. military? let’s say there was a paramilitary wing of the u.s. army, like the green berets, that bush used to attack his opponents; and while dean was president, working towards peace, bush sent the green berets to go kill black voters in florida, or illegal immigrants or something. would you consider bush to be an obstacle to peace?
i sure as shit would.
al aqsa martyr’s brigade, an offshoot of arafat’s fatah party, is a terrorist organization any way you look at it. the haganah didn’t exist anymore when begin was in office. and even so, the haganah never did a fraction of the damage arafat has done in his career. the man belongs behind bars.
Thank you Mo1 couldn’t have said it better myself. Now as for you hopeist -“focusing on arafat is not a way of solving problems and stopping the killing and beginning to treat each other with human dignity and equality” Arafat as the father of modern day terrorism and is the predominant reason rational people have not gotten to the forefront of this debate. when you cloud this complicated problem with violence – random terrorist instigated violence, normal rational people’s opinions and voices get stifled and marginalized.
as for the toddler comment – you can’t be serious. there is nobody in the Israeli government who is sitting there and saying “well the terrorists killed 12 babies this morning we have to kill 12 more babies to even the score”. to even suggest that is beneath contempt. every single time there is someone killed in a targeted assasination that was not the intended target the Israeli government has issued an apology. quite contrary to the other side who dance in the street and hand out candy every time they kill innoncent women and children.
mo1, i’d really urge you and the rest of the mainstream jewish community to take your focus off of arafat. it’s utterly counterproductive.
as far as being a horrible guy goes, yeah. ok. right. it is not at all difficult to make the argument that ariel sharon is a war criminal. in fact, many people do make this argument and some day soon these folks may very well have the power and legitimacy to do to sharon what is being done to milosovic. depending on who you’re talking to, our guy is not so much better than theirs. and i’m not so sure i disagree with them. the bottom line is that both buys are pursuing policies that destroy the option of a two-state solution. both guys believe in transfer or river-to-the-sea. neither of them have any desire to figure out how to live together.
what has become clear in the last few years is that our political leaders really don’t have solutions for the kinds of problems we’re facing. arafat sure doesn’t have solutions. but neither do sharon, bush, putin, assad, saddam, you name him. these guys are perfectly happy to allow their people to beat the sh!t out of each other indefinitely. they don’t really work for us, their people.
placing blame on them, waiting for them to do something, focusing all of our energy on them and their actions — it’s simply a way of avoiding our responsibility to do something about these problems. demonizing (or glorifying) these leaders is a way of simplifying complex issues, personalizing them and disempowering us, the people, from actually believing we can do anything about the problems in our neighborhoods.
one way or another arafat is going to be gone soon. maybe the pope will go first, but arafat is well on his way out (so is heart-attack-man-sharon for that matter). they’ll be gone and our problems won’t be solved. because we’re not focusing now on solving the problems. we’re sitting around talking about whether arafat should stay or go. it’s a total distraction. when you and the rest of the jewish community talk about the need to get rid of arafat, we’re parroting the ideas and policies of people who don’t really care about making a healthy, functional and peaceful society. we’re not really talking about taking responsibility and solving problems. we’re not looking inside and doing what we can right now to make things better. we’re blaming.
when sharon and arafat disappear, it’s entirely possible — likely even — that they will be replaced by even more hardline, heartless and irrational religious zealots. without making real efforts to give palestinians a better life, to give them something to live for, they’re going to keep blowing themselves up. and we’re going to end up with arab leaders that will make us miss arafat.
when sharon and arafat disappear, it’s entirely possible — likely even — that they will be replaced by even more hardline, heartless and irrational religious zealots. without making real efforts to give palestinians a better life, to give them something to live for, they’re going to keep blowing themselves up. and we’re going to end up with arab leaders that will make us miss arafat.
dude…i really don’t think you know what you’re talking about. arafat has embezzled millions, if not billions, of palestinian aid dollars into his own private accounts. the palestinian parliament is currently investigating his misconduct. read more about it here. he has starved his own people and deprived them of needed medical aid, economic investment and infrastructure. he has whipped his people into a frenzy to advance his own agenda. he is a terrorist thug and he is, most certainly, a primary cause for all the turmoil in that region today. the issues that are at hand in the occupied territories have all been perpetuated by his mismanagement. do not blame israel for acting to diffuse the bomb that he set the clock ticking on.
it is already clear that when arafat goes, he’ll be replaced by guys like abbas and queria–men who are for certain more moderate than arafat, and who are willing to go after the terrorists and broker peace. arafat fought abbas on control of palestinian security forces because abbas intended to crack down on hamas and islamic jihad. for now, palestinian security forces are used to help mobilize terror attacks. that will not end until arafat relinquishes control of the palestinian authority.
when that happens, israel will see no further need for hardliners like sharon, because there will no longer be as severe a physical threat of violence looming over their heads.
for now, they are under the impression that 60% of palestinians want them dead, and that’s according to the palestinian authority.
…so long as that’s the case, you can bet your ass israel’s going to vote for a hardliner.
Tapping Into Jews’ Fears
uh, what’s your point with that article? it doesn’t say anything except that worldwide conditions of antisemitism and terrorism are causing jews to be more alarmed than they’ve been in recent years (which they have every reason to be), and that the head of the ZoA is using that “climate of fear” to promote zionism.
it’s not like klein’s lying. arafat used the period of relative calm brought by oslo to arm and train his people. this is a known fact. the palestinians were preparing this intifada long before ariel sharon walked the temple mount. he just gave them a reason to unmask themselves.
you don’t need to scare me with the resurgence in world antisemitism to make me despise arafat. as far as i’m concerned, that resurgence is due quite largely in part because of him.
