Yasser Arafat Quotes

In 1974, Mahmoud Darwish wrote Yasser Arafat’s speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations: Today I have come bearing an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

Palestinians no longer blamed Yasser Arafat or Hamas for their troubles. Now they blamed the Israelis for killing their children. But I still couldn't escape a fundamental question: Why were those children out there in the first place? Where were the parents? Why didn't their mothers and fathers keep them inside? Those children should have been sitting at their desks in school, not running in the streets throwing stones at armed soldiers.

Edward genially enough did not disagree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the ad hominem to point out that his life—the life of the mind, the life of the book collector and music lover and indeed of the gallery-goer, appreciator of the feminine and occasional boulevardier—would become simply unlivable and unthinkable in an Islamic republic. Again, he could accede politely to my point but carry on somehow as if nothing had been conceded. I came slowly to realize that with Edward, too, I was keeping two sets of books. We agreed on things like the first Palestinian intifadah, another event that took the Western press completely off guard, and we collaborated on a book of essays that asserted and defended Palestinian rights. This was in the now hard-to-remember time when all official recognition was withheld from the PLO. Together we debated Professor Bernard Lewis and Leon Wieseltier at a once-celebrated conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Cambridge in 1986, tossing and goring them somewhat in a duel over academic 'objectivity' in the wider discipline. But even then I was indistinctly aware that Edward didn't feel himself quite at liberty to say certain things, while at the same time feeling rather too much obliged to say certain other things. A low point was an almost uncritical profile of Yasser Arafat that he contributed to Interview magazine in the late 1980s.

Arafat had said that the womb of the Palestinian woman was a "biological weapon," which he could use to create Palestine state by crowding people into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as 'Abu Nidal' ('father of struggle'), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat's main enemies. The meeting began inauspiciously when Abu Nidal asked me if I would like to be trained in one of his camps. No thanks, I explained. From this awkward beginning there was a further decline. I was then asked if I knew Said Hammami, the envoy of the PLO in London. I did in fact know him. He was a brave and decent man, who in a series of articles in the London Times had floated the first-ever trial balloon for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. 'Well tell him he is a traitor,' barked my host. 'And tell him we have only one way with those who betray us.' The rest of the interview passed as so many Middle Eastern interviews do: too many small cups of coffee served with too much fuss; too many unemployed heavies standing about with nothing to do and nobody to do it with; too much ugly furniture, too many too-bright electric lights; and much too much faux bonhomie. The only political fact I could winnow, from Abu Nidal's vainglorious claims to control X number of 'fighters' in Y number of countries, was that he admired the People's Republic of China for not recognizing the State of Israel. I forget how I got out of his office.

They are an American Delegation who are doing a tour of the region to apologize for the crusades', said Arafat. Then he, and his guest, burst out laughing. They both knew that America had little or no involvement in the wars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. But Arafat, at any rate, was happy to indulge the affliction of anyone who believed they had and use it to his own political advantage.

O God, my Lord, destroy the Jews for making us endless refugees and condemn Yasser Arafat for causing another Palestinian exodus. O my Lord, burn the Americans and burn the Jews. They are behind all these wars.” “Amen,” Mama said.

Inevitably came the time when he angrily repudiated his former paladin Yasser Arafat. In fact, he described him to me as 'the Palestinian blend of Marshal Petaín and Papa Doc.' But the main problem, alas, remained the same. In Edward's moral universe, Arafat could at last be named as a thug and a practitioner of corruption and extortion. But he could only be identified as such to the extent that he was now and at last aligned with an American design. Thus the only truly unpardonable thing about 'The Chairman' was his readiness to appear on the White House lawn with Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton in 1993. I have real knowledge and memory of this, because George Stephanopoulos—whose father's Orthodox church in Ohio and New York had kept him in touch with what was still a predominantly Christian Arab-American opinion—called me more than once from the White House to help beseech Edward to show up at the event. 'The feedback we get from Arab-American voters is this: If it's such a great idea, why isn't Said signing off on it?' When I called him, Edward was grudging and crabby. 'The old man [Arafat] has no right to sign away land.' Really? Then what had the Algiers deal been all about? How could two states come into being without mutual concessions on territory?

