|
|
|
|
|
|
Netanyahu: Arafat’s Word, Signature Is Worthless. He Is Not Reliable
 |
|
Netanyahu to U.S officials: Expel Arafat and attack Iraq |
By
Steve Smith, IOL correspondent in Washington
WASHINGTON, April 13 (IslamOnline) - Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lobbying the United States for an even tougher stance against Muslims
in the Middle East saying that "moral clarity," and unyielding force form the
way to end violence in the Middle East.
The American-educated former Israeli radical politician was in Dallas
Friday for "A Conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu," the latest installment of
the Sumner Lecture Series sponsored by the National Center for Policy
Analysis. This comes a day after he took the same militant message to the U.S.
congress and White House officials.
Netanyahu, on an Israeli recruitment mission for its military aggression against the Palestinians, dubbed by some analysts as the Palestinian holocaust, has tried to further implicate the White House in the Israeli attacks.
He told the White House that its ties with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat should be broken and an attack on Iraq should be mounted as soon as possible.
Netanyahu saw the hawkish members of the Bush administration to win
support for his call. He met with President Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the Vice-President Dick Cheney, both seen as among the most fervent anti-Muslim elements in the administration and among the loudest voices for tough military actions in the Middle East.
Netnayahu is said now to have the ear of the President, already surrounded by conservative and hard-line officials, who might take his hard-line advice.
Although there were no reports that the U.S. officials talked to the press afterwards, sources traveling with Netanyahu told the news media that he had reiterated his militant view that Arafat should be expelled from his land and that the U.S. should also now take on Saddam Hussein as well.
News reports suggested that Netanyahu said Arafat was working in co-ordination with Iran, one of the U.S.’s ardent foes, which backs Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance, and with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
He alleged that putting off an American attack on Baghdad was actually
complicating Middle East violence.
In Dallas, Netanyahu, seen as a militant Israeli leader who constantly
sought military confrontation with Israel’s Muslim neighbors during his
term as prime minister, said Arafat could not be trusted.
"His word is worthless. His signature is worthless. He is not reliable, but
he's committed to the idea of destroying the state of Israel," Netanyahu
said, addressing 800 people at a dinner for the National Center for
Policy Analysis.
Although, Israeli officials here say that Netanyahu was presenting his own views, he reportedly spoke by telephone to Israel's current war Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, both before and after the meeting.
Also in Dallas, as many as 500 protesters demonstrated outside the hotel where Netanyahu spoke.
Many of them, of Arab origin, carried signs reading "Let our people return" and "End Israeli occupation." Some waved both American and Palestinian flags. The protesters also chanted, "Shame, shame, shame Sharon, Palestine is not your home."
To the applause of conservative senators and hawkish administration officials, Netanyahu had earlier given similar militant messages to the U.S. Congress on April 10.
“I have come here to voice what I believe is an urgently needed reminder: That the war on terror can be won with clarity and courage or lost with confusion and vacillation,” he told them.
Trying to paint the Palestinians as the aggressors, Netanyahu told the senators that the U.S. should apply its rules for the so-called war on terror against the Palestinians.
“The question many in my country are now asking is this: Will America apply its principles consistently and win this war, or will it selectively abandon those principles and thereby ultimately lose the war?,” he asked them.
Defending Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians, the subject of condemnations by the world leaders for the past 10 days, Netanyahu said: “The deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians is shamefully equated with the unintentional loss of Palestinian life that is the tragic but unavoidable consequence of legitimate warfare.”
“With total control of the media, the schools, and ghoulish kindergarten camps for children that glorifies suicide martyrdom, Arafat’s dictatorship has indoctrinated a generation of Palestinians in a culture of death, producing waves of human bombs that massacre Jews in buses, discos, supermarkets, pizza shops, cafés – everywhere and anywhere.”
Netanyahu, who was ousted before finishing his term in 1999, is preparing feverishly a political return with a possible challenge to Sharon, a member of his own party. He is riding high in the Israeli polls and has been acting as a public relations spokesman for Israel in the U.S. and other Western countries.
|
|
|
|
