There is an absolutely awful opinion piece in the September 15 edition of the Daily Telegraph by Barbara Amiel (wife of the owner, Conrad Black), entitled "Arafat's assassination will not resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict."
Literally every paragraph is deeply offensive - she denies the existence of the 1948 Nakba, denounces the rights of Palestinian refugees, and even proposes that Israel may have to use nuclear weapons against the Arab world! We should not let her or the newspaper get away with such extreme views.
Below is the article in full with AMW comments in brackets, followed by contact details and letter-writing tips.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/09/15/do1501.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/09/15/ixop.html
Last Thursday, The Jerusalem Post, of which I am a director, ran a leader that began as follows: "The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible... And we must kill Yasser Arafat."
Yesterday, Israel's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, announced that Arafat's assassination was an option. Why a government would announce such a move, so disastrous in PR terms, is a mystery, but then subtlety has never been a hallmark of Likud.
Arafat is a terrorist leader and a mass murderer. After founding Fatah in the early 1960s, he was both the political and military arm of his own organisation. He plays good cop and bad cop with perfect synchronicity. For 40 years he has organised destruction. Arafat the terror master had Black September massacre Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Arafat the peacemaker stood on the White House lawn shaking hands with Rabin, but in 2002 the same Arafat funded, through his Palestinian Preventive Security Service, the "Karin A", a ship full of heavy arms from Iran destined for the Palestinian Authority in contravention of every agreement from Oslo to the road map.
(The Palestinian Authority vigorously denied this, and Brian Whitaker, the Guardian's Middle East editor, pointed out on January 14, 2002: "The Israeli charge that points most directly towards Mr Arafat is that the ship is owned by the Palestinian Authority. Israeli officials have made this claim repeatedly, from the very first day, but have produced no evidence to support it.")
Arafat makes tactical denunciations of violence and denies involvement in anything but bake sales and good governance, even while directing Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades whose avowed aim is the elimination of a Jewish State of Israel. He congratulates the families of suicide bombers and encourages Palestinian children to become martyrs. In interviews, Arafat has said that his goal is a Palestine that encompasses all of Israel. It took Arafat only 88 days to pull the rug from under Abu Mazen's premiership, during which time 64 Israelis were murdered and more than 1,000 wounded.
(The Al-Aqsa Brigades do not call for the destruction of Israel, and the BBC points out that "the brigade is neither officially recognised nor openly backed by Mr Arafat and Fatah, though brigade members tend also to belong to Fatah, the Palestinian leader's political faction." Fatah and Arafat have long declared the goal of a two-state solution based on the borders prior to 1967 and the recognition of Israel's existence. Arafat declared this in 1988 at the UN and in 1993 as a pre-requisite for Israel embarking on the Oslo process. It was also his negotiating position at the peace talks in 2000 and 2001. Arafat does not congratulate suicide bombings.)
(Arafat does not encourage Palestinian children to become martyrs, and does not call for a Palestine encompassing all of Israel. Where is Amiel's evidence? Also, Abu Mazen told Palestinian MPs in his statement of resignation: "The fundamental problem is Israel's unwillingness to implement its road map commitments and to undertake any constructive measures... The US (and the international community) did not exert sufficient influence on Israel to implement its commitments in the road map to push the peace process forward, or to end its military escalation.")
Scores of terrorists and war criminals have been executed for less. The question isn't whether the killing of Arafat would be a moral act - I believe it would - but whether it would be a helpful one. It has taken many Israelis a long time to face the fact that Arafat and most of the region are rejectionists, not in search of a genuine two-state solution but dedicated to the annihilation of Israel.
(Amiel is endorsing a course of action that is a violation of international and humanitarian law. Also, she forgets that the entire Arab world, including Hamas, accepted the Saudi peace plan last year, which called for full recognition and relations with Israel in return for a full withdrawal from occupied Arab land. Israel rejected this and opposed the plan's inclusion in the roadmap.)
If Israelis have been reluctant to face this, it is hardly surprising that the world should take longer. Indeed, a number of Israelis, including deeply patriotic leaders, risked their lives - Rabin gave his - for the illusion that, except for a militant minority who operated either under a quasi-Marxist banner or a fundamentalist one, the Arab Street, and not just Egypt or Jordan, would accept the notion of a Jewish homeland if they could get the same for the Palestinians.
They had to believe this; otherwise there would have been no point to the negotiations in Oslo or Camp David except to negotiate Israel out of existence - which, of course, is precisely what the Palestinian right of return is about.
