Arafat Pays and Orders
Arabs to Murder Jews

NEW YORK – The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized President Bush’s erroneous claim that Yasir Arafat is not a terrorist.

Speaking to reporters on April 1, 2002, President Bush denied that Arafat is a terrorist, on the grounds that “Arafat has agreed to a peace process. He has agreed to the Tenet Plan. He has agreed to the Mitchell Plan.” In a similar vein, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on April 1, 2002, that the Bush administration rejects comparisons between the terrorists in Afghanistan and the Palestinian Arab terrorists: “The situation in the Middle East is indeed different. What makes it different is the fact that you have parties who themselves have agreed together to the Tenet accords, to the Mitchell accords, which all follows the Oslo peace process. That was not, is not the case with Al Qaeda.” (Washington Post, April 2, 2002)

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on April 1, 2002 that Iraqi’s policy of sending money to the families of Palestinian Arab suicide bombers “is very actively trying to kill innocent men, women and children. And that’s exactly what the Iraqis intend to be doing by doing that.” Rumsfeld did not mention that the Iraqi grants to bombers’ families are distributed by Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and the PA also provides funds of its own to the families as well as to imprisoned terrorists.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “It is absurd to say that Arafat is not a terrorist because he agreed to the Oslo accords. He has consistently violated every aspect of those accords. He is just as much a terrorist now as he was the day before he signed the accords. Arafat should be judged by his actual behavior, not by his signature on a treaty that he never fulfilled.”

ZOA president Klein added: “Adolf Hitler, too, signed a peace agreement —at Munich— but then violated every aspect of it; would anyone have later said that he was anything but a war-monger and a killer?”

ARAFAT ORDERS TERRORISM:

* Israeli Army Major-General Giora Eiland said at a Jerusalem press conference on March 31, 2002: “The Palestinian Authority is involved in a very active way in the terrorist activities. The organization that is responsible for the most of the recent events is the [Fatah] Tanzim, which is part of the Palestinian Authority.” Israeli Army Colonel Gal Hirsch, chief operations officer for the Army’s Central Command, said on March 12, 2002: “The Fatah Tanzim are an offical branch of PA militia under direct Arafat control.” General Yossi Kupervasser, Chief of Israeli Army Intelligence, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on March 4, 2002, that Fatah’s Marwan Barghouti, the chief field commander of the violence, “takes his orders directly from Arafat.”

* Israeli Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said at a Jerusalem press conference on April 1, 2002, that the number of terrorist attacks committed by Arafat’s Fatah since September 2000 “is five times the number of attacks committed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Arafat is thus committing five out of every six attacks that kill Israelis.”

* The State Department’s own annual reports on terrorism acknowledge that Fatah, Force 17 and the PA police are involved in terrorism (although the State Department says it cannot verify if they are doing so with Arafat’s approval), and the State Department recently declared that the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade is a terrorist organization (although the State Department says it cannot verify if Al Aksa is under Arafat’s control—even though the Al Aksa leaders themselves say they take orders from Arafat).

ARAFAT PAYS TERRORISTS:

* Documents uncovered in the former PA headquarters in Jerusalem, Orient House, include “signed orders by Arafat to pay Tanzim members who were known hit-men.” (The MediaLine, March 25, 2002)

* The PA has been providing a one time payment of $2,000 to families of Palestinian Arab terrorists killed while trying to murder Jews; the PA also provides “monthly payments of $150 that continue until the last child has left the house”; an additional $2,500 grant from the PA’s Red Crescent Division; and the PA has served as the conduit for payments of $10,000 to each family from the government of Iraq. (New York Times, Dec. 24, 2000) Iraqi Deputy Minister Tariq Aziz announced in April that Iraq is increasing the amount of its PA-channeled grants to $25,000 per family. (Associated Press, March 12, 2002)

* The PA also provides specials scholarships to “the sons of martyrs” (Jerusalem Times, July 3, 1998) and provides every Arab terrorist imprisoned by Israel with “an income identical to that of a soldier.” (Jerusalem Times, Sept. 11, 1998;Yerushalayim, Aug.27, 1999)

ARAFAT SHELTERS TERRORISTS: In violation of his Oslo accord commitments, Arafat has never fulfilled any of Israel’s 45 requests to surrender terrorists for prosecution. As recently as March 26, 2002, PA Preventive Security Chief Jibril Rajoub said “that he would never arrest the Palestinians Israel has identified as wanted for terrorist activities.” (Israel Radio, March 26, 2002)

ARAFAT PRAISES TERRORISTS: Arafat and other PA officials regularly make speeches urges Palestinian Arabs to become “martyrs” in the “jihad” (Islamic holy war) against Israel. Arafat publicly praises Palestinian Arabs who are killed while trying to murder Jews as “martyrs,” “heroes,” and “stars.” Streets and parks in PA-controlled cities are named after prominent Arab terrorists. Official textbooks used in PA schools glorify terrorists as heroes and encourage schoolchildren to become terrorists. Official PA summer camps teach children how to use guns and bombs, and provide them training in terrorist techniques. Sermons by PA-appointed clergymen urge Palestinian Arabs to murder Jews. The official PA television, radio, and newspapers glorify terrorists as heroes.