Meeting Palestinian 'Blood Libel' With Silence Imperils Peace

(Washington, D.C.): Hilary Rodham Clinton’s response — or, more accurately, her
non-response
— to the outrageous lies about Israel publicly served up in her presence by Yasser Arafat’s wife
suggests she is fit neither to be a Senate candidate nor First Lady. Mrs. Clinton declined on the
spot to repudiate Shula Arafat’s claim that “Our people have been submitted to the daily and
intensive use of poisonous [or, in another translation, “toxic”] gas by the Israeli forces which
have led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.” Immediately afterwards,
Mrs. Clinton embraced and kissed Mrs. Arafat and refused to answer questions from the press
about the latter’s remarks.

When the First Lady did respond, moreover, twelve hours after the fact,
it was not to
dispute the blood libel. Rather, it was to indulge in the sort of moral equivalence that has
characterized her husband’s policies towards the so-called Middle East “peace process” —
and that is creating conditions likely to imperil, not secure, the Jewish State. In a
statement
issued in her name, Mrs. Clinton declared simply, “What was said today in Ramallah is an
example of why the President at Oslo urged the parties to refrain from making inflammatory
charges or engaging in excessive rhetoric and to deal with any issues at the negotiating table.”

‘What Was Said in Ramallah’

In fact, “what was said in Ramallah” — a formulation that makes it sound as though no one,
certainly not the would-be First Lady of Palestine, was responsible for having said something
offensive — was a calculated affront. As David Bar-Ilan, the highly regarded former
editor of the
Jerusalem Post who most recently served as Benjamin Netanyahu’s communications
director,
noted in an op.ed. article in the New York Post on 12 November: “There was no
mistaking the
intent and seriousness of Mrs. Arafat’s words. They were part of prepared speech in
Arabic
delivered intently before the local and foreign press. Nor could there be any doubt
about the
implications of her charge.”

With respect to the substance of that charge, Mr. Bar-Ilan caustically observes:

Palestinians and Israelis in this tiny country breathe
the
same air and drink the same water, and that even Satanic Israel has not yet developed a
poison gas that can target only women and children.

What is most extraordinary about this episode is not what amounted to Mrs. Clinton’s
willingness to allow her visit to be used as a prop for anti-Israeli propaganda by the Palestinians.
Her sympathies for the PLO’s cause — including her past responsibility for charitable
contributions to organizations promoting the Palestinian struggle against Israel and her declared
support for a Palestinian state — are a matter of odious record.

The Palestinians’ Growing Brazeness

Rather, what is striking is that the Palestinian leadership decided to exploit the opportunity
afforded by Mrs. Clinton’s presence to expose Western audiences to the sort of vitriolic
anti-Israeli rhetoric to which Arafat’s own people are routinely subjected by state organs and
other
means. Since statements offering tangible evidence that Arafat and Company remain
unreconciled to the idea of living in peace with Israel are generally made in Arabic, they are
routinely ignored by the American and other foreign media.

That Mrs. Clinton’s visit to Ramallah was chosen as the vehicle to disseminate such hateful
lies
more widely suggests not only the PLO’s confidence that the American First Friend of Palestine
would play along. It also speaks volumes about the Palestinian Authority’s increasing
confidence that the Clinton Administration will deliver to it the remaining territorial
concessions by Israel needed to create a Palestinian state, no matter what Arafat and his
subordinates say or do.

The Bottom Line

By allowing her reflexive sympathies for the Palestinians to be exploited by Mrs. Arafat and
her
handlers, Mrs. Clinton may have done herself irreparable harm as a Senate candidate in New
York. (Indeed, evidence continues to accumulate that — faced with the prospect of actually
having to run for and earn that seat — she is going to decline to do so.) What is
more, the poor
judgment she showed in not calling Suha Arafat’s statement what it was, namely a revolting lie,
either on the spot or afterwards suggests that Mrs. Clinton is ill-equipped to play even the
ceremonial roles traditionally associated with American First Ladies, let alone the sort of
substantive function in her husband’s administration that she has sought for herself.

The larger point is that President Clinton and his associates are imperiling the
“peace
process” to which they are so deeply committed by their abject failure to call Arafat and
Company to account for their systematic indoctrination of the Palestinian people with
blood
libels, calls for jihad against Israel and assurances (both explicit and symbolic ¹) that the PLO’s
long-standing goal of liberating all of Palestine remains unchanged. It is an insult to
the
intelligence of the Israeli people and their millions of supporters in the United States to portray
such behavior as merely “inflammatory charges” or “excessive rhetoric.”

Worse, that sort of apologetic misrepresentation can only be perceived by the perpetrators as
a
license to intensify such incitement — and to continue to exploit the U.S. government’s moral
equivalence and mediation to enable the completion of the first, negotiated phase called for since
1974 by the PLO’s “Plan of Phases.” Caveat emptor: The second phase, to follow
the creation
of a Palestinian state on territory Israel has been induced to relinquish under the false promise of
peace, calls for the liberation of the rest, and the liquidation of the Jewish state.

For these reasons, Congress would be well-advised to “fence” or otherwise withhold the
roughly
$400 million in U.S. foreign aid earmarked for the Palestinian Authority pursuant to the Wye
River until such time as the PLO is fully in compliance with both the letter and the spirit of that
accord.

¹ Among the most dramatic of these is the official use made by the
PA of maps showing
“Palestine” as an area encompassing all of the Gaza Strip and West Bank — and all of
pre-1967
Israel.