No Justice, No Peace

In the final act of injustice in a life nasty and brutish, but not short enough, Yasser Arafat died peacefully today at age 75. Typical news accounts such as this say nothing of the countless murders of innocents he committed, ordered, or financed; or of the brutally repressive rule he imposed on the Arab refugees who became known as "Palestinians." But being the good mouthpiece for terrorists that it is, the Associated Press was sure to include a sample of the kinds of threats -- I mean commitment to "peace" this terrorist, despot, embezzler, and Nobel laureate left to the world. In the words of an already well-brainwashed 14-year old "named Ali, who refused to give his last name," Arafat's legacy is a strong commitment by an uncivilized people to decimate Israel: "He said we will raise the Palestinian flag in Jerusalem - and we will." Arafat has left a destitute people more destitute -- and deluded besides -- and has left the civilized world a mess that will take a long time to clean up at the very best.

There is no way to catalogue the brutality of this repulsive subhuman, but this article does about as well as a new report can. It reports Bush as saying "God bless his soul," on news of his death. Since Bush also called him a principle obstacle to peace in the Middle East in his life, I'll chalk up his remark to his need to maintain decorum as a world leader. But the idea that Arafat the person was the "chief obstacle" bodes ill. It might be a little soon to pass that candy around! For now, with the "chief" obstacle gone, the gate is open for the "peace process" to begin rending Israel apart again. Daniel Pipes gives a good assessment of the great risk this entails: "The president's major statement of June 2002 remains the guideline to his goals vis-a-vis this conflict. In it, he outlined his vision for a 'provisional' Palestinian state and called on Israel to end what he called its 'settlement activity in the occupied territories.' As these two steps make up the heart of the Palestinian program, the president was effectively inviting the Palestinians to behave themselves for an interval, long enough to collect these rewards, and then go back on the warpath." He continues, "Instead, the president should have told the Palestinians that they need unequivocally and permanently to accept that Israel is now and will always remain a Jewish state, plus they need to renounce violence against it. Furthermore, this change of heart must be visible in the schools, media, mosques, and political rhetoric before any discussion of benefits can begin." Palestine is no more ready for independence with Arafat gone than the world will be rid of Islamofascism when Osama bin Laden bites the dust.

Arafat is gone, but terrorism is rooted in the beliefs of its practicioners, so his death is, in the end, really no more significant than that of any common cockroach. And what is that significance? In that part of the world, corroded as it is by an unreformed, primitive religion whose central tenets include death threats to nonbelievers, there are hundreds more waiting to take his place. This is but the closing of a small chapter in a worldwide war that has already spread to Europe, as the March 11 attacks on Madrid and the recent murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh should warn us. Until the Islamic faith achieves the kind of reformation that Christianity had, or until it disappears from the earth, it will represent a constant threat to civilized men everywhere. As Edward Cline puts it in an editorial in Capitalism Magazine, "[T]he chief abomination -- indeed, the principal nemesis -- in the Islamic worldview is man the unbowed, man astride a world he has mastered, man a being proud of his existence and of his achievements, man the rational being. Man who indignantly refuses to degrade himself by groveling five times a day to bang his head on the ground in ritualistic submission to a ghost and its prophets, never daring to think outside the sealed envelope of Sharia law. Man who scoffs at and dismisses the irrational. Man the being who sends probes to wander over Mars, plunge into the atmosphere of Titan, and collect atoms of the sun. Man who creates new medicines, and new materials, and new wealth from the raw material of the earth, so that he can live happily on it." This is why Israel is intolerable to the so-called "Palestinians" and this is why the West in general faces the implacable hatred of the Islamofascist: Man at his best is a direct challenge to Islam.

I agree with Cline: Bush must stop calling Islam the "religion of peace." And I further implore him not to let the death of this small, filthy, murderous tyrant lull him into selling out our only real ally in the Middle East.

-- CAV