Between the Lines

ARAFAT'S TERRORIST HISTORY: A PARTIAL LIST

Yasser Arafat, considered the founder of the modern-day terrorism, began a wave of murder against Jewish targets around the world shortly after taking control of the PLO in 1968-9. Among the murderous exploits he inspired were the following:

* the Savoy Hotel attack of March 1975, in which seven hostages and two soldiers were killed after Fatah terrorists landed on the beach and seized the hotel.

* the Maalot massacre in May 1974 in which a school building was taken over while children from Tzfat on a school trip were sleeping there. Three teachers and 22 schoolchildren were killed.

* the Munich Olympics slaughter, in which eleven Israeli athletes were killed in September 1972.

* the Nahariya/Avivim school bus attack, May 1970. Palestinian terrorists crossed the border from Lebanon, ambushed the bus with a barrage of gunfire, and murdered 12 children and 3 adults, and left several others crippled.

* the Lod Airport Massacre, May 1972, carried out by three Japanese Red Army terrorists in an operation planned and supported by PLO faction PFLP-GC,
killing 26 and wounding 78.

* the Kiryat Shmonah apartment building attack in April 1974: PFLP-GC terrorists penetrated the Israeli border town, entered an apartment building on Yehuda HaLevy St. and killed all 18 residents they found there, including 9 children.

* the Coastal Road bus hijacking of March 1978, in which 11 Fatah terrorists ,who infiltrated by sea, killed a photographer and a taxi driver and hijacked a bus filled with adults and many children. The terrorists fired on passing cars from the bus, and when they were finally stopped, they began firing missiles. The massacre left 35 people dead and 100 injured.

* the brutal murder of three U.S. diplomats held hostage in Khartoum, Sudan, in March 1973. The terrorists demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian assassin of Robert F. Kennedy. Arafat was recorded as having given the execution orders.

* the Achille Lauro hijacking of a cruise ship in October 1985, in which wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, 69, was shot and thrown overboard into the ocean. Israeli intelligence later showed that the terrorists had been in contact, via the ship's radio telephone, with a PLF coordinator in Genoa, who in turn was in touch with PLO headquarters in Tunis for final instructions.

Arafat was famous for denying responsibility for the terrorism committed by his underlings. Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Romanian intelligence official who defected to the West after working closely with Arafat, writes that Romanian dictator Ceausescu advised him how to do this:
"In the shadow of your government-in-exile, you can keep as many operational groups as you want, as long as they are not publicly connected with your name. They could mount endless operations all around the world, while your name and your 'government' would remain pristine and unspoiled, ready for negotiations and further recognition."

Describing Arafat in his memoirs, Pacepa writes that Arafat represented "an incredible account of fanaticism ... of tangled oriental political maneuvers, of lies, of embezzled PLO funds deposited in Swiss banks, and of homosexual relationships, beginning with his teacher when he was a teenager and ending with his current bodyguards. After reading that report, I felt a compulsion to take a shower whenever I had been kissed by Arafat, or even just shaken his hand."

Internationally, in 1972 alone, PLO groups blew up a West German electricity plant, a Dutch gas plant and an oil refinery in Trieste, Italy. In 1975, the presence of Arafat and his 15,000-strong army in Lebanon triggered a bloody civil war that raged on for nearly two decades, costing 40,000 lives.

Arafat was banished from Jordan to Lebanon in 1970 in the course of a violent war against the PLO by King Hussein, and from Lebanon to Tunis in 1982 following the Peace for Galilee War. He orchestrated the first "intifada," beginning in 1987, from Tunis, though it had supposedly started spontaneously.

In 1994, following the Oslo Accords, Arafat was allowed to enter Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Israel essentially forbade him from leaving Ramallah for the last three years of his life. Palestinian terrorists, funded and encouraged by the "statesman" Arafat, have murdered over 1,300 Israelis since the signing of the Oslo Agreement.

Web Design surfgate7 - copyright: MRG ©2003