Charles Krauthammer (via Power Line) explains what Yasser Arafat’s true legacy is:
It is a legacy in two parts: means and ends. The means? Violence. Arafat invented modern terrorism: airplane hijackings, kidnappings and the spectacular mass murder, like the Olympic massacre of 1972. Others had tried it. Arafat perfected it. He turned terrorism into a brilliantly successful political instrument, a vehicle to international recognition and respect. The man who murdered more innocent Jews than anyone since Hitler died an international hero. The president of France bowed to his casket. The secretary general ordered U.N. flags to fly at half-staff.
Arafat also bequeathed a legacy of ends: uncompromising, irredentist ends. He didn't just reject any settlement that would leave Israel intact, thereby setting a precedent that any successor dare not violate. He also raised a new generation to ensure that rejection. Deploying every instrument of propaganda -- television, radio, newspapers and, most importantly, schools and summer camps for children -- his Palestinian Authority fed his people a diet of such virulent anti-Semitism and denial of the Jewish connection with the land that no successor will even be in position to contemplate breaking Arafat's rejectionist precedent.
Arafat's most cherished achievement was to so poison the well that the revolution -- until total victory -- continues long after he is gone. As soon as he died, the most murderous terrorist wing of his Fatah movement, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, changed its name to the Yasser Arafat Martyrs Brigades.
They understood their master. Which is why the prospects for peace upon his death are far more distant than the naifs (who got him wrong all through his life) now insist. Arafat's legacy -- the romanticization of violence, the rejection of Israel, the indoctrination of a new generation in intolerance and hatred -- will require a long time to undo. It will require years, perhaps even generations. It will require brave new Palestinian leaders who are the very antithesis of Yasser Arafat.
Arafat was single-minded, not indecisive as his apologist would proclaim. His goal was not an independent state for his people, but to eradicate Israel. Palestine was a convenient location for him to attack his enemy. Ramallah was not his intended burial plot. He wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. And the reason for his triumphant burial there would be because he had destroyed the Jews, not because of their permission. Thankfully, he was unable to achieve his endgame. But the people of Palestine that he has poisoned with hatred for Israel for the last 40 years will continue the fight. Peace in the Middle East is far off. Many generations must come and go before the Arafat doctrine will be a thing of the past.
With the election of a new Palestinian leader, the slow process of draining the poison of hate from the people of Palestine can begin, and must begin.
