Yes, yes, yes, the man won a Nobel Peace Prize. But you wanna know how Yasser Arafat and the PLO got started? It was the USSR. Good ol' Uncle Joe.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former chief of Romanian Intelligence under Ceaucescu has this piece in the WSJ today describing what Yasser and his ilk were like "before they were stars."
-- Romanian Intelligence alone gave the PLO $200,000 in laundered money every month, in addition to two cargo planes worth of uniforms and other supplies (explosives? guns?). Other Soviet Bloc states did the same.
-- Romanian Intelligence was assigned the task, in 1972, of "ingratiating" Arafat to 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 "an Egyptian bourgeois" recruited by the KGB in the early 60's and trained in in terrorism at the Balashikha school in Moscow.
-- The KGB decided to "groom" Arafat to be PLO leader, much the same way as how they groomed Kim Il Sung to be North Korea's leader. They helped by altering Egyptian birth records so that Yasser Arafat could claim to be Palestinian by birth.
-- The KGB not only published and distributed Arafat's propaganda over the Arab world, they gave Arafat a PR makeover into a rabid anti-semite for fear that his "high-minded idealism" would attract few followers.
-- In addition to training him in terrorism, communist-bloc intelligence also gave him diplomatic pointers: "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel -- over, and over, and over," Ceausescu told him for the umpteenth time. Ceausescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch.
The result: Jimmy Carter bought it...hook, line, and sinker. Carter gushed about Arafat and called Ceaucescu a "great leader."
Ceaucescu may be long dead (fittingly, killed by his own people), along with the rest of the Soviet Bloc, but their Arab Frankenstein lives on, following his long-dead master's voice. And being praised for it by people who are unable to distinguish good and evil.
Contrast this to an op-ed in the Washington Post today by none other than...Jimmy Carter himself, yet another Nobel Prize winner, musing on the 25th Anniversary of the Camp David Accords:
It has been recognized that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were a violation of international law and the primary incitement to violence among Palestinians. Our most intense arguments at Camp David were about their existence and potential expansion. The parties agreed that all those in Egypt's Sinai region were to be dismantled, and there was a strong dispute about their growth in the West Bank and Gaza, then comprising about 4,000 settlers. During the first Bush administration, Secretary of State James Baker said, "I don't think there is any greater obstacle to peace than settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an advanced pace," and the president threatened to withhold American financial aid in order to discourage settlement expansion.
But during the past two administrations in Washington and with massive financial and political incentives from the Israeli government, the number of new settlers has skyrocketed, with many settlements protected by military forces and connected to others by secure highways. An impenetrable fence is hastily being built, often through Palestinian lands.
Today, except for the fact that the Palestinian issue has become one of the foremost causes of international terrorism, our strategic interests are much less involved in the Israeli-Palestinian violence. There seems to be no urgency in resolving the relatively localized dispute, with harsh crackdowns from the Israeli military and abhorrent terrorist acts perpetrated by Palestinians who claim to have no hope for freedom and justice.
Oh, the Palestinians have a hope for freedom and justice. But Carter never even stops to consider that Yasser Arafat, the man who allows the current intifada to happen, who preaches peace in English and jihad in Arabic, and who has never stopped placing his own wealth above the welfare of his people (his net wealth is $300 million), might be why the Palestinians have neither freedom nor justice. Carter doesn't even mention Arafat's name. It's all about the Israelis and how they have failed in the "peace process."
No matter what leaders the Palestinians might choose, how fervent American interest might be or how great the hatred and bloodshed might become, there remains one basic choice, and only the Israelis can make it:
Do we want permanent peace with all our neighbors, or do we want to retain our settlements in the occupied territories of the Palestinians?
America's worst betrayal of Israel would be to support the second choice.
And what would you ask of Arafat and his cronies, Mr. Carter? Would you ask them to allow the Palestian Security services to stop suicide bombers? Would you ask them to stop inciting six-year olds to kill Jews on the Palestian version of Sesame Street? Would you tell the Saudi Sheiks and Syrian dictators who feed Palestine's misery with their terror bribes to go to hell? Would you even, dare I say it, step aside to allow a new generation of Palestinian leaders to step forward and make peace? Or do you think that the Israelis should take down that fence, make the West bank judenrein and go sing Kumbayas with Hamas?
Mr Carter, you were blind to the truth of terror when you were President. (That's why you lost.) Why bother opening your eyes now?
"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion."
(Oh, that God would give us the very smallest of gifts
To be able to see ourselves as others see us
It would save us from many mistakes
and foolish thoughts.)
-- Robert Burns, "To A Louse"
The whole Pacepa article is here. Via Little Green Footballs.