TruthNews Commentary, June 27, 2002

President Bush has called for the removal of Yasser Arafat as leader of the Palestinian Authority. Although Bush did not mention Arafat by name in his Monday address, Bush said, "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty.... And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East."

In response to Bush's call for Arafat's removal, Saeb Erekat, Palestinian Peace Negotiator and Minister of Local Government, said, "It's only for the Palestinian people to determine who are their leaders. The Palestinian people have chosen President Arafat to be their leader. The world and President Bush must respect the democratic choice of the Palestinian people." In an amazing coincidence, the Palestinian Authority announced the day after Bush's speech that they would have new elections in January. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan stood by Arafat’s side though, saying the Palestinians must elect their own leaders. "They elected Chairman Arafat, they are planning new elections, let them elect their own leaders," Annan said. While many Israelis praised Bush's proposal, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, architect of the Oslo accords, rushed to defend his fellow Nobel peace prize laureate. Peres called Bush's speech a "fatal mistake." He continued, "For 35 years Arafat has bee

We disagree with these people's logic. First, legitimate election does not ensure the continued legitimacy of the government. Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany through a legitimate electoral process. Once elected, abrogated the democratic process, started World War II, murdered 6 million Jews, and tried to take over the world. After his defeat, he blew his brains out to avoid being captured. If he had been captured, the legitimately elected Hitler would no doubt have been hung as his co-conspirators were following the Nuremberg trials. Hitler's fellow dictators Mussolini and Tojo, who could also make some claims as to being recognized leaders of their people, were also hung. The point is, when legitimately elected leaders begin behaving in an illegitimate manner by making war against their neighbors, those neighbors have the right to remove them.

A second point we should make is that the point of Bush's speech was that he would support creation of a Palestinian state "when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors." The Palestinians, Europeans, and UN can argue that the Palestinians have the right to choose as their leader whoever they want. But our response is, if they choose Arafat, then they have shown themselves to be unworthy of self-government. Let's take the example of Hitler again. The Germans demonstrated that they were incapable of self-government when they elected Hitler (the German Weimar republic had only existed for 14 years, so the Germans didn't have much experience with self-government). Following World War II, Germany did not regain independence until 1955. If they had persisted in electing Nazis to rule them they would have remained under Allied military government much longer.

Washington D.C.'s ex-mayor Marion Barry serves as an object lesson as to what can happen to a people who continually elect corrupt leaders. Barry served as Washington's mayor from 1978 to 1990, and was a leader in the effort to gain statehood for D.C. Barry was occasionally accused of corruption, cronyism, cocaine use, and womanizing, but in 1990 Barry was caught smoking dope on videotape, convicted of cocaine possession, and sent to jail for 6 months. This would have ended the career of a politician in a normal city, but in 1992, Washingtonians elected Barry to the city council and in 1994 RE-ELECTED HIM AS MAYOR! By 1995, Barry had run up a budget deficit of more than $700, leading Congress to take control of the city government. The fact that Washington could continue to elect Barry as governor, even after a drug conviction, illustrated to many that D.C. is not ready for statehood, and the D.C. statehood initiative has become largely moribund (even Bill Clinton, a self-proclaimed D

Although Arafat was elected, it would be hard to argue that his election was legitimate. Arafat was anointed leader of the Palestinian people, not by the Palestinians but by Israel. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an exiled terrorist group led by Yasser Arafat. The Israelis could equally well have chosen either the Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, but Peres figured that Arafat had been weakened by his years in exile, and would jump at the chance to be in charge in Israel. So Arafat became Israel's proxy, returning to Israel and setting up his headquarters in Ramallah in 1994. Not until two years later was there an election (the only one to date).

With Arafat in control of Palestinian security (i.e., secret police), media, television, and governmental organizations, it's not surprising that won the elections handily. His lone challenger for the Palestinian leadership was a 72-year-old social worker, Samiha Khalil. In a one-week period shortly before the election, Arafat had more than nine hours of speaking time on television, but his opponent was never mentioned once. Nevertheless, Khalil shocked the international press with what the New York Times labeled a "surprisingly high" number of votes. The "surprisingly high" 9.3 percent of the votes garnered by Khalil may have indicated some dissatisfaction with Arafat. Former CIA director Jim Woolsey dismisses claims that Arafat was democratically elected, quipping, "Arafat was essentially elected the same way Stalin was, but not nearly as democratically as Hitler, who at least had actual opponents."

Now, Arafat the puppet dictator has turned on Israel just as Zedekiah, the Biblical puppet king of Judah, rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar. Like Zedekiah, Arafat has led his people to the brink of disaster. Nebuchadnezzar enslaved and deported Zedekiah's people, the Jews. Today's Jews are unwilling to stoop to Nebuchadnezzar's barbaric tactics, so a standoff has ensued. Meanwhile, the terrorism continues. Washington Post commentator Charles Krauthammer said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, "Oslo will go down in history as the greatest diplomatic blunder that any country that had not suffered military defeat could make. Germany and Japan had no bargaining chips at the end of the Second World War. Israel came very close to forfeiting its existence with Oslo. We had an enemy in the PLO that was on the verge of extinction. That's what history will scratch its head about. The arrogance, the super-cleverness of the Israeli Left that they're going to rescue this dying PLO just enough

Now that Arafat and his gang of thugs has been in power for 8 years in the Palestinian autonomous areas, it's hard to imagine that he will lose the election in January. Once in power, dictators can maintain their power indefinitely through suppression of dissent and control of the media. Although Arafat's approval rating is only 35 percent, his "security forces" will intimidate anyone from running against him, and the state-controlled media will ensure that only his face, his speeches, and his actions are broadcast.

Peres is right when he says it's not possible to "get rid" of Arafat "with one speech." But there's nothing to prevent Israel from deporting Arafat back to Tunisia and ensuring free elections. After 8 years of Arafat's insanity, it may even take a few years of Israeli occupation to return the Palestinian populace to sanity. Bush's speech points out the reality of what must occur for the violence to come to an end. Now Israel needs to make it happen.