Would one expel Hitler or try him in court for genocide? Would the U.S. expel Osama bin Laden if it had the opportunity to arrest and try him for mass murder? If Marwan Barghouti, an Arafat underling, is tried for murder and incitement to terror under Israeli jurisprudence; And if Adolph Eichmann was not left free after „expelling” himself to Argentina, but was brought to justice in Israel; Should a feeble and cowardly solution be applied in this case – that one of the most vicious murderers of Jews who has ever lived be permitted to go free to enjoy his life?
Expulsion is certainly the wrong solution! Rafi Eitan, anti-terrorism advisor to Israel’s prime ministers in the 1970s and 1980s, said Monday Arafat should be brought to Jerusalem and put on trial as a war criminal. Eitan was quoted in The Jerusalem Post (August 26, 2003) saying: „Arafat is a war criminal. We should take him to court and try him for war crimes. He has brought great misery and destruction on the Palestinians and on us. He is a murderer. Bring him to Jerusalem, like Eichman.” Through his own Palestinians, who for years had enjoyed the hospitality of the Kuwaiti people, and then acted as vicious informers on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s cruel troops, enabling them to occupy and nearly destroy the Arab sheikhdom, Arafat became responsible, after earlier trying to destroy both Jordan and Lebanon, of bringing near destruction on yet another sovereign Arab state. He first threatened, and then nearly destroyed Jordan, only being prevented from doing so by King Hussein, who expelled him. He brought havoc and untold destruction on Lebanon, especially on the Maronite Christians there, and only through Israel’s courageous intervention was he finally expelled from that country. Arafat congratulated Communist China’s cruel leadership after it had crushed to the ground and killed thousands of fasting Chinese students. He was the friend of Khomeini, whose revolutionary guards he had welcomed for training in his own PLO camps. He was a bosom friend of Saddam Hussein. He backed the Soviet hard-liners who tried to prevent democratic freedom from coming to the USSR. Arafat supports the evil regime of the Khartoum monsters who are responsible for the mass murder of more than two million of their own people. He has a good working relationships with the Hamas terrorists, and in front of the world press openly praised one of the group’s worst killers, Yihye Ayyash. Arafat alone knows all the details of the fabulous wealth belonging to the PLO and to himself – details he carries with him in a small attache case all the time. He is personally one of the wealthiest men in the world, yet asks for money everywhere for the cause of „Palestine.” When fellow Palestinians stand in his way, he does not hesitate to have them killed or tortured. There is no person too low or too cruel for him to meet with. He has worked closely with nearly all the terrorist organizations in the world. He is responsible for the killing of numerous people, including journalists and US diplomats; murders for which he has never so much as breathed an apology. Thousands upon thousands or people who have not committed even one percent of his misdeeds and atrocities are safely behind bars. Should he not be too? The European governments that allowed NATO planes to bomb Serbian infrastructure in Yugoslavia, put Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic under house arrest and then brought him to trial for war crimes before the international court in the Hague, will not see that an even worse criminal, a man guilty of infinitely more cruelty, is standing before them. And they spinelessly announce that he is still the Palestinian leader they accept and with whom they are willing to do business as usual! The Bible contains a clear lesson in this regard after Israel’s king Ahab is severely rebuked by God’s prophet for letting Ben Hadad, also a cruel enemy of Israel, go free: „Thus says the Lord: ‘Because you have let slip out of your hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore your life shall go for his life, and your people for his people.” (1 Kings 20:42) Israel already once expelled Arafat from Beirut, leaving him free to go to Tunisia and re-establish his terror machine from there. Thousands of Israeli men, women and children have paid with their lives for that grievous mistake. May it not be repeated this time! Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director International Christian Zionist Center