My point is that people like Klein (& Sharon) use scare mongering about the dangers of anti-semitism as a tool to promote Zionism and/or further swings to the far right, which in turn, promotes more anti-semitism.
“The practical upshot: not only does Israel not protect the Jews from anti-Semitism, but quite on the contrary – Israel manufactures and exports the anti-Semitism that threatens Jews around the world.”
–Uri Avnery – “Manufacturing Anti-Semites“
“Israel manufactures and exports the anti-Semitism that threatens Jews around the world.”
See, here’s the problem with Avnery’s line of thought–so long as there are Jews, there will be antisemitism. Today’s it’s Israel, yesterday it’s the banks, tommorrow it’s something else. Racists and xenophobes–antisemites–will always find something wrong with Jews to justify their persecution of them. Today they have Israel’s military response to terrorism as an excuse to avow their Jew hatred. If and when Israel recedes, or if the Israelis & Palestinians make peace, they will just find something new to single Jews out for.
So yeah, Herzl was wrong. It’s not diaspora that causes antisemitism. It’s our very presence which does. Period. Does that mean we should lay down and die so that antisemites will not be disturbed by our breathing?
Also, the Diaspora has not ended. We’re still pushed to the four corners of the Earth. So Avnery’s point there is invalid. If everyone “came home” perhaps there would be no world antisemtism, simply for the fact that the Jews wouldn’t be spread about in places where they can be persecuted.
See, here’s the problem with Avnery’s line of thought–so long as there are Jews, there will be antisemitism.
Avnery is 80 years old and came of age in Germany in the 1930s. Among his experiences, he wrote a book called “The Swastika” (1961, Hebrew), which is an analysis of the growth of the Nazi movement in Germany.
I don’t know you personally, so I don’t know what kind of anti-semitism you’ve experienced as an American but I would guess that Avnery knows more about anti-semitism than you and me put together. I personally would hestitate to second-guess him. But it’s a free country (sorta)
Avnery also knows Ariel Sharon quite well – “Over the years, he has written three extensive biographical essays about him, two (1973, 1981) with his cooperation.”
well, let me put it to you plainly–
1. all four of my grandparents escaped concentration camps.
2. my mother is a long-time holocaust awareness activist. in school, my friends called her mrs. holocaust. if you visit her blog, http://www.jewschool.com/jeanette, there’s a picutre of kyle’s mom there for a reason.
3. because of her activism, in 1984 or so, a group of skinheads firebombed my back porch in teaneck, nj.
4. when i was in high school, a group of students drew a picture of me on a bathroom wall with the words “kyke”, “penny pincher”, and “jews burn in the oven,” and my name hovering above it; the students responsible were never punished.
5. in my junior year, while discussing the catholic church’s system of indulgences, a girl turned to me in the middle of my class and told me i was going to burn in hell cuz i killed jesus and that the holocaust never happened–we just made it up to have something to bitch about. the next day, on my way into class, she should in the door with her arms folded and told me, “sorry, no jews allowed.” my mother called the principal who told her the girl was entitled to her opinion. my mother said, “these are matters of fact, not opinion–fact being, the jews didn’t kill christ & the holocaust did happen.” he said, “what do you mean the jews didn’t kill christ? what do you think was carved on the cross.” what ensued was a brief legal battle waged, on our behalf, by the state of nj’s civil rights commission, which ended with a court ordering that my school implement a tolerance education program.
6. my mother also knows ariel sharon and wrote a rather lengthy biographical piece about him for the magazine she edits.
7. when i lived in jerusalem i was both physically and verbally assaulted by palestinians on more than one occasion for simply being a white jew.
8. the doctor who died in one of the recent suicide attacks was my cousin.
9. my sister is a former kach activist and now a proud member of the jewish legion.
10. i have read dozens of books on the history of the jewish people, the holocaust and the formation of the state of israel.
…i will not claim to know more than avnery, but i believe i have more than enough experience to qualify as having some degree of authority on the subject of antisemitism.
stood* in the door
Dude!,
The one-sided perspective of your statement below is kind of amazing. You could virtually be describing either Arafat OR Sharon.
A very close Jewish American relative of mine has been working in Israel with the Sharon government for a few years now. He is utterly blown away by the way Sharon runs his government. My relative compares the Sharon government to a mafia or gang. Sound familiar? My family member has become so disgusted and disenchanted that he has virtually given up working with the current Israeli government and now just works with community groups and individual Israelis with personal integrity. Sharon and his sons also have been under investigation for corrpution and graft. Sharon also has brought his people to the brink of economic ruin, despair and poverty. He also has whipped his people into a frenzy… your discounting of his walk to the Temple Mount is kind of incredible. Sharon too is a primary cause for turmoil in the region — not just today — but for the last 25 years.
Again, my point being: It’s not helpful to focus entirely on the other guys’ problems. We don’t necessarily have control over that. And when we do try to control them and their problems, it exacerbates the problems. That’s a simple lesson from Relationships 101. Let’s deal with our crap. Let’s not sit around and blame and point fingers. Arafat and Sharon — let’s work around these two bitter, violent, angry, rotten old men.
“…has embezzled millions, if not billions, of palestinian aid dollars into his own private accounts. the palestinian parliament is currently investigating his misconduct. read more about it here. he has starved his own people and deprived them of needed medical aid, economic investment and infrastructure. he has whipped his people into a frenzy to advance his own agenda. he is a terrorist thug and he is, most certainly, a primary cause for all the turmoil in that region today.”