Garibaldi Street, Ramallah
By Michael Freund
September 25, 2002
fter
two years of relentless Palestinian terror, there is something
refreshingly ironic about Yasser Arafat's current plight.Holed
up in what remains of his Ramallah compound known as the Mukata,
Arafat now finds himself surrounded by Jews in uniform, members
of the very same people he has devoted his career to mercilessly
killing and destroying.
With their rifles at the ready, these proud young defenders of
the Jewish people stand prepared to bring the Palestinian leader
to justice, if only Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will give the
order.
This is a moment we should all be relishing.
Indeed, not since May 1960, when Israeli agents apprehended German
mastermind Adolf Eichmann outside his Buenos Aires home on Garibaldi
Street, has a mass murderer of Jews been so close to being captured.
In his account of the operation, The House on Garibaldi Street,
Mossad chief Isser Harel explained the reason behind his determination
to bring Eichmann to justice: "In everything pertaining to the
Jews, he was the paramount authority and his were the hands that
pulled the strings controlling manhunt and massacre this man was
pointed to as the head butcher."
By now, it should be clear to all that those words offer an apt
description of Arafat, as well.
It is Arafat's hand that signed the checks to fund Palestinian
terror attacks against Israel. And it is Arafat's voice that gave
the green light to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and his own Fatah movement
to launch suicide-bombing attacks against innocent men, women
and children. And it is Arafat's mind that plotted and oversaw
the present wave of Palestinian terror.
"His were the hands that pulled the strings..." As a result,
more than 600 innocent Israelis have been murdered in the past
two years by Palestinian terrorists. That is 600 compelling reasons
to bring Arafat to justice. Which is not to mention the Munich
Olympics massacre, the Achille Lauro hijacking or other various
atrocities perpetrated over the years by the PLO.
The French are said to be "appalled," and the rest of Europe
is hopping mad, that Israel now dares to turn up the heat on the
leader of the Palestinian revolution.
LET THEM fume all they wish. They stood by silently as Eichmann's
henchmen murdered Jews half a century ago, and they spoke out
in protest only when Israel hunted him down and brought him to
trial.
Then, as now, they do nothing to stop the killing of Jews, but
everything to stop the State of Israel from seeking justice.
But, with Arafat in its crosshairs, Israel now has an opportunity
to remind the world, and many Israelis too, about the meaning
of Zionism and Jewish sovereignty: namely, that those who kill
Jews can no longer do so with impunity.
It was a lesson that guided the state in its early years, giving
rise to the daring operation that brought Eichmann to a courthouse
in Jerusalem. But that lesson was largely brushed aside over much
of the past decade, when the government chose to court Arafat
rather than haul him before a court.
The Palestinian leader, of course, is no Eichmann, and it would
be wrong to compare the Palestinians to the Nazis. The point here,
quite simply, is this: anyone who murders Jews, as Arafat has
done, must be made to pay for his actions.
In his last address to his men before the end of the Second World
War, Eichmann is reported by one of his close associates to have
said these chilling words: "I shall leap into my grave laughing,
because the feeling that I have the deaths of five million people
on my conscience will be for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction."
Israel's task now is to ensure that Arafat knows no similar sense
of contentment.
After pursuing him on and off over the past four decades for
his lethal anti-Jewish terror, Israel now has Arafat in its sights,
in the modern-day equivalent of the house on Garibaldi Street,
in the heart of Ramallah.
Now is the time for Israel to finish the job. Now is the time
to bring Arafat to justice once and for all.
This article was originally published in the The
Jerusalem Post on September 25, 2002
