Jabba the Hut Goes Back on His Word

So apparently Ariel Sharon has dipped a toe back into the assassinating Yasser Arafat waters, teasing us with some words about how his three year commitment to Bush not to harm or exile Arafat was no longer applicable.

Regardless of how you feel about Arafat, you really must ask yourself: how reckless is Sharon really? Here’s a good example, a salient quote from a Sharon spokesman:
"The important thing is to exert a stern warning: `Don't even try to use this to instigate more terrorist activity,'… It's more of a deterrent measure than an operational message."

In other words, we said this thing right before Passover to deter you, not to provoke you, so you better not be provoked. This shows the dehumanizing insanity of the Likudniks in Israel. Essentially it boils down to this: “We are saying X, and we mean Y and if you take it to mean Z, well, we don’t accept that”. Evidently no one in the Sharon government read “Death of the Author”. It doesn’t really matter how you want someone to take what you say, people are going to react how they are going to react.

Furthermore, since we clearly are in the realm of reverse-psychology between the Israelis and the Palestinians, saying to the Palestinians “don’t take this as a provocation” is a pretty good way to ensure that it is taken as a provocation.

Ariel Sharon clearly does not care about the Israeli people or their security, he cares about a particular reading of the Zionist mission. If he cared about their security, he would be working towards finding a safe end to this conflict. It is pretty damn clear that his government’s actions during this seemingly endless Intifadah have done nothing but perpetuate and worsen the cycle of violence. Sharon is a General, viewing his citizens as (occasionally unwitting) soldiers in an ongoing fight for the land promised his people in the Bible.

If you want evidence, look no further than his statements today. What kind of fool goes in front of the press and says “Hey, right before what is basically considered Wabbit Season for terrorists, I just wanted to say that we’ve got plans in the works to kill the closest thing you have a leader, even though he’s got a foot and a half in the grave already, just because, well, just because we can”. I’ll tell you what kind of fool, the same kind of fool who tells insurgents to “bring it on”. The kind of fool that wants carnage so that he can justify doing whatever the hell he wants.

Well, I guess there is another reading to the situation, but it's no more complementary. Maybe Sharon just has a final solution in mind for the Palestinians, moving them off into Jordan and other countries or killing them all, whichever is easier, but his hands are tied by the US and the possibility of global thermonuclear war. Perhaps by provocing the Palestinians into doing something even more horrible he can get what he wants. Either way, he's willing to put up with an endless amount of civilian casualties in order to fulfill the Zionist mission. (here's more good evidence of why zionism is bad for the jewish people, but we can get into that kettle of fish later).

What shocks me is that the Israeli people seem to persist in thinking that Sharon and the Likudnics have done anything to make them safer. There must be other solutions than collective punishment, administrative detentions, provocative threats and targeted assassinations. There are international law reasons why you shouldn’t kill Arafat, but there are also practical ones. How would killing Arafat make the situation any better? You think by taking him out a new, more docile Palestinian Authority is going to spring up in his place?

The Palestinian people need real leaders. Arafat is not a real leader for the Palestinian people. Arafat was a stooge, brought in during Oslo because the Madrid people were proving to be too difficult to shove around. Arafat was promised power on one condition, that he stop the first Entifadah. That accomplished, we were all happy to watch him undermine any chance of democracy in the occupied territories, because he was doing a pretty good job of being the enforcement wing of the IDF. Then he betrayed his Israeli and US sponsors by not agreeing to Barak’s peace plan and turned into the crazy, terrorist supporting, Parkinsons-riddled road block to constructive peace that he is.

The Palestinians need a leader who will represent their interests. They need a leader who is good on US television. They need a leader who will be tough to the Israelis and demand real concessions on real issues. They also need a leader who will find a way out of the spiraling and attractive blood lust that has gripped so many. Assassinating Arafat is not a way to find that person, assassinating him is a way of making sure that the Palestinians will never get the leaders they need.