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Terrorism

Legitimizing terror


By Ryan Jones
February 09, 2005

Israel is about to release hundreds more jailed “Palestinian” terrorists as payment for the nice words about peace and security PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas has been uttering lately.

And, as with past prisoner releases, commentators and defense officials are busy explaining how such a move at such a time will only legitimize the use of violence by groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

And they are absolutely right.

But what everyone is forgetting is that whatever legitimization the coming prisoner release gives to Hamas and its murderous ways, it pales in comparison to the legitimization given intentionally to the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization in 1993.

In that year, on the White House lawn, Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization – the most violent terror group the world had ever known – was offered acceptance and its blood-soaked leader embraced as a hero.

That event - the signing of the “Oslo Accords” and the negotiation with terrorists that preceded it - set a precedent that no amount of hard talk from US President George W. Bush can ever undo.

According to the current policies of the Western World, unrelenting terrorism can reap diplomatic rewards, especially when that terrorism is targeting the Jews or their state.

Why would the likes of Hamas believe anything other than that the continued slaughter of Israeli Jews is going to provide it with leverage to extract concessions? It worked for Arafat.

And now US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a report in The New York Times , wants to actually set up a pension fund for any “Palestinian” terrorists that agree to “retire.”

So, for the Palestinian Arabs, being involved in terror now not only provides the national cause with political leverage, but also will result in financial compensation for the individual.

Doesn’t sound like much of an incentive to not become a terrorist.

A US House of Representatives bill passed last month contained a clause that recognized any member of the PLO as being “engaged in terrorist activity,” including its senior officials.

Why is the will of the American people, as expressed by their elected representatives, being ignored by the Bush administration, which is preparing to lavish millions of the taxpayers’ dollars on Abbas’s regime?

Why is it that Washington doesn’t understand that the only way to deter future generations of Palestinian Arabs from becoming terrorists is to crush the ones that are terrorists now?

It seems to understand this perfectly well when dealing with the Taliban, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Al Qaeda.

The lives of Israeli Jews, it would seem, are secondary to US national interests.

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