Bill Quick has posted four well-written and well-thought out "reasons for killing Yasser Arafat now."
"Were Israel to kill Arafat," he writes, "the puffed-up bubble of Palestinian triumphalism that prevents Palestine from negotiating from a position grounded in reality would vanish." I'm not so sure; such is the perversity of the suicide-bomber ethos that triumphalism and defeat have merged into a single, crazy cult, a celebration of victimhood where the revelers cheer wins and losses with equal relish. The world would be no worse off without Arafat, certainly; but I fear it wouldn't make much practical difference. It's hard to argue with reason #4, though:
Arafat is a monster. Anybody who believes that he doesn't have the consciously willed blood of hundreds, even thousands, of innocent men, women, and children on his hands knows almost nothing of his past. I feel no qualms at all about comparing his methods, aims, and goals to Hitler himself - the same insane anti-semitism driving the same urge to wreak holocaust on the Jewish race by any means possible. He has lived all his life by a sword drenched in the blood of innocents. It seems fitting to me that he should die by the same sword wielded on behalf of his innocent victims.Posted by Dr. Frank at April 9, 2002 11:52 AM | TrackBack