By Khaled Amayreh Since the death of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat on 11 November, the late Palestinian leader has been the target of a venomous vilification blitz by the pro-Israeli media in North America, particularly in the United States. This vindictive onslaught is symptomatic of the Islamophobic and anti-Arab trends now dominating the US, especially since the events of 9/11. As such, it contains very little truth, and is largely devoid of credibility and objectivity. Arafat has been praised by millions as an outstanding freedom fighter, but reviled by his enemies, especially Zionist Jews, as a terrorist. True, Yasser Arafat was not an icon of moral excellence. His long reign was characterised by political adventurism, despotism within the organisations he chaired and nepotistic practices when in government. As president of the Palestinian Authority, a police state without a state, he held all the reins, took all the decisions, and controlled all the money. He went too far in trying to appease Israel and the United States, so much so that he often valued the legitimacy that came from foreign acceptance more than that which came from his own people's support, which seldom wavered. Nonetheless, Arafat was a bona fide Palestinian nationalist and true seeker of peace with Israel. He recognised Israel within the 1967 boundaries, revoked the Palestinian National Charter and agreed to share Jerusalem with the Jewish state. During the so-called Oslo period (1995-2000), he violently repressed and imprisoned opponents of peace with Israel, to the point of violating the civil and even human rights of his own people. Moreover, Arafat always condemned attacks against civilians, Israelis and Palestinians alike. This obviously was not sufficient for Israeli leaders, especially Ariel Sharon and his cohorts, who in effect were demanding that Arafat act and behave like a quisling. People may argue over Arafat. But to compare Yasser Arafat with Adolf Hitler, as some Jewish writers and columnists have done, is, nothing short of linguistic adultery. How could any serious person, with any modicum of intellectual honesty, compare a helpless and desperate man, who in the last 1000 days of his life was a prisoner in his own living room, to Hitler? How could any honest person accuse a nearly decimated people who spend half of their time languishing under sinister military curfews and the other half standing in long queues at ubiquitous Israeli army roadblocks (manned by trigger-happy soldiers) of seeking to finish what Hitler started? Even before the inception of the current Intifada, Arafat could not leave Gaza or the West Bank without an Israeli permit. Indeed, Arafat's every move and action were coordinated with Israel, in what was often a humiliating manner. Such a man cannot possibly be compared to Hitler, who proactively occupied and destroyed the bulk of Europe and caused the death of tens of millions of people. To be sure, Arafat was not a Mahatma Gandhi. But, most certainly, he was no more of a terrorist than David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Yitzhak Shamir, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and, by no means least, Ariel Sharon. These Israeli leaders lived all their lives as terrorists. Was not Yitzhak Rabin arrested by the British and imprisoned in Rafah camp in the early 1940s? Was not Yitzhak Shamir arrested as a terrorist and exiled by the British to a prison camp in Eritrea? Was not Menachem Begin branded a terrorist, with a price on his head, after blowing up the King David hotel in Jerusalem killing a hundred civilians in 1947? And as we all know, these four subsequently became prime ministers of Israel. And Sharon, the "hero" of the Sabra and Chatilla massacres of 1982? It is a terrible indictment of our times that this wild beast remains at large. It is also lamentable that in this age of the internet and satellite television there are people who still are not aware of the man's real nature, and others who would even give him the benefit of the doubt. Two years ago, Gerald Kaufman, a conscientious Jewish member of the British Parliament, wrote that "Ariel Sharon has made the Star of David look like the Swastika of Hitler." Last year, the former Israeli minister of education Shulamit Aloni wrote in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot that "We, Israelis, have become a barbarian people." And in 2002, two Israeli Jewish journalists wrote a book entitled, The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians. It is true, there are no gas chambers in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza. But thousands of Palestinian civilians are being killed and maimed by other means, all under the misleading claim of fighting "suicide bombings" and "terror". Protected by these deceitful terms, every conceivable crime has been committed against innocent civilians, from demolishing civilian homes right on top of their occupants to "hunting" Palestinian school children with M- 16 bullets while they are sitting in their class rooms or on their way to and from school. Yes, many Palestinians have been guilty of suicide bombings, which often targeted innocent Israeli civilians. These crimes are, of course, outrageous. However, it is also grossly unfair to decontextualise these horrible incidents by utterly ignoring or overlooking the even more obscene Israeli crimes which make such bombings inevitable. In the final analysis, Israel (and the United States) cannot push the Palestinian people, already tormented by 37 years of a dehumanising military occupation, to the brink of physical annihilation, and then nonchalantly shout, "Suicide Bombings! Terror! Hamas!", as if these slogans were the solution to this unbearable moral equation. Evil breeds evil. As the famous American poet, WH Auden, wrote: I and the public know, What all school children learn, Those to whom evil is done, Do evil in return. Some Israeli supporters might argue that Israeli terror is only a reaction to Palestinian violence. But this simply is not true. Israel has had more than 32 years to reach a settlement with the Palestinians, to give them hope and at least a semblance of justice. Israel is a country that prefers land over peace, and it has already killed President Bush's vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living peacefully side by side. The intensive proliferation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has simply left no room for the creation of a viable Palestinian state worthy of the name. Hence, the only remaining solution is a unitary democratic and civil state in all of mandatory Palestine (Israel and the occupied territories) in which Jews, Christians and Muslims, can live together as equal citizens, just as they do in California. Will the US government be bold enough to push for what is clearly the most human and moral solution? If they do not, the only alternative left will be more hatred, violence, terror and war. And in such a cycle of violence, everyone -- Americans, Arabs, and Jews -- will continue to suffer.
