The Times and Democrat · Orangeburg, SC · 14 October 2003

CP-2003-029

Put Arafat on trial

NAT HENTOFF

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Transcribed from the clipping

Israel should not remove or kill Yasser Arafat. Assassinating him will make this lifelong revolutionary a martyr for the ages, and not only among Palestinians. But he should be put on trial, in Jerusalem, for direct involvement in serial acts of terrorism against civilians. This trial should be entirely public – unlike state trials in Cuba and China.

Facilities should be provided for the world press, including neutral, professional translators that are neither from Israel, nor the Palestinian Authority nor Arab countries.

Intense worldwide attention will certainly be paid to these proceedings, considering the identity of the defendant and the issues to be raised in the trial – historical and contemporary – that will concern a number of nations, as well as Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Arafat’s defense will surely include extensive charges against the state of Israel, including that state’s alleged acts of terrorism against the Palestinian people.

Both sides, then, before a world audience will finally, in direct confrontation in an open courtroom, be able to present their quintessential arguments for self-preservation – as nations and as peoples. … I cannot pretend to be neutral about Arafat.

For years, I wrote strongly in favor of an independent Palestinian state, and even received recognition from an Arab-American organization for fairness in my reporting. But the horror of suicide bombings – vigorously approved by Arafat in speeches in Arabic to Palestinians – has deeply changed the moral equation of this conflict.

Avraham Burg, former speaker of Israel’s Knesset (its unicameral parliament) and a persistent critic of Ariel Sharon’s policies, said in a recent “Letter to my Palestinian friends” about suicide bombings: “It is a weapon of monsters, not freedom fighters. And until you spit it and its facilitators from your midst, you will have no partner on my side.”

If Arafat does go to trial, I hope with all my heart that suicide bombings everywhere will be, at last, definitively condemned as indeed a monstrous violation of human rights – and will then be glaringly defined as such in international law.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

Maria’s note on this slide asks whether a pattern or carousel on Israeli Arabs is possible. This clipping contributes nothing to that: it is a syndicated opinion column about Arafat, with no reference to Arab citizens of Israel at all. Recorded as a negative case.

Cite this clipping

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