Ediblog.com
Hang Saddam, Then Arafat
By Ariel Natan Pasko
"They got Saddam! They got Saddam!" Passengers on buses and trucks
shouted, as others fired into the air and radio stations played upbeat
celebratory music. People were dancing and distributing chocolates. These
scenes occurred all over Iraq the Sunday Saddam finally got it.
Contrast that with the responses from "Palestine". According to
Israel Radio, a senior Palestinian cabinet minister said that the
Palestinian Authority would not issue a formal response to Saddam's capture,
due to his financial support for suicide bombers and Yasser Arafat's support
of Saddam during the 1991 Gulf War.
Mohammed Horani, a legislator from PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's ruling Fatah
movement, said he expected many Palestinians and Arabs to have mixed
feelings. "Saddam is a dictator and the Iraqi people suffered under
him, but on the other hand, it was the (American) occupation that caught
him," he said. "There will be a sense of confusion in the
public."
Confusion in the Palestinian public?
Well sure, a population that when polled, regularly supports suicide
bombings by a two-to-one margin; who received during the past three years of
Palestinian terror against Israel, millions of dollars that Saddam sent to
Judea and Samaria - the West Bank - and Gaza; including US$25,000 for the
family of each suicide bomber and US$10,000 for each Palestinian killed in
fighting with Israelis, that would surely confuse them.
According to an authoritative May 2003 Pew Global Attitudes Project opinion
poll, 80% of Palestinians agreed with the statement: "The rights and
needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the State
of Israel exists." Other polls since, consistently back up these
findings. They clearly want to destroy the Jewish state; they don't sound
confused to me.
I can "understand" their moral confusion, i.e. depravity!
Which brings us to another dictator and leader of a terrorist regime -
whether as a gang, in Lebanon or Gaza - Yasser Arafat. For over 18 months
already, I've been calling on the Israeli government to bring Arafat to
Justice. I've written several articles, "An Eichmann Trial For
Arafat," "Don't Expel Arafat," "Put Arafat On Trial Like
Eichmann," and "Don't Expel Arafat 2: The Rerun."
Arafat should be put on trial for crimes against humanity, i.e. the Jewish
people, Lebanese, Americans, Palestinians, and others. Terror and murder
against Jews and Israelis worldwide, everyone knows about. But do people
remember that Arafat already some 20 years ago admitted his involvement in
the 1974 murder of two American diplomats in Sudan, or the PLO murder spree
throughout the 1970's and 1980's in Lebanon?
And yes, also Palestinians. The Americans found warehouses full of medical
supplies, baby food, and other goods the west had sent Iraq during the years
of sanctions under Saddam's regime, that Saddam withheld from his own
people, to increase their suffering and victimhood to the eyes of the world.
Arafat, like Saddam has diverted hundreds of millions - if not billions - of
dollars of western donor money, that was supposed to help out impoverished
Palestinians, but found it's way to Arafat's private bank accounts instead.
Arafat deliberately impoverished his own people, to try to increase sympathy
for them, and make himself rich. Under Arafat's regime of terror, quickie
military night courts found "collaborators" - those accused of
helping Israel - guilty and executed them without fair trial, or the right
to appeal. Arafat signed all those orders of execution. Arafat should
"also" be tried for hurting and murdering Palestinians.
Charges should be brought against Arafat, and he can be left in his Mukatah
compound. Israel should surround it for the duration of the trial, and make
it off-limits to the media, and foreign or Israeli visitors. Arafat's
telephone and other communications links to the outside world should be
cut-off. Mukatah will become Arafat's prison.
Many in the Israeli media or politicians who have raised the issue of trial,
always use the excuse, "But it would be too difficult to take him
out." There, I've solved that problem. Leave him in the Mukatah.
Around the world it is not uncommon to try terrorists or organized crime
figures without actually bringing them into court. Many times it's been
considered to be too dangerous to move the prisoner from his cell to the
court so he is represented via his lawyer. This can be done for Arafat. Due
to the public support he is likely to get among Palestinians - even though
he's been so cruel to them - moving him might be difficult. I therefore
suggest trying him in absentia. When found guilty, if the Israeli army
determines that it's too difficult to bring him to Jerusalem, to hang him
like Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann in 1961; after sanitizing the area,
the Israeli Air Force can bomb the compound with him inside, thus carrying
out the death sentence. Arafat deserves execution as much as Saddam Hussein.
Let there be no excuses to carry out justice. They just got Saddam; let's
get Arafat too!