Time for Arafat to Go
Dec 4, 2001

MARINA DEL REY, CA--It is well past the time for President Bush to encourage Israel to rid itself of Yasser Arafat, said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

After more suicide bombers killed or wounded 200 Israelis this weekend, the Bush administration told Arafat that, unless he immediately reins in those responsible, it will no longer deal with him. "That warning is much too weak--and hypocritical, given America's war on terrorism," said Dr. Brook. "How many times--after similar terrorist attacks in the past (109 in the past eight years)--have American presidents warned Arafat that he must end Palestinian terrorism? What has his response been? With much ceremony, Arafat 'arrests' a handful of people and 'jails' them in comfortable hotels, where they are free to orchestrate their terrorist activities by phone. Soon the story fades from the headlines and the terrorists return to the streets to murder again." 

On September 20, Mr. Bush declared: "The only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it and destroy it where it grows." "Nowhere has terrorism existed longer than in Palestine," noted Dr. Brook. "Yasser Arafat is Osama bin Laden's spiritual father--and deserves the same treatment. Though viewed as a legitimate statesmen and awarded a Nobel Prize for peace, Arafat is in fact just as brutal and despotic as the leaders of the Taliban, just as stridently anti-West and anti-freedom as bin Laden.

"President Bush must break precedent and do what morality demands in this situation. He must support Israel, the only pro-freedom country in the area, in the pursuit of that which a free America demands for itself: the absolute right to self-defense. Bush should tell Israeli prime minister Sharon that the United States will support whatever force Israel deems necessary to destroy the Palestinian terrorists: the PLO, Hamas, Hizballah, Islamic Jihad. Sharon should then unleash the Israeli Defense Force to purge the terrorists from Palestine--just as America is doing with the terrorists in Afghanistan. Arafat and his bloody henchmen must go. Of course a stronger Israel, America's only true ally in the region, and fewer terrorists are in our own self-interest as well."

### ### ###  ########

Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org

For more articles by Yaron Brook, and his bio, click here.