Arafat = Freedom

If Arafat is murdered by Israel, Every American should rise up to tell the U.S. that we will no longer give aid to a nation that murderes dissidents!

Opposing views are welcome.

One man's terrorist is another's "freedom fighter".

The U.S coined the phrase "freedom fighter"

I have only one point of view that I think stands above all others -- MURDER IS WRONG. MURDER BY A GOVERNMENT IS MORE WRONG!!!!

[Edited on Sep 15, 2003 by SinCity1]

it's nice to be in safe las vegas and talk PC stuff isn't it?

I don't like Arafat.
I don't like how he depends on the systematic manipulation of the young through blatant hate media to stay in power and keep a supply of bomb fodder to make his points.
I don't like much of anything about him.

But I also don't like the notion of assassination, or the thought process that makes it a "viable option", while ignoring the inevitable violence it will inspire in his quarters.

Ariel Sharon should know better than to let his people make irresponsible comments like that. Helicopter gunships making retaliatory strikes are one thing--and barely justified by the reasoning that today's borders and Palestinian semi-autonomy make it rather impossible for the boys and girls from the Mossad to make "hits" on scum like Hamas more or less collateral-free. But this "game" has advanced far enough where assassination on leaders, even wretched, selfish, power-clinking fuckwits like Arafat, is just no longer an option. The Palestinian Authority and its territories are no longer just an underground PLO, and cannot be pursued as such. The Israelis will just have to hang tough and hope that Arafat chokes on something sometime soon, and that his successor is someone a mite more reasonable.

I agree 100%...and I offer the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in 1982 as an example of the actions of another Middle Eastern leader who, unfortunately for this peace process, fits perfectly into this category too...

It should be noted that they found him indirectly responsible. His responsibility was born not out of actions that he took that aided the massacre, but becasue he did not take actions to prevent it.

The Arabs kill themselves by their own hands a lot more ruthlessly than Sharon has ever done to them. Black September, Assad's massacre of the entire city of Hama, ever hear of those massacres? Probably not, the Arabs dont like advertising them. The toll was in the 10's of thousands, in both cases. Makes me laugh when the Arabs wail "brutality" over 2 or 3 kids killed when the Israelis bomb a terror leader, men who manage and plan the slaughter of civilians.

Not to mention, Sharon wouldn't even be PM today if Arafat hadn't launched the terror campaign in September, 2000. The Arabs hate Sharon because he has a lot of experience in dealing with them the only way they can be dealt with; with ruthless violence. The Jews tried talking, it got them nowhere, so they elected Sharon. Palestinians, poor bastards that they are, are stuck with the incompetent Arafat. No fair elections or genuine opponents for them. Only Arafat's flunkies who he has control over. No one questions why hundreds of millions of dollars sent to the Palestinians authority gets diverted into Arafat's personal accounts and wife in Paris. Did you know Arafat's a billionaire? All stolen from the people he "leads".

as long as "ruthless violence" is the only way you can deal with an arab, then we do want to root them out of the gene pool and kill them all...

...and gain a big chunk of real estate and the greatest supply of the most precious natural resource modern industry has ever know, of course....

Arafat shouldn't be killed. I say this for practicality's sake. He'd become a martyr (sp?). Then where would the "Middle East Peace Process" be. I think the US needs to shift it's policy regarding this matter. There needs to be progress by one side or the other. We need to start throwing our weight around...
However, I don't know very much about this topic, so I'll keep reading, espically any criticism.

...the truth is Arafat(not his real name) was chosen for a position a long time ago because as a black marketeer and gangster gave him a wealth of connections in the mediterrean underworld and the middle east, he was never meant to be a political leader of the palestinian cause, however, he obviously saw an opportunity early in the struggle and his organization skills, cooperation with british intelligence, kgb, cia and many other espionage organizations in the region gave him the power to insert himself in a struggle for freedom for a peole that had been enslaved and persecuted for longer than anyone can remember, he has never consistently worked for peace because he would be seen as weak from inside his own criminal organization and would have been overthrown from within as soon as the ink hit the paper on a true peace agreement, he is a world player in espionage and is a regular information/disinformation conduit for even our intelligence, he will never sign a peace and he will silence any palestinian leader who would, or preempt their rise to popularity, and the palestinian people have suffered under his rule, their cause and the brutality they have incuured from the isreali's is never going to be helped by his criminal activity, but at this late stage in the game there should be a way to circumvent his stranglehold on the peace process, unless he serves some sort of purpose for some yet to exposed byzantine alignment in an area of the world that has a long history of bloody warlords gaining the clandestine support of a rival in order to keep a tight hold on its own populace...and a substantial warchest to boot...in other words the guy can't simply be that good at evading his comeuppance, to have gotten this far he must have had help from yet undisclosed area of support, and there are many in this century who have fought the idea of a jewish homeland, which, if it had been helped istead of hindered by world powers a hundred years ago the whole spectre of zionist conspiracy would have never been erected in europe that led to the nationlist-socialist tendency to scapegoat the jewish populace and it would not have spilled over into the arab world the way it did if it had not have come at the end of british and french gun barrels....but it did and the blood shed up til now is on the world hands, not just the isreali's and palestinian's, and that is why i believe the world that created this problem needs to finally put differences on the back burner and try to bring about peace and end the hatred rhetoric towards both sides that has colored this problem and helped excacerbate it into the conflagration it has become, a be-ne-lux type peace for the region is possible, but not with the plo headed by the gangsterism of arafat or the knesset headed by sharon, the unfortunate reality is the common people are the ones who have suffered on both sides....

