What will it take? by Ed Koch The Jerusalem Post (April 21) - I pray the time will come when I won't have to write columns in defense of Israel. I pray the people of that biblical country will be able to live within secure and defensible borders, respected by a democratically-elected Palestinian leadership with a state situated side by side and linked by ties of friendship and commerce. Regrettably, my prayers will probably not be answered for a long time. A substantial majority of Israeli and American Jews support the creation of a Palestinian state. But, there are no comparable Arab voices seeking a permanent, peaceful resolution that would allow both a Muslim Palestinian state and a Jewish Israeli state to coexist. When Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is pressed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, he will, in order to gain a meeting with the secretary, denounce suicide bombers who target Israeli civilians. But what real impact do his words have? Does he mean what he says? What measures does he take to implement his statements? Is it significant that he utters these words in Arabic? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding no. Arafat's words have no meaning or impact and are intended to placate his European allies and those in the US State Department who then foolishly point to his reasonableness. This week, an article in The New York Times, by Judith Miller reported the following. "Before Yasser Arafat condemned 'terror against civilians' on Saturday, his wife, Suha al-Taweel Arafat, told an Arabic-language magazine that she endorsed suicide attacks as legitimate resistance against Israeli occupation. In an interview published Friday in Al Majalla, a London-based, Saudi-owned weekly, Mrs. Arafat said that if she had a son, there would be 'no greater honor' than to sacrifice him for the Palestinian cause. Would you expect me and my children to be less patriotic and more eager to live than my countrymen and their father and leader who is seeking martyrdom?'" Day after day, Arafat supporters on American TV have said that Arafat has denounced such tactics many times. Why, they ask, do Americans - referring to Powell and President George W. Bush - continue to ask for such reassurance? But his wife tells us what he truly believes. If we had any doubt, we need only listen to the words of Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the top scholar of Al Azhar University in Cairo, that all Israelis "men, women and children" were "forces of occupation," and "martyrdom operations" were the "highest form of jihad operations." We already know that Faisal al-Husseini, Arafat's chief representative in Jerusalem until his recent death said, "...our ultimate goal is [still] the liberation of all historical Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations." Miller's article, which appeared on page 11 of the Times when it should have appeared on page 1, reported the statement of Sheikh Ahmed Tayyeb, Egypt's mufti and highest religious authority. He said, "the solution to the Israeli terror" lies in a proliferation of suicide attacks "that strike horror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah... The Islamic countries, peoples and rulers alike, must support these martyrdom attacks." The European countries where anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments are at an all-time high, support Arafat and daily threaten Israel with economic and military sanctions. They demand the placement of United Nations forces on the West Bank to prevent Israeli reprisals against those protecting the suicide bombers. Would they agree that half of such UN force should be deployed in the buses that are being blown up in Israel? I am so tired and bitter at hearing lectures from France, Belgium and other countries that cooperated with Nazi Germany bringing their Jewish citizens to the railway box cars for delivery to death camps in Poland. The rising tide of anti-Semitism in France and shockingly even England, is approaching that which existed in 1939. Thank God the Israelis - "the Jewish nation" - has an army that will defend its people when they are attacked. We are constantly told by American TV anchors how important it is that we placate our Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, et. al., so as to enlist their support in the coming showdown with Iraq. Those commentators never mention that those same Arab countries voted recently in Beruit that an attack upon Iraq would be considered an attack upon all of them. They have become, with Iraq, the Arab version of a NATO hostile to the US What will it take to get us to understand those countries are not our allies, and cannot be depended on when the chips are down. The writer is a former mayor of New York City. --- source: