About Being Kind to the Cruel

by Michael Freund
November 3, 2004

The outpouring of sympathy and concern has been nothing short 
of breathtaking. 

Followers and well-wishers around the globe have expressed 
their fear and anxiety over the ailing patient's health, 
hoping against hope that somehow, yet again, he will stare 
death down and manage to recover. 

Take, for example, the flood of statesmen wishing Yasser Arafat 
well, with everyone from Jacques Chirac to Vladimir Putin to 
Chinese President Hu Jintao expressing hope for his recovery. 

Even the US State Department got into the act, with spokesman 
Richard Boucher telling reporters: "This is not a political 
matter for us. This is a matter of seeing that an ill person 
gets the medical care he needs for health. That is our wish 
and our hope in this circumstance." 

Leila Shahid, Arafat's representative in Paris, said the 
Palestinian leader had been inundated with notes and letters 
of support. 

"All these people have written personal letters to President 
Arafat, and I consider that this is what I would call the 
emotional medication, the psychological medication," she said. 

A correspondent for the BBC went so far as to describe how 
she "started to cry" when the "frail, old" Arafat was taken 
from his compound for medical treatment abroad. 

In just about any other scenario it would be difficult not to 
be moved by such a display of kindness. After all, caring for 
others is truly one of the most benevolent and elevated of 
human acts. 

And yet, when it comes to Yasser Arafat, all this talk of 
compassion and pity could hardly seem more misplaced. 

Even with the natural tendency to set aside differences when 
a leader's health is in question, let's not forget about whom 
we are talking. 

Whatever one's views of the peace process, Arafat was and 
remains a crude and ruthless serial killer. For decades he has 
devoted himself to violence and terror, sparing neither the 
young nor the innocent. 

He is both literally and figuratively responsible for the 
deaths of thousands of people, and the maiming of countless 
others. 

Arafat has sanctified terror and legitimized the rifle, 
corrupting the values of generations of Palestinians. 

Given that we are finite beings and have a limited amount of 
energy and emotion at our disposal, why do so many world leaders 
and pundits feel it necessary to expend them on a killer rather 
than on his victims? 

And yet when it comes to those whose lives have been destroyed 
by Arafat and his comrades, no equivalent level of sympathy 
has been forthcoming. 

Last Friday, as Arafat was being airlifted from Ramallah, 
the Chizhik family of Tiberias was burying their 21-year-old 
son Michael, a sergeant in the military who had been murdered 
the day before in a Palestinian rocket attack near Gaza. 
Six of Chizhik's fellow soldiers were wounded, three of them 
seriously. 

Do we even know their names or hear about their condition? 
Do world leaders pray for their recovery or call to find out 
how they are doing? 

Just this week, a study was released underlining the extent 
of the harm caused by Arafat and his cronies. According to the 
University of Haifa's Center for National Security Studies, 
more than one out of five Israeli Jews has lost a friend or 
relative to Palestinian terror in the past four years. 

That is the equivalent of some 55 million Americans being 
directly affected by the loss of a loved one. 

What kind of warped morality, then, leads so many people to 
anguish over Arafat, even as they pay little heed to the 
devastation he has wrought? 

Consider the words of Haaretz commentator Gideon Levy, who 
described meeting Arafat as being "in the embrace of a warm, 
effusive, caressing man." 

While the Palestinian leader does not eat much, Levy tells us, 
he "heaps more and more food on your plate, like an oversolicitous 
Jewish mother." The least Israel should have done when Arafat 
fell ill, Levy insists, was to "offer medical treatment." 

Medical treatment? To the man whose signature was found all over 
documents recovered during Operation Defensive Shield authorizing 
terrorist attacks? To the person who has devoted himself and his 
career to waging war against the Jewish people and their state? 

Just imagine if Osama bin Laden were to emerge from his cave 
complaining of a nagging headache. Would anyone seriously expect 
the US to grant him safe passage to a leading Western medical 
facility so he could recover as quickly as possible and return 
to the path of terror? 

Being kind to the cruel is nothing to be proud of, and it 
certainly isn't an appropriate policy. 

By permitting Arafat to travel abroad, Israel was actually 
committing an anti-humanitarian act. Allowing the Gangster of 
Gaza to escape scot-free rather than arresting him and putting 
him on trial was neither moral nor just. 

Israel's prison hospital in Ramle would surely have been more 
than able to accommodate him. 

So my suggestion to all those worrying about Arafat's condition 
in Paris is this: Don't rush out and spend your money on get-well 
cards. It's the victims, not the perpetrator, who are truly 
deserving of your sympathy and support.
----------
The writer served as a communications and policy adviser in 
the office of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.