(Amiel is justifying ethnic cleansing. The right of return is an inaliebale right enshrined by the UN, the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other legal documents.)
(There is a good FAQ on the right of return at the link below.)
http://www.nad-plo.org/fact_sheets_faq/FAQ-PalestinianRefugees.pdf
Still, a man who creates, as Arafat did, Nakba Day (Day of Catastrophe), to coincide with the birth of Israel in 1948 and designates it as a day of mourning each year, cannot be accused of hiding his true colours. When Arafat refused Ehud Barak's offer of virtually everything he wanted except for the "right of return" to Israel for millions of Arabs, a three-word euphemism for the demographic destruction of a Jewish state, Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton's chief negotiator, summed it up: "He doesn't want a deal.''
(Amiel is even denying the existence of the Nakba and the dispossession of the Palestinians!!! Also, Ross was a leading activist for the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee - AIPAC - before he was hired by the State Department, but is now a hired hand in a pro-Israeli and AIPAC-backed think tank, the Washington Institute for Near-East Studies. Many of its board members are leading neo-cons like Paul Wolfowitz and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.)
We are at a point where neither his exile nor unnatural death would resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Once, you could exile a trouble-maker to some remote island and reduce his effectiveness as a leader, but those days are gone. We do live in a global village. What would putting Arafat in the Sudan do? Osama bin Laden may or may not be alive in the mountains of Afghanistan, but his spirit still causes us to be body-searched if we want to get on a plane in Manchester or Des Moines.
One can never predict the consequences of an assassination, but I think it is too late to kill Arafat. Had Arafat been eliminated 20 years ago, the situation might be different. Now the conflict has a momentum of its own, whoever the Palestinian leader. What is so dreadful to face and was so comforting to deny is that the majority of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East as well as in some other countries are by now rejectionists as well.
Increasingly, Muslims outside the Middle East find themselves infected by the spirit of our times; they are being pulled into a malicious myth in which the antagonist is named Israel and, by extension, America and its allies.
This fight between Arabs and Israelis is not about settlements or the establishment of a Palestinian state. It cannot be solved by Israel going back to the 1967 borders when it is the 1948 creation of a Jewish state the Palestinians want reversed. Now, for the first time, between the resurgence of Islam, the emergence of suicide bombers, the radicalisation of the Palestinians and the indifference of the world, this goal seems attainable.
Given the UN's Third World bloc, the cowardice of the EU, the opportunism of countries intent on oil contracts or power politics and the puerile ignorance of most media reports on the Middle East, one understands why rejectionist Muslims feel the wind blowing their way. After all, the world has no fear of Jews blowing up buildings or becoming suicide bombers.
It is true that if enmity were eternal, no peace could never be made. But I am increasingly of the terrifying view that this conflict in the Middle East is not amenable to a peaceful solution and can only be solved by the total victory of one side. This means the Arabs annihilating the Israelis or the Israelis being forced to use every means, not excluding nuclear power, to defend themselves. If you are a nation of under six million people surrounded by 70 million enemies who don't accept your existence, the only option is to fight to the death.
(Is Amiel advocating the Israeli use of nuclear weapons against the Arab world?!)
There is one solution. It costs nothing, not one penny, not one human life or bullet and would turn the tide. If all major powers - preferably through the UN or simply in concert - were to make a joint declaration guaranteeing Israel's existence as a Jewish State, it would be clear to the rejectionists that they could not reach their goal. If the EU, Russia, China and the US reiterated that the UN declaration establishing a homeland for the Jews is as honourable today as it was in 1948; confirmed that Israel had the right to defend itself by all means and at the same time committed themselves to the establishment of a Palestinian state so long as it is not aimed at replacing the Jewish state but had a parallel existence, such a declaration would alter the ambience of the times.
(The declaration of 1948 covered just over half of Palestine, not the 22% of historic Palestine that is now termed the occupied territories.)
But since an astigmatic world will not do that, Israel will probably have to fight. Israelis are already blamed for imposing a "military" solution without having the benefits of a genuine military offensive. Whatever the outcome, the cost to Palestinians and Israelis will be immense.
If the platoons of liberals now talking of peace and understanding would turn their energies to obtaining a joint proclamation of the genuine right to existence for two states, the sands of Arabia might yet avoid being soaked in blood.
E-mail the letters editor at dtletters@telegraph.co.uk or fax them to 020 7538 6455.
If you want your letter to be considered for publication, say so and provide your full name, address and contact details, which will not be published in the newspaper.
You can also send complaints to the newspaper's Reader Relations department at readrel@telegraph.co.uk or call them on 020 7538 7676.