With their terrible defeat in the Six Day War of 1967, and the dreadful loss of Arab prestige, the Arab campaign to obliterate Israel took a new turn. After their utter humiliation, the Arab nations realized their chances of defeating Israel on the battlefield were slim. The new campaign would seek to wear Israel down with terror attacks while at the same time defeating her in the political realm.
A ready tool of this new campaign was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The organization, which was actually formed in Egypt in 1964, was ultimately headed by one who has become infamous to many Jews, Rahman Abdul Rauf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, alias Yasser Arafat.
YASSER ARAFAT
Arafat’s grandparents on his mother’s side were Husseinis from Palestine and were thus connected by blood to the Mufti of Jerusalem, also a Husseini. The Husseini family over the last century has produced several notable adversaries of Israel.
Arafat was most likely born in Cairo and not in Jerusalem as he would have everyone believe. As a youth he did spend some time in Jerusalem, as a member of an Arab gang. He attacked unarmed Jews, smashed and looted Jewish shops and was involved in other such activities.
One of his classmates described him as “a fat moody boy who managed to frighten everyone a little…His eyes were hypnotic, and they could stop you cold.”* One acquaintance of the youthful Arafat described him as “particularly brutal” and one who “grew crazed at the sight of our blood.”* One of his Egyptian acquaintances described him in this way: “He had a certain charm which he could use to great advantage. But he also had a dark streak, a sort of permanent irrational anger that was always simmering below the surface.” *
In 1949-50, Arafat became a member of the Mufti’s youth gang in Gaza. In time he organized several other gangs and became their leader. Finally he became an engineering student at Cairo University. There he joined the extremist Muslim Brotherhood.
He had a lackluster stint in the Egyptian Army and finally was expelled from Egypt when the radical Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed. His name was actually carried on Egypt’s official blacklist until 1968. After his expulsion he worked as an engineer in Kuwait, doing mostly plumbing jobs.
It was while in Kuwait that the concept of Fatah was born. The name was a reversed acronym for Harakat at-Tahrir al-Filastin, meaning the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine. It was not necessarily the idea of Arafat, but due to his financial genius and industry he soon rose to the top of the organization. Arafat also was the publisher of the newspaper Our Palestine, which promoted the viewpoint of Fatah. In time, Fatah became a major component of the PLO and ultimately Arafat became Chairman of the whole PLO organization.
Later, as leader of the PLO, Arafat became directly responsible for some of the bloodiest terror attacks in Israel’s history. The most notable of these are the hijacking and subsequent destruction of three commercial airliners in Jordan in 1970; the murder of 11 members of the Israeli delegation at the Munich Olympics in 1972; the killing of 24 and wounding of 64 Israelis at the Ma’alot school in 1974; The Coastal Road Massacre, killing 21 Israelis in 1978.
THE PLO PATH OF DESTRUCTION
The PLO became an umbrella organization for the many other terrorist groups that began in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of these groups arose due to splits and wrangling between various PLO officials. Arafat’s Fatah would continue to form the backbone and dominant component of the whole structure.
An incomplete list of other organizations would include the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA); Saika; The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); The Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP); the PFLP- General Command; The Palestine Liberation Front (PFL); The Arab Liberation Front (AFL); and Black September.
Although there has been deep rivalry between these groups there is one thing they always have in common – their absolute hatred for Israel. They vow to root Israel out of every square foot of the Holy Land, and not just the “West Bank.” This fact has been made abundantly clear by the symbols of all these groups. Their emblems picture the whole land of Israel as the object of Palestinian conquest.
The PLO and its affiliated groups have always relied upon terror to accomplish their end goal. Yasser Arafat is the first and only speaker to address the UN General Assembly while wearing a pistol. He held out an olive branch and gave the world the choice of the olive branch or his gun. Although this was a veiled threat, the whole assembly still broke into wild acclamation.
Such violence has been expressed by the PLO, that few of their Arab brother nations are willing to give them succor. In 1970, Jordan waged an all out war against the PLO following that organization’s violent bid to take over the country. Afterward the PLO took up lodging in Lebanon, and quickly turned that beautiful country into a war zone. Bashir Jemayel Lebanon’s president-elect stated in 1982: “In eight years of fighting we have, out of a population of three million inhabitants, more than 100,000 killed, more than 300,000 wounded and almost half of the population uprooted from its homes…” ** Jemayel himself was latter assassinated.
Jemayel’s remarks did not mention the rapes, even of young girls, thefts, and many other abuses the people suffered. They did not tell of the churches turned into ammunition dumps, of small children taken by force and trained by the PLO to be killers, of houses confiscated, etc. The PLO made Lebanon a giant training camp for terrorists. Groups like the Italian Red Brigade, the Irish Republican Army, and the Baader Meinhof gang all received training from the PLO in Lebanon.
One can understand why the Israelis were greeted with joy when they responded to this PLO challenge and invaded southern Lebanon in 1982. The Israelis completely destroyed the PLO infrastructure in Lebanon and would have probably put an end to Arafat and his murderers. Unfortunately, the PLO was rescued because of world pressures and particularly by the intervention of the United States.
When they were pushed out of Lebanon, the PLO relocated in Tunisia. After their short-sighted backing of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, much of the support from rich Arab nations was lost and the whole organization fell on hard times. Yet, somehow the PLO and its related terror organizations seem to be needed by anti-Semitic and oil hungry nations. Beginning with the Madrid Conference of 1991 a rescue program was begun for Arafat. The rescue operation eventually resulted in the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, and what has come to be known as the “peace process.”
ARAFAT THE PEACEMAKER
Because of the Oslo Peace Accords, the life-long terrorist and mass-murderer, Yasser Arafat, has now received the coveted Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps never before in the history of the world has such a wicked man as Yasser Arafat, who is supported by such a malevolent organization as the PLO, been given such world-esteemed accolades.
Arafat continues with his gruesome “peacemaking” before the eyes of the world. He has now instilled in a whole generation of Palestinians a virulent and burning hatred of Israel. He has now even incited Palestinian young people to blow themselves up in order to slaughter innocent Israeli civilians. In spite of all this, he continues to be a media darling and were he not presently held in confinement by the Israeli army in Ramallah, he would no doubt still be strutting through world capitals. What a testimony from a world that, in the words of Isaiah 5:20, has decided to call evil good and good evil.
-Jim Gerrish
* Kiernan, Thomas. Yasir Arafat, pp 25, 55 & 134
** Tal, Eliyahu, ed., PLO, p37
Note: This article is an updated excerpt from the author’s book, Does God Play Favorites.
April, 2002