[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 45 (Monday, April 22, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E594]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  PALESTINIANS DESERVE BETTER LEADERS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 22, 2002

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, today, Israel is engaged in a struggle 
against violence and terror. Suicide bombings promoted and abetted by 
Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority have ravaged Israeli cities 
and towns killing scores of innocent Israeli men, women and children. 
Arafat's refusal to denounce--persistently, convincingly and in 
Arabic--these atrocious suicide bombings is indicative of a man who has 
no interest in a cease-fire, much less a lasting peace settlement. 
Palestinians are sadly ill-served by irresponsible leaders who advocate 
violence and homicide instead of peace.
  I would like to call to your attention an article that appeared in 
the Wall Street Journal on April 11, 2002 by Tarek E. Masoud, a 
graduate student at Yale University. His points are accurate and 
relevant to the current crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to read Tarek E. Masoud's thought-
provoking article, and I ask that the text be placed in the Record.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Apr. 11, 2001]

                  Palestinians Deserve Better Leaders

                          (By Tarek E. Masoud)

       Those of us who watched Palestinian kids throw stones at 
     Israeli soldiers and tanks during the intifada of the late 
     1980s find it hard to reconcile those images of bravery and 
     daring with the current wave of atrocities carried out in the 
     name of Palestine. The stone-throwing youths of the first 
     intifada made it easy for reasonable people (who always saw 
     Yasser Arafat for the terrorist that he was) to get behind 
     the Palestinian cause. Today, when Palestine has become 
     synonymous with the murder of innocents, supporting the cause 
     is not so easy. One constantly has to separate the justness 
     of the cause from the injustice of the acts carried out in 
     its name. It is a near impossible feat of mental acrobatics.
       What disturbs me is the degree to which many supporters of 
     Palestinian statehood do not even attempt it. They issue pro 
     forma denunciations of suicide bombing, and then go on to 
     offer justifications. The Palestinians, they tell us, are 
     frustrated by their lack of freedom, by the erosion of the 
     dignity by an Israel that places settlers on their land and 
     soldiers outside their homes. They are a people with their 
     backs against the wall. After 50 years of occupation, we are 
     told, the Palestinians have thrown their hands in the air and 
     declared, quite literally, Give me liberty or give me death.
       But of course, as Thomas Friedman and others have pointed 
     out, the choice before the Palestinians is not between 
     liberty and death. Israel's leaders long ago accepted the 
     logic of a Palestinian state; they put forward proposals for 
     what that state would look like, and they haggled with the 
     Palestinians over these proposals. Whatever one wants to say 
     about the quality of Israeli proposals or the personal 
     commitment of Ariel Sharon to a Palestinian state--and I 
     happen to think both were fairly low--surely the Palestinians 
     were not in a hopeless situation, the kind of situation 
     which, we are told, causes sane men and women to fall into 
     murder and suicide?
       And, even if the situation were hopeless, if all the 
     options were exhausted, is there ever a justification for the 
     murder of innocent civilians? The philosopher Michael Walzer 
     recently argued that those who claim to have tried everything 
     before resorting to terror are lying to us and to themselves. 
     He asks, ``What exactly did they try when they were trying 
     everything?'' There's always something else you can do short 
     of killing.
       But many of the most vocal supporters of the Palestinian 
     cause would rather not address these moral issues. Instead 
     they want only to criticize Ariel Sharon. Even if you cringe, 
     as I do, at reports of mass arrests and the bulldozing of 
     Palestinian homes, Mr. Sharon is right about one thing: There 
     is no difference between the murder-suicides perpetrated in 
     the name of Palestinian statehood and Osama bin Laden's 
     attacks on American civilians. You cannot, as many pro 
     Palestinian groups in this country have done, denounce the 
     latter and justify the former. Those who do invite us to 
     question either the sincerity of their denunciations of Sept. 
     11 or their capacity for moral consistency.
       I'm not sure where any of this leaves us. Even if the 
     supporters of the Palestinian cause denounced suicide bombing 
     just as vehemently as they do Mr. Sharon, we might be 
     satisfied, but this would not stop the steady stream of 
     volunteers for the grim work of Hamas and the al Aqsa Martyrs 
     Brigade.
       This is why I think President Bush has the right idea when 
     he demands that Arafat condemn suicide bombing, and in 
     Arabic. There may be little the isolated Palestinian 
     strongman can do now to control the groups that carry out 
     acts of terrorism. But he can tell his people that the path 
     of murder is the path of doom, that it has only brought shame 
     to the people of Palestine and done nothing to further their 
     cause. Of course, we may be indulging in some wishful 
     thinking. ``General Yasser Arafat,'' as he called himself 
     recently on CNN, is not likely to become a moral force. If he 
     had any inclination to do the right thing, he would have 
     reined in the terrorists long before Mr. Sharon was even 
     elected.
       It is by now the received wisdom that Palestinians deserve 
     better leaders. We are offered an example of the kind of 
     leadership they need by the esteemed British historian Martin 
     Gilbert. In 1948, the U.N. mediator in Palestine, Count Folke 
     Bernadotte, was assassinated by members of the Stern Gang, a 
     Jewish militant group that included a future prime minister 
     of Israel named Yitzhak Shamir. In the half century since 
     then, Arabs have often pointed to the episode to justify 
     their own acts of terror.
       But what Arabs seem to forget--and what Palestinians would 
     do well to remember--is how David Ben-Gurion, the father of 
     modern Israel, responded to that murder carried out in the 
     name of the Jewish state. According to Mr. Gilbert, when Ben-
     Gurion learned of the assassination of Count Bernadotte, he 
     thundered: ``Arrest all Stern gang leaders. Surround all 
     Stern bases. Confiscate all arms. Kill any who resist.'' Yes, 
     the Palestinians deserve better leaders. What they deserve is 
     a David Ben-Gurion.

     

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