Because everyone knows how much public support there is when the US decides to "throw it's weight around".

Paragraph breaks, Razor, paragraph breaks, please!

I want to read your comment, but as-posted, it makes my head hurt, even after several rye on the rocks,

Hahahahaha.

Indeed.

paragraph breaks? Up until "french gun barrels...." that was all one freaking *sentence* and even then I think he only included that extra period by accident.

Razor13 is the only person on this site that I always read his posts. Thanks Razor

sorry, i used the first chapter of "english grammar" to roll joints with in prison...

Its is important to note that the Kahan commission was not held to a standard of reasable doubt, and that the decisions made were based on flawed and optimistic intelligence from the Mossad colored by conflicts between they and the IDF command.

That said however, thats not what happened, not was that the commissions conclusion. IDF forces were in complete control of the camps. They allowed or sent, depending on testimony, the Marionite irregulars into the camps. It was not, a sin of omission or failure to act, save the failure to recognize what was actually going on in the camps and stop it. This was after eight years of wholesale slaughter reprisal killings and ethnic cleansings on both sides. Think Serbia, only with two sets of Serbians. This also imediately followed the assasination fo the essentially messianic leader of the Phalange movement. To say that this was ill advised would be an understatment. They let the fox into the henhouse and closed the door behind him.

i don't want anyone to get me wrong, the turmoil in the middle east has been a political hot potato and has been tossed at the u.s. because of our dependence on the arabian crude, the cia insinuated us in the french/british position instead of our state dept. creating a new track to deal with the problem back in the late 50's, before that the oss, which had more control over latin american and asian theater ops, had merely followed the doctrine of the brits and french, who, and i suppose this is understandable, wanted to penalize anyone who had been sympathetic of the axis in the middle east.....at the same time they wanted to stem the tide of jewish refugees that were looking for shelter in the aftermath of the war, and the prevalent intelligence stance, especially with the british, was to secretly arm jewish commandoes that had fought in ww2 while playing the arab/egyptian side that they would do all they could to prevent the jewish state from burgeoning.....this hypocrytical stance has permeated euro/u.s. spec ops ever since...it is with knowledge of this beginning of our modern middle east policies(which is seldom touched on, everyone behaves as if this started with arafat) that i feel we should stop trying to choose sides in this struggle and actually engage in a new track that does not choose a side as much as it disarms the radical elements in the intelligence community that interfere with our elected leaders ability to negotiate a peace and have actually contributed to both sides being cornered into a position where violence seems the only way out, the machinations have been too hypocritical for either sides common people to have good faith in our intentions until we break completely from the euro view that this area of the world is a resource rich colony and the only leadership we support is the one that keeps the guns chambered....both sides have suffered and even if a peace is reached tomorrow the healing will take generations, it should have never come to this, but greed for resource and revenge for historical wrongs have driven the engines of western intelligence/police influence and led us to assinate democratically inclined leaders in favor of supporting despotic criminals that are little cogs in the machinery of our military/industrial complex....it would almost seem impossible to me to do this and that wouold mean we are all on a collision with a bloody and painful future, all because our forbears in europe and here in the u.s. took advantage of a religious struggle to gain control over a regions resources....

Yeah, you didn't take that out of context at all did you?

Personally, I don't know what killing Arafat would do. I think nothing positive. Also, to my understanding, Israel's military, intelligence, & technology are plenty advanced to wipe out Arafat and millions of his closest friends if they desired.

This thread reminds me of Tina Fey on SNL news: "Arafat, stop saying in English that you're committed to peace, then turning around & saying in Arabic to kill infidels. And Ariel Sharon, it's one thing to order your tanks into villages - just don't look like you ENJOY it so much!!"

no, I really didn't. Everytime the US starts throwing our weight around in foreign affairs we get shit on by the world at large. Why would you think it would be any different if we start trying to throw our weight around there too?