In 1974, Mahmoud Darwish wrote Yasser Arafat’s speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations: Today I have come bearing an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. 346 I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

The question of borders doesn’t interest us… From the Arab standpoint, we mustn’t talk about borders. Palestine is nothing but a drop in an enormous ocean. Our nation is the Arabic nation that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond it…The P.L.O. is fighting Israel in the name of Pan-Arabism. What you call “Jordan” is nothing more than Palestine.

The ultimate source of power, here as in the whole course of Arab history, is the personality of the commander. Through him, whether he be an Abbasid Khalif or an Amir of Nejd, the political entity holds, and with his disappearance it breaks.” The echo of her words would ring throughout the region for the rest of the century, in men like Gamal Abdel Nasser, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein.

Since that time, Muslims have quoted the “Quraysh Model” as justification for deceptive treaties. This model means: “Negotiate ‘peace’ with your enemy until you become strong enough to annihilate him.” This is the justification Chairman Yasser Arafat quoted in Arabic to the Muslim world when he signed the Oslo Agreement. Muslims believe that no infidels really understand what the Quraysh Model means—and for the vast majority of non-Muslims, that is a correct assumption.

The Arab world has done nothing to help the Palestinian refugees they created when they attacked Israel in 1948. It’s called the ‘Palestinian refugee problem.’ This is one of the best tricks that the Arabs have played on the world, and they have used it to their great advantage when fighting Israel in the forum of public opinion. This lie was pulled off masterfully, and everyone has been falling for it ever since. First you tell people to leave their homes and villages because you are going to come in and kick out the Jews the day after the UN grants Israel its nationhood. You fail in your military objective, the Jews are still alive and have more land now than before, and you have thousands of upset, displaced refugees living in your country because they believed in you. So you and the UN build refugee camps that are designed to last only five years and crowd the people in, instead of integrating them into your society and giving them citizenship. After a few years of overcrowding and deteriorating living conditions, you get the media to visit and publish a lot of pictures of these poor people living in the hopeless, wretched squalor you have left them in. In 1967 you get all your cronies together with their guns and tanks and planes and start beating the war drums. Again the same old story: you really are going to kill all the Jews this time or drive them into the sea, and everyone will be able to go back home, take over what the Jews have developed, and live in a Jew-free Middle East. Again you fail and now there are even more refugees living in your countries, and Israel is even larger, with Jerusalem as its capital. Time for more pictures of more camps and suffering children. What is to be done about these poor refugees (that not even the Arabs want)? Then start Middle Eastern student organizations on U.S. college campuses and find some young, idealistic American college kids who have no idea of what has been described here so far, and have them take up the cause. Now enter some power-hungry type like Yasser Arafat who begins to blackmail you and your Arab friends, who created the mess, for guns and bombs and money to fight the Israelis. Then Arafat creates hell for the world starting in the 1970s with his terrorism, and the “Palestinian refugee problem” becomes a worldwide issue and galvanizes all your citizens and the world against Israel. Along come the suicide bombers, so to keep the pot boiling you finance the show by paying every bomber’s family twenty-five thousand dollars. This encourages more crazies to go blow themselves up, killing civilians and children riding buses to school. Saudi Arabia held telethons to raise thousands of dollars to the families of suicide bombers. What a perfect way to turn years of military failure into a public-opinion-campaign success. The perpetuation of lies and uncritical thinking, combined with repetitious anti-Jewish and anti-American diatribes, has produced a generation of Arab youth incapable of thinking in a civilized manner. This government-nurtured rage toward the West and the infidels continues today, perpetuating their economic failure and deflecting frustration away from the dictators and regimes that oppress them. This refusal by the Arab regimes to take an honest look at themselves has created a culture of scapegoating that blames western civilization for misery and failure in every aspect of Arab life. So far it seems that Arab leaders don’t mind their people lagging behind, save for King Abdullah’s recent evidence of concern. (The depth of his sincerity remains to be seen.)

