Assassinate that blankety-blank

by David Grand
September 18, 2003

No, I'm not talking about "wasting" Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein- although they both richly deserve to be- but about Yasir Arafat, who the Israeli Security cabinet has decided must be permanently silenced, if the peace process is to ever get back on track. Amen to that, brother, a sentiment I'm sure the majority of Israelis and Americans would echo.

It's still unknown which of the four options they'll select to achieve that end: expelling him, arresting him, tightening the siege at his compound in the West Bank, or killing him outright. Granted, assassinating or exiling him could lead to an all-out war with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But so be it, for having a showdown once and for all with those extremists groups, who'll never in a million years agree to a peaceful solution, is preferable to Israel continuing to suffer from unrestrained, suicide bombings.

And even though there's been worldwide condemnation (including from the U.S.), they've showing no indication of wavering in their resolve to remove the man they regard as an arch-terrorist, who-directly or indirectly- provides aid and encouragement to terrorist activities. And I find it almost laughable for the Secretary-General of the U.N. Kofi Annan saying that it'd be "unwise to expel him," when the U.N. has, as of late, shown itself to be a "paper tiger," who couldn't break-up a cookie fight among Girl Scouts.

Now, I'd like to believe that the U.S. dumping on Israel was just for appearance sake; and that in reality, there's nothing they'd like better than to see him disappear like a magician's coin, by whatever means Israel decides. But if the U.S. was sincere in rebuking Israel, then as the Israeli Education Minister said last week: "Israel is an independent and sovereign state, and doesn't take orders from America or any other country."

From the moment that Arafat forced Prime Minister Mahoud Abbas to resign, after refusing to relinquish his control over the security forces Abbas needed to root-out Islamic military groups, it was patently clear that it was a new ball game, with him calling all the shots; and that he wouldn't accept being viewed, as he is by the governments of Israel and the United States, as a pariah who's irrelevant to the peace process.

And unbelievably, in his first public pronouncement he laid down a challenge to Israel: "Come to peace, come let us make peace together." How could he possibly think that anyone, who wasn't brain dead, could take him seriously, when he's been as deceptive as Venus flytrap over the years, and better at bluffing than a world class poker player. Plus, his breaking pledge after pledge to become a peacemaker rather than a revolutionary, such as he did 10 years ago in signing the Oslo peace accords, speaks volumes about his untrustworthiness.

I know that hearing the word assassination immediately evokes in the minds of Americans the murdering of JFK and other presidents whose lives were ended by an assassin's bullet: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, as well as the attempted assassinations of FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, Ford (two attempts), and Reagan. (My mother wanted me to become president someday, but now I'm glad I didn't share her hopes.)

Most assassinations of national leaders are for personal vengeance (such as Lincoln and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin); for propaganda purposes (a la, Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in 1914, whose death precipitated World War I; and for political revolutions (e.g., Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family in 1918). And since 1900, there's been a total of 150 attempts on the lives of heads of state around the world, with 75 of 'em successful. Not that those who were killed would view that way.

But even though Arafat is not, as of now, the leader of a sovereign state, I'd have no qualms about adding that master provocateur's name to that list, provided of course he ends up on the wrong end of a gun.