Sunday, April 20, 2008

Carter pays respects to a Monster

Almost all of America’s MSM has ignored former President Jimmy Carter’s tribute to “the father of terrorism,” Yasser Arafat.

From Cybercast News Service:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter laid a wreath of red roses at the grave of Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat during a visit to the West Bank City of Ramallah on Tuesday.

"He and Mrs. Carter and his son Jeff wanted to pay their respects to President Arafat," Carter's trip director Rick Jasculca told Cybercast News Service. …
The entire CNS story’s here.

Now this from the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby’s Nov. 11, 2004 column:
Yasser Arafat died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg.

In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster.

In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."

God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea!

Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich?

Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity. …
A person with reasonable judgment and a bit of moral fiber wouldn’t lay a wreath at Afafat’s tomb.

I don’t think very much of Jimmy Carter. Still, I was surprised he’d do such a thing.

As for why MSM has mostly ignored the wreath laying as a news story and failed to condemn it editorially, I think the answer’s this: most of MSM doesn’t want to call attention to what Carter did for fear it will further upset many American Jews who are traditionally Democratic voters, but are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the party.

The ending of Jacoby’s column is powerful, touching and to be remembered:
It would take an encyclopedia to catalog all of the evil Arafat committed. But that is no excuse for not trying to recall at least some of it.

Perhaps his signal contribution to the practice of political terror was the introduction of warfare against children.

On one black date in May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100 boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number of imprisoned terrorists were released.

When Israeli troops attempted a rescue, the terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on the students. By the time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21 of them were children.

Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?

So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar. The 21 dead children of Ma'alot -- 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command.
Jacoby’s column is here.

4 comments:

Insufficiently Sensitive said...

Arafat commanded the attention of the MSM precisely by out-thugging all the other small-time soreheads, and by organizing them into the PLO with lavish help of the Soviets. That is the sort of resume the leftist press adulates when it comes to writing up political 'leaders', particularly those opposed to the [oh-so-colonialist, hemonist, fascist, plutocratic] Western pluralist societies.

MSM is ready to instantly forgive and cheer on 'leaders' whose careers are built on such murders and tyranny as Arafat's (the IRA and Fidel and Mugabe instantly come to mind), as soon as they pretend to enter a democratic or "peace" process - but only the left-wing ones.

President Carter established his reputation, both in and out of office, by a policy of supporting thuggish Soviet-supported dictators - perhaps as some sick form of atonement for the Western support of anti-Soviet dictators who excited his liberal guilt. It's a wonder that he has not yet gone to lay a wreath at the feet of Robert Mugabe.

His meddling in international politics and relations, whether with or without the support of the elected governments of the USA, is unprecedented - for some reason he's apparently determined to compete with Jesse Jackson for demagogic media points. He's a sick puppy with a supersize ego, and his exit from public life can't come too soon.

Anonymous said...

John:

There no doubt Arafat was a monster.

For Carter to lay a wreath on his grave indicates the man is mentally unbalanced.

Ken
Dallas

Anonymous said...

Carter is “….like an old uncle who says things, everyone has someone like that in their family."

Anonymous said...

John -

Thank you for citing Jeff Jacoby's piece in the Boston Globe. One can only shake one's head when it comes to Jimmy Carter. I sometimes feel than not only is he anti-Israel, but that he's anti-American as well, and to think that he was president of the United States.

As for Jews becoming disenchanted with Democrats, were that it were so. While the more religiously observant tend to split more evenly between Democrat and Republican, as one goes from more observant to less observant the figures tilt heavily towards the Democrat party. Of course, I have heard the very same people complain about taxes and about government inefficiency, but that does not seem to prevent them for voting for left end of the Democrat party.

Jack in Silver Spring