The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
Vice President Joe Biden says the Palestinians deserve a state. He has traveled to the Mideast to press the Israelis to surrender more territory more quickly to what has been termed the Palestinian Authority. The Obama administration is giving $900 million of our money to the Mahmoud Abbas regime on the West Bank of the Jordan River, supposedly for "humanitarian" causes. This administration went out of its way to avoid being seen as "meddling" with Iran, but it shows no such restraint with Israel. Meanwhile, the Palestinians go on naming schools for suicide bombers and coaching their children to emulate these bombers. But somehow they are viewed as "partners" in the mythical peace process.
The Obama administration's position is that Israelis should withdraw from the West Bank and leave the entire regions of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians -- all in the interest of a comprehensive Mideast peace settlement. What happened when Israel did evacuate from Gaza? Hamas promptly took over.
Yasser Arafat (l) and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas
Have President Obama, Vice President Biden or Secretary Clinton ever stopped to ask why is it in the interest of the U.S. to foster a Judenrein on the West Bank? That terrible word -- which comes to us from the time of the Holocaust -- means a region cleared of Jews. We need to understand that Jews have lived in this region since biblical times. If Jews have no right to live in Judea and Samaria, why do they have a right to live in Tel Aviv, which was founded only in the early 20th century?
Why indeed. Mahmoud Abbas is the head of a shaky government that has lost most of its appeal to its own people. That's because he is not considered radical enough or violent enough.
When an election was held in Gaza, the residents there voted against Abbas's Fatah crowd and for the openly terrorist Hamas. Hamas regularly sends missiles into Israel from their Gaza fortress. World media blasted the Israelis for alleged attacks on hospitals in Gaza during a recent incursion, but Hamas routinely stores missiles in hospitals and uses ambulances to transport them. So much for "humanitarian."
Mahmoud Abbas long served on the Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) executive council. The PLO is the predecessor to the so-called Palestinian Authority. Abbas was the loyal lieutenant of Yassir Arafat. Arafat founded the PLO. He invented airline hijacking for terror purposes. Many of us recall the headlines the PLO won for these terrorist attacks -- not just airlines but the 1972 Olympics, kindergartens in Israel, and peaceful cruise ships. Many of us have not forgotten it was Arafat who gave orders for the murder of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel in Sudan in 1972.
Leopards don't change their spots. Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party emblem proves it: All of Israel disappears in the map it shows of the Mideast -- not just the West Bank, not just Gaza. When Vice President Biden stumps for a "contiguous" Palestinian state, he plays right into Fatah's hands.
Today, Palestinian media continue uninterruptedly to spew the most hateful caricatures of Jews. And Palestinian children continue to be indoctrinated in all their schools with hatred of Israel and all Jews. Only now, Americans are footing the bill.
When Arafat died, Abbas stepped up to take his place. Here's what the U.S. Government had to say about the PLO in 1988, the year that we supposedly achieved a breakthrough for peace in the Mideast.
U.S. Government has convincing evidence that PLO elements have engaged in terrorism against Americans and others. This evidence includes a series of operations undertaken by the Force 17 and the Hawari organizations since the PLO claimed to foreswear the use of terrorism in the Cairo declaration of November 1985. As Chairman of the PLO, Mr. Arafat is responsible for actions of these organizations which are units of Fatah, an element of the PLO of which he also is chairman and which is under his control.
The most recent sign of Mr. Arafat's associations with terrorism was the presence at the Algiers session of the Palestine National Council this month of Abu Abbas, a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO who has been convicted by the Italian judicial system of the murder of an American citizen, Mr. Leon Klinghoffer. In summary, we find that:
* The PLO, through certain of its elements, has employed terrorism against Americans;
* Mr. Arafat, as Chairman of the PLO, knows of condones, and lends support to such acts; he, therefore, is an accessory to such terrorism;
* Terrorism and those involved in it are a serious threat to our national security and to the lives of American citizens; and
* The headquarters agreement, contained in Public Law 80-357, reserves to us the right to bar the entry of those who represent a threat to our security.
In those days, we would not even allow Arafat to enter our country. We correctly branded him and his cohorts terrorists and mass murderers. Over time, we somehow have convinced ourselves that if we pay them enough and pet them enough, these leopards will purr like kittens. Why? Nothing we have seen in the two decades since then should convince us that the PLO has changed its spots, whatever it is calling itself these days.
Ken Blackwell is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.
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