This article in the Jerusalem Post, describing participants at the vigil for Arafat outside Percy Hospital in France, shows a display of ignorance and idiocy that defies belief.
First and foremost, we have the rabbi from Neturei Karta, a/k/a Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism -- a very disturbed group of individuals who believe that the State of Israel is an abomination because it was established by men rather than by God and because it's basically a secular state. (This doesn't prevent many of its members from living there, mind you, but although they refuse to pay taxes or acknowledge the existence of the State in any way, they are nonetheless tolerated.) Somehow, in their minds, their great piety justifies glorifying a man who has murdered more Jews than anyone since Hitler.
Next, we have the moron holding up this banner:
"Palestine defeated Rome, it will defeat Washington. Arafat opened for us the gates of Jerusalem. Arafat = Jesus, Sharon = Barrabas . . ., thief, and criminal, Bush = Pilate, coward, assassin, and idiot."
Then there's Moishe Arye Friedmann, from Vienna, who said he felt "very ashamed of the barbarity being done against the Palestinian people."
And Linda Salm, a 40-year-old Frenchwoman of Tunisian descent who prayed for Arafat's life as she kissed a portrait of him: "Great Allah, keep him alive to bring peace to Palestine."
The only hope of there ever being peace for "Palestine," as even Dennis Ross now acknowledges, lies on the other side of Arafat's grave, wherever it may be. Though I trust it will not be in Jerusalem. In the eloquent but provocative words of Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid,
Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists.
