The Long War Journal: Adieu to Arafat?
Written by Bill Roggio on October 28, 2004 8:37 AM to The Long War Journal
Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2004/10/adieu_to_arafat.php
Reports from Ramallah indicate that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is seriously ill and possibly on his deathbed. Arafat’s rise from exiled fringe Palestinian terror leader to internationally acclaimed Palestinian terror leader bridges the conflict of yesterday, the Cold War, to the conflict of today, the Global War on Terror or World War IV. His assent illustrates the Western world’s naivety in understanding the dangers of dealing with the Soviet trained Arab Marxists that embraced both the nationalist Palestinian cause and the ideology of the Islamofascists.
Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction assumed control over the Palestinian Liberation Organization shortly after the Pan-Arab defeat in the Six-Day War by the Israelis (a full and somewhat sanitized biography that glosses over his involvement in terrorism can be read here). In the wake of the defeat of the Soviet Union’s client states, Syria and Egypt, the Soviets embarked on a program to sponsor terrorists to undermine Israel, America’s ally in the Middle East. Ion Mihia Pacepa, “the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc” (he was Romania’s Chief of Intelligence) describes his first encounter with Arafat.
When I first met Arafat, I was stunned by the ideological similarity between him and his KGB mentor. Arafat's broken record was that American "imperial Zionism" was the "rabid dog of the world," and there was only one way to deal with a rabid dog: "Kill it!" In the years when Gen. Sakharovsky was the chief Soviet intelligence adviser in Romania, he used to preach in his soft, melodious voice that "the bourgeoisie" was the "rabid dog of imperialism," adding that there was "just one way to deal with a rabid dog: Shoot it!" He was responsible for killing 50,000 Romanians. In 1972, the Kremlin established a "socialist division of labor" for supporting international terrorism. Romania's main clients in this new market were Libya and the PLO. A year later, a Romanian intelligence adviser assigned to the PLO headquarters in Beirut reported that Arafat and his KGB handlers were preparing a PLO commando team headed by Arafat's top deputy, Abu Jihad, to take American diplomats hostage in Khartoum, Sudan, and demand the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian assassin of Robert Kennedy.
The Soviets were major backers of Arafat’s brand of poison, and invested time, effort and money to promote Arafat as a legitimate leader of the Palestinian cause. Mr. Pacepa further documents this:
Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world's "kings, queens & despots," with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.
The evil of Soviet Communism fell in 1989, but it spawned Arafat, the pioneer of Islamic suicide bombings, and the promoter of hijacking and other tools of the terror craft.
"I invented the hijackings [of passenger planes]," Arafat bragged when I first met him at his PLO headquarters in Beirut in the early 1970s. He gestured toward the little red flags pinned on a wall map of the world that labeled Israel as "Palestine." "There they all are!" he told me, proudly. The dubious honor of inventing hijacking actually goes to the KGB, which first hijacked a U.S. passenger plane in 1960 to Communist Cuba. Arafat's innovation was the suicide bomber, a terror concept that would come to full flower on 9/11.
The Soviets were masters at exploiting the Western world’s vulnerabilities and the intellectuals of the Left, and they capitalized on America’s divisions over the Vietnam War.
In 1972, the Kremlin put Arafat and his terror networks high on all Soviet bloc intelligence services' priority list, including mine. Bucharest's role was to ingratiate him with the White House. We were the bloc experts at this. We'd already had great success in making Washington -- as well as most of the fashionable left-leaning American academics of the day -- believe that Nicolae Ceausescu was, like Josip Broz Tito, an "independent" Communist with a "moderate" streak. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov in February 1972 laughed to me about the Yankee gullibility for celebrities. We'd outgrown Stalinist cults of personality, but those crazy Americans were still naïve enough to revere national leaders. We would make Arafat into just such a figurehead and gradually move the PLO closer to power and statehood. Andropov thought that Vietnam-weary Americans would snatch at the smallest sign of conciliation to promote Arafat from terrorist to statesman in their hopes for peace.
Arafat was trained, purchased and paid for by the KGB (the full extent of his collusion with the Soviet Union can be discerned by a full reading of Mr. Pacepa’s articles). The Soviets achieved a stunning success in promoting Yasser Arafat as a legitimate resistance fighter and leader of the Palestinian people. Arafat was a patient man, he was able to outlast his Soviet handlers, navigated the dangers of exile Palestinian politics, and eventually achieved the status as Palestinian Authority Chairman under the 1993 Oslo Peace accords. The Soviets chose well. Arafat adroitly wooed the Western world, which purposely blinded itself to his terrorist activities, his fierce hatred of Israel and his connections to the Soviet Union. The Europeans, the United Nations, and Presidents Carter and Clinton honored Arafat as a statesman and provided him with the legitimacy and moneys, just as his former KGB handlers predicted.
Yet every one of the Western world’s attempts to domesticate the “reformed” terror master failed. His assent to Chairman of the Palestinian Authority only lead to increased corruption, nepotism, massive embezzlement of funds from America, Europe and Israel, which were intended to build the nascent Palestinian state, and the ongoing sponsorship of his terrorist allies, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The nations of the West deluded themselves in believing his goal was a free Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, yet Arafat has never recognized Israel’s right to exist. His goal is the destruction of the Israeli state, via a combination of terrorism, diplomatic pressure and wearing down the will of the Israeli people in order to achieve the Right of Return, which would allow exiled Palestinians and those never born in Israel to flood the Israel state and remove the Jewish majority. The Palestinian Right of Return is the modern day Trojan Horse which would lead to the death of the Jewish state.
Arafat’s rejection of the generous Camp David peace talks which provided for a Palestinian state was followed by the PA and Arafat backed Second Intifada in the Fall of 2001, and which continues to this day. The continuing conflict has been an abject failure for the Palestinian Authority. America, under the leadership of President Bush, has refused to negotiate with Arafat until he lives up to his obligations under the Road Map, specifically reigning in known terrorists and works to prevent future terror attacks. The PA has seen their power diminish in the West Bank and Gaza, as the various terror factions that Arafat succored have battled over control over the remnants of the power structure. Much of Gaza is lawless, leaders of the Palestinian Authority, including police chiefs and mayors, are routinely targeted.
The Palestinian Authority maintains nominal control over their territory, and the only thing preventing an outright civil war is Arafat’s control over the large factions in the Palestinian political spectrum (the term ‘political’ is used loosely, as this includes terrorist organizations). The West has tolerated Arafat’s dictatorship and heavy handed tactics in the PA administered regions, and he has not groomed a successor. There is no political mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power. Instead, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the various associated terrorist organizations have learned to obtain power the old fashioned way, through the application of raw force and terror.
Arafat’s death will likely cause the short knives to be drawn amongst the various Palestinian factions. The violence that is barely held in check by Arafat may rise to the surface, leading to the much anticipated blood-letting, with Hamas, al Aqsa, Islamic Jihad and the remnants of the Palestinian Authority turning their tools of terror from their outward object of hatred, the Israelis, to their inward object of disgust, each other. The West will stand by in awe, wondering how their civilized diplomatic efforts and fawning attitudes towards the benevolent Arafat could come to such a state of violence, never realizing that dealing with the Devil is the surest path to Hell.
Update:
Viva la France! Yasser Arafat is being flown to a Paris hospital. This is France's greatest guest of honor since hosting Ira Einhorn.