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Subject: Arafat speaks at Prayer Summit in Washington DC
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 16:40:44 -0800
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From: Paul Jablonowski
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: Arafat to speak at Prayer Summit in Washington DC
ARAFAT TO ATTEND CONGRESSIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST
GUEST VIEWPOINT: PRAYING WITH ARAFAT (by Louis Rene Beres)
Yasser Arafat, a long-time terrorist, has been an honoured guest at
the White House on several occasions. He will return again to
Washington on February 4th, when he will meet privately with
President Clinton. This meeting is scheduled to follow Arafat's
invited speech before the Congressional Prayer Breakfast. No
representative from Israel has been asked to attend.
This visit, even more than its several predecessors, will represent a
serious violation of international law. Moreover, as all
international law is a part of the law of the United States,
Presidential and Congressional reception of Arafat will be a serious
crime under American law - a boldfaced rejection of both Article 6 of the
U.S. Constitution and of several major decisions of the Supreme Court.
While Senators and Congressmen repeat the daily mantra of concern for
our Constitution in the trial of William Jefferson Clinton, they now prepare to
undertake a much more substantial breach of justice on February 4th.
Neither President nor Congress has been particularly animated by
considerations of law on matters of terrorism. But this does not mean
that Arafat - the documented murderer of Israeli schoolchildren at
Ma'alot (by literally cutting their throats) and of American
diplomats at Khartoum - is immunised against all legal remedy. There
are provisions under this country's laws, Presidential and Congressional
disregard notwithstanding, to use United States courts to enforce
human rights standards identified by international law. These
provisions follow a law known as the Alien Tort Statute.
Under this eighteenth-century legislation passed by the First Congress
in 1789, federal district courts have "original jurisdiction of any
civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of
the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Significantly,
this law is currently being used to bring a civil suit against Dr. Radovan
Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs. Endorsed by the Clinton
administration, this suit, brought by two plaintiffs known only as
Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, uses United States courts to
remedy another category of crimes against humanity.
The Alien Tort Statute authorises the United States federal courts to
deal with civil claims by aliens alleging acts committed against
international law when the alleged wrongdoers can be found in the
United States. This means that terrorists like Yasser Arafat, when
within the territorial jurisdiction of this country, can be brought before our
federal courts for civil remediation of their unspeakable crimes. As a
practical matter, this would require an interested foreign national -
most plausibly a citizen of Israel with some direct link to an
Arafat-engineered act of criminality - to serve papers upon the PLO
terrorist leader.
There are some special ironies in the current United States invitation
to Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian Authority, which he chairs, has
just released Abdallah al-Shami, one of the leaders of Islamic Jihad
in Gaza. Al-Shami was detained a month ago after engaging in
incitement to murder President Clinton on his recent visit to Gaza.
Although he stated openly that he would be "happy if the American President
were to be killed during his visit to the Palestinian Authority
areas," Chairman Arafat freed al-Shami on the
occasion of Muslim holiday celebrations.
Yasser Arafat is guilty of other pertinent categories of criminality
as well. The PLO Chairman gave his blessings to numerous crimes of
war, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity committed by
Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War - a war in which soldiers of the
United States fought bravely and at considerable personal cost. In
case the President and Congress may have forgotten, units of Arafat's
Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) served with Saddam's forces in
occupied Kuwait, making them actively complicit in multiple mean
crimes of extraordinary horror and ferocity. Regarding Arafat's
direct responsibility for PLO crimes, official voices within the PLO not
only accept this responsibility of their Chairman, they celebrate it.
On July 13, 1994, Dr. Ahmad Tibi, senior advisor to Arafat, stated:
"The person responsible on behalf of the Palestinian people for
everything that was done in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
Yasser Arafat...."
In theory, a United States led by a law-abiding President and Congress
could provide venue for criminal prosecution of Yasser Arafat's
crimes within our federal courts. American federal law confers
jurisdiction "to try any person who, by the law of war, is subject to
trial by a military tribunal...." Additionally, federal law grants
jurisdiction to the federal district courts for all offences against
the laws of the United States. Since the United States was founded,
we have reserved the right to enforce international law within our
own courts. For a President of the United States who may have
forgotten the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 10 confers
upon Congress the power "to define and punish piracies and felonies
committed on the high seas and offences against the law of nations."
It is sad, to be sure, that an American President and Congress remain
so woefully indifferent to international and national law. It is
tragic, nothing less than tragic, that the people's White House and
Congress will be darkened by the visit of an especially malevolent
terrorist. But it will be inexcusable, absolutely beyond pardon, that
this honoured guest of the United States, after praying with the President
and Members of Congress, shall be able to exit our shores again
without even any hint of legal interference by law-enforcing remedy.
In the future, in the face of persistent official unwillingness to
remember that international law is part of our law, civil remediation by means
of the Alien Tort Statute may represent the last hope for decency and
justice in Washington. It is a fitting irony that such a remedy,
impractical as it is, would have to be applied by a citizen of
another country.
(LOUIS RENE BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) IS Professor of
International Law at Purdue University, and author of 14 books and
several hundred journal articles dealing with international law.)
SOURCES: VOICE OF ISRAEL, THE JERUSALEM POST, HA'ARETZ, MIDEAST
DISPATCH, REUTERS, ARUTZ 7, CNN
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