Arafat odds and ends
I expect that Charles Krauthammer's column tomorrow will be the equivalent of a rhetorical 21 gun salute delivered right to the gut of Arafat's many synchophants, apologists and enablers in the West.
Loved LGF's cute photoshop memento of the occasin.
Liked WizBang's thoughts for the funeral. (I harbored a similar thought. Did someone drive a stake through his heart to make sure?)
On a more serious note Jeff Jacoby used his column today, "Arafat the Monster," to remind us of the names of some of Arafat's victims.
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. The 21 dead children of Ma'alot -- 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command.
24 years ago when I was studying in Israel, I visited Ma'alot for a Sabbath. I remember going to the school. If these children had lived they'd likely be parents now. Instead, to much of the world, they matter less than the man who saw to their murders.
In his column at NRO, Aaron Mannes of Terrorblog concludes:
But Arafat's life's work was to justify the use of random violence and equip a generation with the means to do so. He helped set in motion the web of alliances that has manifested itself in today's super-terrorists. This is Yasser Arafat's terrible legacy.
It is a point that is too often missed - the Washington Post calling Arafat a "dreamer" - and I'm glad to see it reinforced. This is the same point that the late Michael Kelly made in "When Innocents are the Enemy:"
If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand.
Finally, for now, (via Instapundit ) there's Max Boot:
Though Arafat, of course, bore ultimate responsibility for his many sins, he could not have been so destructive without so many outside enablers, ranging from the Soviet Union, which supported him from the 1960s to the 1980s, to the European Union and the United States, which stepped into the sugar daddy role in the 1990s. And let us not forget his fan club among the Western intelligentsia, many of whom even now weep for his passing as if he were a great man instead of a criminal with a cause.
Yes the enablers are still at it. As if Palestinian nationalism innoculates one against all manner of crimes.
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