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat was invited to spend more time in the White House than any other foreign leader—thirteen invitations.303 Clinton was dead set on helping the Israelis and Palestinians achieve a lasting peace. He pushed the Israelis to grant ever-greater concessions until the Israelis were willing to grant the Palestinians up to 98 percent of all the territory they requested. And what was the Palestinian response? They walked away from the bargaining table and launched the wave of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks known as the Second Intifada. And what of Osama bin Laden? Even while America was granting concessions to Palestinians—and thereby theoretically easing the conditions that provided much of the pretext for Muslim terror—bin Laden was bombing U.S. embassies in Africa, almost sank the USS Cole in Yemen, and was well into the planning stages of the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001. After President George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, bringing American troops into direct ground combat with jihadists half a world away, many Americans quickly forgot the recent past and blamed American acts of self-defense for “inflaming” jihad. One of those Americans was Barack Obama. Soon after his election, Obama traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where he delivered a now-infamous speech that signaled America’s massive policy shifts. The United States pulled entirely out of Iraq despite the pleas of “all the major Iraqi parties.”304 In Egypt, the United States actually backed the Muslim Brotherhood government, going so far as agreeing to give it advanced F-16 fighters and M1 Abrams main battle tanks, even as the Muslim Brotherhood government was violating its peace treaty with Israel and persecuting Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian community. The Obama administration continued supporting the Brotherhood, even when it stood aside and allowed jihadists to storm the American embassy, raising the black flag of jihad over an American diplomatic facility. In Libya, the United States persuaded its allies to come to the aid of a motley group of rebels, including jihadists. Then many of these same jihadists promptly turned their anger on the United States, attacking our diplomatic compound in Benghazi the afternoon and evening of September 11, 2012—killing the American ambassador and three more brave Americans. Compounding this disaster, the administration had steadfastly refused to reinforce the American security presence in spite of a deteriorating security situation, afraid that it would anger the local population. This naïve and foolish administration decision cost American lives.

the 2004 rape and murder of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people. [Addressing the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat]

Incidentally, in 1951, a close relative of the Mufti named Rahman Abdul Rauf el-Qudwa el-Husseini began study at the University of Cairo. The student decided to conceal his true identity and enlisted under the invented name—Yasser Arafat.” Alex, stunned by what he was hearing, finished the story. “Who went on to found the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO.

Eban said of Yasser Arafat that he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Yasser Arafat and his PLO held the records for the largest hijacking,6 the greatest number of hostages held at one time,7 the greatest number of people shot at an airport, the largest ransom collected,8 and the greatest variety of targets.9 Yasser Arafat was the man who ordered the murder of the schoolchildren in Avivim, Ma’alot, and Antwerp; the murder of eleven Jewish Olympic athletes in Munich; the murder of synagogue worshipers in Istanbul; the murder of a child and his pregnant mother in Alfeh Menashe; and the murder of a mother and her children on a bus in Jericho. This was the man who ordered innocent Arabs in Nablus to be hanged by their chins on butchers’ hooks until they died; by whose orders the bellies of pregnant Arab women were split open before the eyes of their husbands and the hands of Arab children were chopped off while their parents looked on.10 And he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and celebrated on the White House lawn in a forced handshake with both the leaders of the very people he had sworn to destroy.

Israel rightly pointed out that Yasser Arafat was an unrepentant terrorist and

The PLO was founded three years before the Israelis ever occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and that the PLO wanted Israel wiped off the map. But in a ninety-second story, who has time to remind viewers that when the PLO was founded, Gaza was illegally occupied by Egypt, and the West Bank by Jordan, but Yasser Arafat did not mind those occupations? Where were the voices of the Palestinians then for their independent state?

Frank Fiorini, better known as Frank Sturgis, had an interesting career that started when he quit high school during his senior year to join the United States Marine Corps as an enlisted man. During World War II he served in the Pacific Theater of Operations with Edson’s Raiders, of the First Marine Raiders Battalion under Colonel “Red Mike.” In 1945 at the end of World War II, he received an honorable discharge and the following year joined the Norfolk, Virginia Police Department. Getting involved in an altercation with his sergeant, he resigned and found employment as the manager of the local Havana-Madrid Tavern, known to have had a clientele consisting primarily of Cuban seamen. In 1947 while still working at the tavern, he joined the U.S. Navy’s Flight Program. A year later, he received an honorable discharge and joined the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer. Again, in 1949, he received an honorable discharge, this time from the U.S. Army. Then in 1957, he moved to Miami where he met former Cuban President Carlos Prío, following which he joined a Cuban group opposing the Cuban dictator Batista. After this, Frank Sturgis went to Cuba and set up a training camp in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, teaching guerrilla warfare to Castro’s forces. He was appointed a Captain in Castro’s M 26 7 Brigade, and as such, he made use of some CIA connections that he apparently had cultivated, to supply Castro with weapons and ammunition. After they entered Havana as victors of the revolution, Sturgis was appointed to a high security, intelligence position within the reorganized Cuban air force. Strangely, Frank Sturgis returned to the United States after the Cuban Revolution, and mysteriously turned up as one of the Watergate burglars who were caught installing listening devices in the National Democratic Campaign offices. In 1973 Frank A. Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio R. Martínez, G. Gordon Liddy, Virgilio R. “Villo” González, Bernard L. Barker and James W. McCord, Jr. were convicted of conspiracy. While in prison, Sturgis feared for his life if anything he had done, regarding his associations and contacts, became public knowledge. In 1975, Sturgis admitted to being a spy, stating that he was involved in assassinations and plots to overthrow undisclosed foreign governments. However, at the Rockefeller Commission hearings in 1975, their concluding report stated that he was never a part of the CIA…. Go figure! In 1979, Sturgis surfaced in Angola where he trained and helped the rebels fight the Cuban-supported communists. Following this, he went to Honduras to train the Contras in their fight against the communist-supported Sandinista government. He also met with Yasser Arafat in Tunis, following which he was debriefed by the CIA. Furthermore, it is documented that he met and talked to the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, or Carlos the Jackal, who is now serving a life sentence for murdering two French counter intelligence agents. On December 4, 1993, Sturgis suddenly died of lung cancer at the Veterans Hospital in Miami, Florida. He was buried in an unmarked grave south of Miami…. Or was he? In this murky underworld, anything is possible.

