BURN IN HELL

Arafat's End Was a Lie, Like His Whole Life - Martin Peretz
An independent Palestine will eventually emerge. But thanks in part to the leadership of Yasser Arafat from 1969 until today, its press will be intimidated. Its courts will not be independent. Its schools and universities will be centers of ugly racist and anti-Jewish doctrine. Its sciences will not be curious. Law will be determined by which faction is most cruel. Women will suffer the historical onus of their gender in Islam. Gays will try to escape to Israel. Its economy will be crippled because Israel will be wary of allowing Palestinians to come in and work. A fitting tribute to Yasser Arafat, his legacy to the Palestinians. (Los Angeles Times)

Arafat: Bin Laden's Inspiration - Alan Dershowitz
Arafat managed to leapfrog the Palestinian cause over equally or more deserving causes - such as Tibetan freedom, Kurdish independence, and Basque statehood - by wielding three immoral weapons: first, international terrorism on a scale previously unknown to the world; second, an alliance with oil-rich states willing to extort support for his cause by energy blackmail; and third, exploitation of international anti-Semitism against the Jewish state. Arafat was personally responsible for the murders of thousands of innocent Israelis, hundreds of innocent Americans, and countless others, including several well-planned attacks on Israeli schools and nurseries. He also personally ordered the murder of hundreds of his own people who disagreed with him or collaborated with Israel. Arafat was the inspiration for Osama bin Laden, because he proved that terrorism works and that terrorists can be praised and rewarded by a craven world, as Arafat was by so many for so long. (Jerusalem Post)

Israelis Breathe a Huge Sigh of Relief - Uzi Benziman
With Arafat's death, Israel has breathed a huge sigh of relief. Eight months after he signed the Oslo Accords, Arafat whispered in a Johannesburg mosque that the agreement was equivalent to the one between Mohammed and the Qureish at Hudbeiya that the Prophet broke two years later and is considered a paragon of Muslim cunning and tactics. Two months after he competed in courtesies with then prime minister Ehud Barak at the Camp David summit, Arafat gave his blessing to - if not the signal for - the outbreak of another fatal round, which has been going on for more than four years, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arafat gave the green light for the continuation of cruel terrorist acts while he was still conducting truce negotiations with Israel's leaders.

Israel wished for Arafat's death not only because of the vast amount of its blood he has spilled and not only because of the terror he imposed on its streets, but because of the crushing of the belief in the ability to reach an agreement with the Palestinian people. A month after he received the Nobel Prize for Peace, the terror attack in Beit Lid occurred; Arafat blamed Israel for carrying it out. Israel has not forgiven him, and will not forgive him on the day of his death, for releasing the beast of terror and letting it sow killing and destruction in every corner of the country. It has not forgiven him for having broken his commitments, for having shattered its hopes, and for having brought down upon it rampages in the style and methods of a primitive tribal world. Arafat was, and remained until his dying day, the palpable threat to the Zionist project and the Jews' right to establish a sovereign life for themselves. (Ha'aretz)

How Arafat Got Away With It - Max Boot
Arafat and his cronies pocketed billions of dollars and kept their grip on power through the cruel application of violence against various enemies and "collaborators." In return, Arafat reaped worldwide adulation and a Nobel Peace Prize. There has been no more successful terrorist in the modern age. Yet his biggest victims were not Israelis. It was his own people who suffered the most. His unwillingness to give up the way of the gun consigned his people to economic and moral suicide. The current intifada, launched in September 2000 after Arafat turned down a generous peace offer from the Israelis at Camp David, has claimed three times as many Palestinian as Israeli victims and has also led to a precipitous plunge in living standards in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Arafat could not have been so destructive without so many outside enablers, ranging from the Soviet Union to the European Union and the United States, which stepped into the sugar daddy role in the 1990s. Many among the Western intelligentsia even now weep for his passing as if he were a great man instead of a criminal with a cause. (Los Angeles Times)

Terrorism's Little Helper - Editorial
A generation ago, when all the world learned the word "terrorist," Yasser Arafat was the teacher. For 20 years, the movement he led openly used the killing of innocents as a political tool. Arafat, Hamas, and the mass of the Palestinian people already have squandered the best chance for peace in recent history - the 30, 60, or 90 days following the Sept. 11 attacks. Imagine if the leadership had really renounced terror then - and by renounce terror, we mean "stop blowing up Israeli civilians and finger some terrorists." Instead, too many Palestinians have clung to killing utterly innocent people. But only Palestinians themselves, not the wishful thinking of the rest of the world, can stop these suicidal attacks. (Ft. Wayne News Sentinel)

Funeral Hymns Should Not Obscure PLO Strongman's Record - Editorial
The natural instinct of many of the media will be to honor the murderer for receiving an improbable Nobel Peace Prize for his success in pulling the wool over the eyes of many who believed he actually wanted peace with Israel. In reality, of course, Arafat headed an organization built on the premise that any Arab who truly seeks peace with the Jews must be assassinated out of hand - a process that has actively forestalled accommodation in the Arab world since the 1920s. (Las Vegas Review Journal)

Arafat Gets the Di Treatment - Tom Gross
Arab leaders long ago stopped liking or respecting Yasser Arafat, or indeed believing a word he said. Yet until the very end, some prominent Western journalists never stopped heaping praise on him, or covering up for his countless crimes and misdeeds. It didn't matter how many Jews, Arabs, and others died on his orders, or how many times he let down his own people, or stole from them. To judge by some of the reporting, Arafat was a figure who deserved to be deeply revered. The last time BBC correspondents were so emotional during their reporting was when Princess Diana died. (National Review)