OPINION:
The challenges noted in Danny Danon’s op-ed “’Making peace is harder than making war,’” (Web, Aug. 10), which began by quoting PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s infamous 1974 “olive branch and gun” speech, are underscored by the date on which it was published: The day after the anniversary of one of Israel’s deadliest terror attacks.
On Aug. 9, 2001, a Palestinian bomber entered a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem and murdered 15 people, including children Malki Roth, 15, and her best friend Michal Raziel, 16; Yocheved Shoshan, 10; Tamara Shimashvili, 8; siblings Hemda, Avraham Yitzhak and Ra’aya Schijveschuurder, ages 2, 4 and 14, respectively; and Judy Greenbaum, who was five months pregnant.
Arafat, the Palestinian leader at the time, delighted in massacres of Israeli children. His PLO was behind the 1974 Ma’alot massacre of 22 Israeli children at an elementary school and the 1978 coastal road massacre of 13 Israeli children near Tel Aviv. Following the June 1, 2001, Dolphinarium disco bombing in Tel Aviv that killed 21 Israelis — mostly teenage girls as young as 14 — he sent the bomber’s father a $2,000 reward and a personal letter praising “the heroic martyrdom operation” and calling the bomber “the son of Palestine the model of manhood and sacrifice.”
Arafat’s “moderate” successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is no different. He arranged financing for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, incited numerous deadly terror attacks and named a public square, high schools, summer camps and sports competitions in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, who perpetrated the coastal road massacre.
How does one make peace with leaders like Arafat and Abbas, who actually celebrate barbarity?
The Palestinians must put down the gun of terror and demonstrate they will finally give the olive branch of peace a chance.
STEPHEN A. SILVER
San Francisco
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