I must start by thanking the French government and people for honoring President Yasser Arafat who spent his last days in their hospitality. The special treatment accorded the late Palestinian leader is testimony to the nobility and magnanimity of a people with a rich history and civilization.
The difference is indeed huge between a state such as France and a newly born state whose only record of achievement is that it was built on the ruins of another people whom it subjugated by force.
Having said this I should confess that I am a little worried about the French leader and his prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who not only allowed Arafat to be treated at a French military hospital but also visited him and closely followed his condition.
By so doing, the French president and prime minister must have angered Israel who would obviously see in what they did yet another proof of French “anti-Semitism”.
It would be no surprise if the US State Department lists the French leaders’ names in its next report on anti-Semitism incidents worldwide. The report may also include the names of other French leaders who attended Arafat’s funeral.
I am also worried about the eight soldiers of the French Republican Guard who carried Arafat’s coffin.
Israel insists on calling Arafat a terrorist and falsely claims Palestinians have no rights in their land and that the Jews have not committed any aggression but have only returned to their ancestral land in Palestine. Israel views all that Arafat had been doing as well as the heroic Palestinian resistance as illegal.
As far as Israel is concerned, the murder and killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their homes and livelihood are legitimate acts and any Palestinian resistance to or defiance of the Israeli aggressors acts of terrorism. Israel’s ultimate goal seems to be to destroy all that is Palestinian and Muslim.
To my great bafflement, the White House continues to back these false claims and lies at the expense of their supposed Arab friends. In their view, Arafat was a terrorist because he led the Palestinian struggle for independence.
Israel and the United States refuse to admit that Arafat was the first Palestinian leader to recognize the Jewish state.
Based on a Zionist logic blessed by America the following must be true:
• Gen. George Washington was a terrorist because he led the American resistance to the British occupation of the northern states of the continent. Washington won the fight to become the first president of the United States.
• Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru and the founder of Bolivia was a terrorist because he liberated those countries from Spanish colonizers and sought to unify South America.
• Gen. Charles de Gaulle too should have been a terrorist because did he not lead the French resistance against the German occupation? He did also lead the French Army in exile in the war for the liberation of Europe from the Nazis.
• Gen. Jozef Broz Tito should be no different because he too led the national resistance against the Germans in Yugoslavia during World War II.
• All the leaders of African liberation movements with Nelson Mandela on top of the list.
Arafat was a national leader who dedicated his entire life to the cause of his people and worked to win back their rights and a state of their own like others.
Arafat was human and must have erred, but his struggle for his people should make us forgive his lapses.
His name will go down in history as a national hero regardless of whether the international Zionist movement and its offspring, Israel, agree or not. Israel wanted Arafat dead and may have even played a role in his death as suggested by some observers.
The Bush administration refused to deal with him for no objective reason despite the fact that he was a democratically elected leader.
What the US wanted was a puppet Palestinian leader who would accept to live under Israeli yoke and take orders from Washington.
However, the Palestinian history shows that not a single Palestinian leader would dare to compromise the basic rights of his people.
One thing is very clear: Whatever may be Israel’s thinking, Arafat’s departure would not be in its interest. The man was so powerful and influential; though he was confined to a small office in Ramallah he did stop many acts that could have shaken Israel to its very core. The man who had the legitimacy and clout to reach a historic agreement with Israel was confined to a room surrounded by tanks while Israeli leaders kept threatening to kill him.
Israel and the United States refuse to admit this basic fact. Future developments would force them to realize who Arafat was and his commitment to peace.
They would then find themselves asking the question: What shall we do now that Arafat is dead?
