Arafat: ‘I’m Like George Washington’
“Did you ever accept the British occupation of the United States,” Arafat asked. “Didn’t George Washington fight, along with his people, until they freed the United States?”
Arafat made his statements one day after the Palestinian cabinet called on all Palestinian factions to abide by the PA’s cease-fire orders of December 16.
Arafat’s vow yesterday to continue the “struggle until victory” was no contradiction to the cabinet’s call for a cease-fire, and was not in defiance of the American demand that he do more, Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to the Palestinian leader told The Jerusalem Post. The Jerusalem Post
Apparently, Arafat has been encouraging this simile for awhile now. It provoked this response in December from Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley:
Incredibly, when the tide began shifting last week, some in our community attempted to rally support by comparing Arafat and his suicide bombers to George Washington and the heroes of the American Revolution. Nice try.
Washington raised an army of patriots willing to die for liberty and used conventional military tactics to defeat a superior foe. Arafat fights with pitiful fanatics who are brainwashed into believing that by murdering innocents they’ll gain a greater heavenly reward.
Washington was a freedom fighter. Arafat is a terrorist.
(…)
It took three months longer than it should have, but the moral equivalency argument was at last blown to pieces in the suicide bombings that killed 26 Israeli civilians last weekend.
The Bush administration finally understands there is no equating the intentional slaughter of children on a family outing with the occupation of Palestinian territories, or the accidental deaths that result from subduing terrorism.
The only moral equivalency that can be drawn today is between the death and destruction inflicted on the United States on Sept. 11 and the daily torment suffered by Israelis.
If only George W. Bush had seen that sooner. Perhaps the dozens of Israelis murdered in recent months might have been spared.
The similarlties, however, may be more apt than his detractors would acknowledge — but turned on their head. Couldn’t you imagine the Founding Fathers targeting British civilians for terrorist attacks if they had had access?
