11/12/2004 07:56:51 AM|||Toni|||From the OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today - November 11, 2004 there is a collection of quotes regarding Arafat and his legacy. I am appalled though not terribly surprised by comments from some of the world's "Leaders". And of course we always have our favorites Jimmy Carter and Kofi Anan and Chirac. The last paragraph from James Taranto is especially biting if I were a Democrat!

By JAMES TARANTO
Finally!Yasser Arafat is in stable condition after dying in a Paris hospital. A hospital spokesman "said there would be no details about the cause of death because of French privacy laws," reports the Associated Press--secrecy that is sure to fuel suspicions Arafat died of AIDS.
Most media organizations are enveloping Arafat's long-overdue death in a giant cloud of puffery. Typical is the Washington Post, which begins its obit:
For virtually his entire adult life, Yasser Arafat had one dream, and he pursued it with such energy and zeal--some would say fanaticism--that he came to personify the dream itself.
The dream was of self-determination and statehood for the Palestinian people, and in the end he did not live to see it.
Of course, "the Palestinian people" would have had a state in 1948 had the Arabs not immediately declared war on the nascent state of Israel. Arafat, who founded the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, was instrumental in developing a Palestinian political culture centered on rejectionism, anti-Semitism and terrorism. The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby highlights one of Arafat's early "accomplishments":
In May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100 boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number of imprisoned terrorists were released. When Israeli troops attempted a rescue, the terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on the students. By the time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21 of them were children.
Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?
So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar.
France's President Jacques Chirac calls Arafat "a man of courage and conviction," while Nelson Mandela says, "Yasser Arafat was one of the outstanding freedom fighters of this generation."
Mandela won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Arafat was also implicated in the murder of Americans, as The Wall Street Journal's Robert Pollock reported in 2001:
In early 1973, Black September [a Palestinian terror group] took the American ambassador and his deputy (along with one Belgian diplomat) hostage in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, and, after President Nixon refused to negotiate, murdered them. . . .
Persistent rumors that the U.S. and Israel possess tapes of Mr. Arafat directing the 1973 Khartoum murders (confirmed to me by Ariel Sharon late last year) have gained further credence with the recent allegations of James J. Welsh, a former Navy and National Security Agency intelligence analyst. He says the NSA sent out a warning of a possible PLO attack, based on shortwave intercepts, that was inexplicably downgraded by the State Department. After the murders, it was covered up. His story deserves congressional attention. After all, there is no statute of limitations on murder.
Jimmy Carter describes Arafat as "a powerful human symbol and forceful advocate" who "was instrumental in forging a peace agreement with Israel in 1993." Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, says: "President Arafat will always be remembered for having . . . led the Palestinians to accept the principle of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state. By signing the Oslo accords in 1993 he took a giant step towards the realization of this vision."
Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Annan won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.
After signing the Oslo accords, Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. And of course the terror continued. "From the signing of the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO on September 13, 1993, until September 2000, 256 civilians and soldiers were killed in terrorist attacks in Israel," notes Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Notwithstanding Bill Clinton's last-ditch efforts at resolution, the pace of violence stepped up drastically in September 2000; since then the Palestinians have murdered 1,032.
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair says that Arafat "led his people to a historic acceptance and the need for a two-state solution."
Not all world leaders are singing in tune with this arafatuous chorus. John Howard, Australia's newly re-elected prime minister, said, "I think history will judge him very harshly for not having seized the opportunity in the year 2000 to embrace the offer that was very courageously made by the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barack, which involved the Israelis agreeing to 90% of what the Palestinians had wanted."
George W. Bush, America's newly re-elected president, essentially ignored Arafat and looked toward the future:
The death of Yasser Arafat is a significant moment in Palestinian history. We express our condolences to the Palestinian people. For the Palestinian people, we hope that the future will bring peace and the fulfillment of their aspirations for an independent, democratic Palestine that is at peace with its neighbors.
During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace.
In the short run, Arafat's legacy is likely to be more of the same. The Islamist group Hamas says it plans to continue murdering Jews (though thanks to Israel's security fence, this is a lot harder than it used to be). Quintuple murderer Marwan Barghouti, who led the West Bank chapter of Arafat's Fatah organization, urged Palestinians to retain "our commitment to the intifada." And the Fatah-linked al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade announced that it's changing its name to the Martyr Yasser Arafat Brigades.
But as America's own Democrats have learned, hate alone is insufficient to sustain a political movement. With the Arafat cult of personality broken, we may hope that the Palestinian terror movement exhausts itself in infighting and recriminations. With freedom on the march elsewhere in the Arab world, that may eventually provide an opening for the president's vision of an independent, democratic, peaceful Palestine. George W. Bush may turn out to be the best friend the Palestinians ever had.
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