Will Arafat Triumph from Beyond the Grave?

Don Feder issues a warning that gloating over Arafat's death (in itself a very understandable and satisfying thing to do) should not cause us to take our eyes off the ball.

The UN, EU, Russia and yes, the US as well are now more ready than ever to ram the roadmap down Israel's throat.

At a White House press conference on the day of Arafat’s burial, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that now that the chief obstacle to Middle East Peace is R.I.P., it’s time to resurrect the Road Map.

"We’ll do what it takes to get peace," the president proclaimed. Bush promised that his administration will "spend the capital of the United States" in a futile search for Palestinian moderates who will help to establish a just and enduring peace with Israel.

What's so futile about searching for 'Palestinian' moderates? Want to know what a 'Palestinian' moderate is? It's a 'Palestinian' who holds the same genocidal views on Israel as any other 'Palestinian' but has learned to control his tongue.

There is a myth, beloved of European and US policymakers, that Arafat was the principal impediment to a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. According to this fantasy, he was a cruel tyrant who held the Palestinians hostage, much the way Saddam ruled Iraq.

Once Arafat was out of the way, we were told, the Palestinian people longing to breath free would elect reasonable men willing to compromise. Thereafter, Palestinians would devote themselves to reading "The Federalist Papers," holding peace marches, and building statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa.

In reality, Arafat reflected the Palestinian mentality perfectly. Like him, the Palestinians are bloodthirsty, treacherous, sadistic, nihilistic anti-Semites who would rather kill a Jew than have a decent life.

Arafat was a tyrant and a despot. So on the surface, the conclusion seems logical that now that the 'Palestinians' have been freed of their yoke, they will be freedomloving democratic Arabs, like all other Arabs, longing for peaceful coexistence with Israel.

Oops. That's right. This type of Arab is a myth. He does not exist (or in such small numbers that it makes no difference). Look what happened when the Shah was toppled. Or Saddam. Or any other Arab dictator. They managed to find a new one, worse than before. And the 'Palestinians' profess nothing but love for Arafat.

The land reclaimed in a defensive war in 1967 (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) will be presented to the terrorists for their terrorist state. Jews living there – in Biblical Israel – will be driven from their homes, while a million Arabs will continue to live in Israel proper. To augment this fifth column, there will also be a Palestinian right-of-return, of undetermined dimensions. Thus the Jewish state will be inundated with revanchists eager to liberate the rest of "Palestine."

Americans are dying to foster democracy in Iraq, while we resume pressuring Israel (the only democracy in the region) to negotiate with the same sort of people who are killing Americans in Iraq – objective: to create a state (much like Iraq under Saddam) which will destabilize and ultimately destroy the only democracy in the region.

Somewhere in the depths of Hell, Arafat is laughing.

When you look at it like that, there's still some satisfaction to be drawn from the fact that he IS in Hell. But Israel's worries are far from over.