After several days of speculation, Palestinian Liberation Organization leader and terrorist Yasser Arafat has finally died.  The civilized world has no reason to be sad or mourn.  It means he is no longer the primary influence on the PLO leadership and the world can look positively on his vacating the spotlight.  It means the peace process in the Middle East can once again move in a positive direction.

Arafat severely hampered the entire peace process because he supported the Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorists who routinely attacked and killed hundreds of Israelis.  The Palestinians need a leader capable of understanding that a peaceful Palestinian state does not come on a road paved with murder and blood.  They need a leader who vocally opposes terrorism and does something about it rather than insist he is doing something while winking knowingly at the bombers and encouraging them to continue their assault.

Arafat’s death won’t immediately end the terrorism that infects fundamentalist Islam, but the end of another influential Arabic leader/terrorist sympathizer means greater rewards for the culture he leaves behind.  In part, Arafat’s success, like Hussein’s, was the result of Europe, and sadly some Americans too, turning a blind eye to his misdeeds.  Europeans ignored Arafat’s sinister past to regard him as the last bastion of hope when he was nothing but a bane to peace.

These appeasers legitimized Arafat’s role as leader with several unseemly occurrences in the Nineties.  First, President Bill Clinton openly supported and met with Arafat on innumerable occasions despite knowing full-well of Arafat’s terrorist connections and his refusal to curb Palestinian terrorists.  By doing so, Arafat was granted power and authority on the world stage – he was effectively rewarded for not stopping the violence that Palestinians had been using for years.  President Bush, by contrast, made it clear that only after Arafat stopped the suicide attacks against Israel would he earn enough respect to be brought to the table for peace talks.  Unlike Europe’s leaders and his predecessors, Bush understands that terrorists will not change unless forced to, and they certainly won’t with gentle treatment.

The other blow to the peace process came when Arafat was awarded the Nobel Appeasement Prize because he agreed to pretend to follow the Oslo Peace Accords – a notion anyone with a modicum of common sense knew he had no intention of doing.  Europe, though, doesn’t care about Israel and the peace process in the Middle East as much as they care about perpetuating their own governing authority.  Most of Europe’s leaders are so worried about the dramatic increase in their Muslim population, that they openly ignore the increases in terrorism and anti-Semitism and quietly support terrorist sympathizers like Arafat or Hussein to keep their Muslim populations satiated and quiet, thus solidifying their grip on power.  You can rest assured that at least every continental western European leader will go to Cairo to pay their respects to Arafat’s body – a respect that he has never earned, but which they must pretend to have because they are afraid of terrorist reprisal if they don’t.  Does that sound like a road to peace in the Middle East?

The delicate Israeli-Palestinian peace process is complicated by a grave mistrust and seething hatred from both sides that can only be overcome if both sides put their violent past completely behind them – a tact never genuinely considered by Arafat or the Palestinians.  With another leader there’s no guarantees either, but we can only hope a change in the control of the PLO means a change for the better.

Those who defend Arafat need look no further than the potential list of his replacements to see how they’ve misplaced their respect.  The short list includes members of the top two terrorist organizations in Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah.  If Arafat was a supporter of peace, how is it that Hamas stands a chance of taking control of the PLO?  And can anyone rationally believe the PLO will stop the violence with terrorists in charge?

Arafat’s legacy will live on, but it cannot be the white-washed legacy of greatness created by a cowardly and anti-Semitic European leadership.  His legacy must reflect his deliberate stonewalling of the peace process. Now that he is dead, history can correct the false record of Arafat’s alleged greatness so that a peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea might eventually be reached.

So, farewell Yasser Arafat.  It’s about damn time.

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