WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Posted on 11/14/2004 7:52:06 PM PST by Alouette
Uri Avnery was the first Israeli to meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, and one of the last.
While many Israelis blamed Arafat for the failure of the Oslo Accords and for leading the reign of terror which replaced it, Avnery said he never lost his faith in the Palestinian leader.
"Arafat was not only a great national leader, but he was a partner with whom we could have made peace and should have made peace," said the 81-year-old long-time activist and former journalist.
"I was the first Israeli who ever spoke with Yasser Arafat; it was unusual. My personal impression at the time was how different Yasser Arafat is from the man we knew from television."
He compared Arafat to the founding father of the United States, George Washington, and to the founding statesman of Israel, David Ben-Gurion.
"I first met him in the besieged Western part of Beirut on July 5, 1982, when I crossed the lines during the battle of Beirut," said Avnery.
"There was a strong emotional undertone because neither Arafat nor I believed that he would come out alive from Beirut. He believed, as he reminded me dozens of times later, that I had risked my life to meet him.
"He spoke about practical things, about how to achieve peace and what peace would be like," recalled Avnery.
There is a large discrepancy between the media image and the real one, said Avnery, who estimates that he must have met with Arafat about 100 times in the 22 years he knew him.
"On television he looks aggressive and even fanatical. In real life he was a very warm, informal person. There was no ceremony around him. He was very direct and established contact within minutes. After less than five minutes everyone who ever met Arafat felt that he had known him his whole life. He had this capacity to establish a relationship with people immediately," said Avnery.
"He was intelligent, but not an intellectual. He was a man of intuition and a man who expressed himself by gestures in a very Arabic tradition," said Avnery.
"He expressed himself in the Arab way. This was what made contact with Western people very difficult because they did not understand him," said Avnery.
"There was this natural authority which was impossible not to feel in the air. He had this huge towering moral authority, which turned him into such an important national and international leader."
Avnery last saw Arafat three weeks ago in his Ramallah compound. "He looked to me more healthy than on many occasions. The trembling of his lips and his hand had disappeared," said Avnery, who was shocked to hear of his collapse.
"We had a very lively conversation about Palestinian elections, about Mr. Sharon's so-called disengagement plan," said Avnery.
From their first meeting Avnery said he understood that the two held similar ideas about how to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
"Whenever he believed his aims could be achieved by peaceful means, he did the utmost to stop violence," said Avnery. Every single liberation movement, including Israel's, has this same philosophy, he said.
Arafat would have accepted a deal at Camp David in 2000 had it met the minimum standards of what the PA needs for peace, said Avnery. Once Israel failed to put forward such a deal violence was inevitable, said Avnery.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to disprove the Palestinians' belief that they only gain concessions from Israel by force, said Avnery.
When asked about the discrepancy between his views on Arafat and those of most Israelis, he said, "Israelis in general and Israeli security services in specific have not the slightest idea of the Palestinian side, the hopes and fears that animate the Palestinians, and therefore their judgments today are not based on informed understanding."
Actually I believe that Neturei Karta "Rabbi" Moshe Hirsch (spit, spit!) knew Arafat long before that.
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
OH MAN Major Barf alert Alouette
What a sheep this dude is
I was thinking that too.
"long-time activist and former journalist" = radical Lefty
Yes, them radical lefties are dangerous.
Say what? Moral authority, like blowing up innocent Jewish women and children, shooting Leon Klinghoeffer in the head and rolling him into the ocean in his wheelchair? Pedastry? Moral authority?
I am utterly unable to comprehend a mind like that of Uri Avnery. May G-d have mercy on him.
You know, you really could have spared us this.....your warnings weren't enough. And the author is an Israeli?
"Even Israeli Has Useful Idiots".
...and those minimum standards were nothing less than the removal of all Jews from the Middle East and the death to all who remain.
""On television he looks aggressive and even fanatical. In real life he was a very warm, informal person."
That's funny. That's just what they said about Adolph Hitler.
Thanks a lot, you twinkie head. It's Sunday evening, my kids and mother-in-law are here, and junk like this is the reason I'm too embarrassed to surf FreeRepublic any more when family members are nearby. I can understand, and forgive, when things like ERUPTING VOMIT VOLCANO are bandied inside of a heated thread, but need you really broadcast your lack of good manners by spray painting graffiti on the welcome mat at the entrance? Would your mother be proud of you?? Please, do better in the future.
This Uri Avnery character sounds just like a lot of the "media elite" types in the US! Ugh! Like them, he seems to have smoked too much of the cheap stuff over the years and he ended up addling his brain! Sheesh, someone help this guy get a clue!
Geez Louise, what kind of uptight family do you have? It's not like I posted NUDE PICTURES OF ARAFAT DOING IT WITH YOUNG LADS. I thought this thread deserved more than the usual (barf alert) warning.
Nobody in the world is more uptight (or liberal) than my mother, and I know that if she saw me click on a thread labeled ERUPTING VOMIT VOLCANO she'd probably laugh.
Like totally, gag me with a dreidl!
This guy has learned nothing. It's not always true that with age comes wisdom.
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