But surely you understand why Kuwaitis would be upset with Palestinians? Yasser Arafat betrayed them by siding with Saddam Hussein.

At around the same time, while in Cairo, Yasser Arafat, the PLO chairman, declared that the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank was “a joke”; later, in Algeria, he declared, “This project aims at liquidating Palestinian organizations.

In the late 1980s and the 1990s, it appeared as if the PLO, under Yasser Arafat, might be abandoning the one-state goal and adopting a two-state paradigm, envisaging a Palestinian Arab state arising, on 22 percent of historic Mandate Palestine, alongside Israel, and coexisting with it in peace. Such a vision, at least from the Israeli side, underlay the Oslo peace process. But already at the time the sincerity of Arafat’s newfound commitment to a two-state settlement was doubtful in view of some of his public pronouncements, his incitement to hatred and terrorism vis-à-vis Israel, and his serial nonimplementation of various provisions, especially those related to curbing terrorism, of the interim agreements he signed during the 1990s.

Yasser Arafat

We drove to Ramallah, to the presidential compound called the Mukata’a, where former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is buried in a mausoleum and where the current president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is headquartered.

I thought of the young Saul of Tarsus in November 1995, when the then prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by a student called Yigal Amir. Rabin had taken part in the Oslo Accords, working out agreements toward peace with the Palestinian leadership. In 1994 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his political rival Shimon Peres and with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He also signed a peace treaty with Jordan. All this was too much for hard-line Israelis, who saw his actions as hopelessly compromising national identity and security. The news media described the assassin as a “law student,” but in Europe and America that phrase carries a meaning different from the one it has in Israel today and the one it would have had in the days of Saul of Tarsus. Amir was not studying to be an attorney in a Western-style court. He was a zealous Torah student. His action on November 4, 1995, was, so he claimed at his trial, in accordance with Jewish law. He is still serving his life sentence and has never expressed regret for his actions. The late twentieth century is obviously very different from the early first century, but “zeal” has remained a constant.

Yasser Arafat got a Nobel Prize,

I had taken office during a raging intifada, with Yasser Arafat running the Palestinian Authority, Israeli leaders committed to a Greater Israel policy, and Arab nations complaining from the sidelines. By the time I left, the Palestinians had a president and prime minister who rejected terrorism. The Israelis had withdrawn from some settlements and supported a two-state solution. And Arab nations were playing an active role in the peace process.

Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat and the other PA leaders had been determined to spark another intifada. They had been planning it for months, even as Arafat and Barak had been meeting with President Clinton at Camp David.

on July 25, 2000…Barak had offered Arafat about 90 percent of the West Bank, the entire Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem as the capital of a new Palestinian state. In addition, a new international fund would be established to compensate Palestinians for the property that had been taken from them. This “land for peace” offer represented a historic opportunity for the long-suffering Palestinian people, something few Palestinians would have dared imagine possible. But even so, it was not enough for Arafat. Yasser Arafat had grown extraordinarily wealthy as the international symbol of victimhood. He wasn’t about to surrender that status and take on the responsibility of actually building a functioning society.

Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart.” - Yasser Arafat