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Jewish World Review /Feb. 3, 1999 /17 Shevat, 5759
Don Feder
Blood of victims will drown out breakfast prayers
(JWR) --- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com) An unrepentant terrorist is as out of place at a prayer breakfast as the
president would be at a Promise Keepers' rally.
To pray in the presence of a mass murderer is both an affront to justice
and a mockery of religious service.
Why is this so difficult to understand?
The annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. -- long noted for
its bipartisan goodwill -- was the last place anyone would have expected
such an abomination to occur.
But thanks to Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., the chairman of this year's
event, when Washington's power elite bow their heads in prayer Thursday
morning, Yasser Arafat will be among them, flashing his vulture's smile.
Largent claims he didn't invite Arafat, but refuses to rescind the
invitation.
"The idea of the prayer breakfast is to bring people together
for reconciliation and healing and forgiveness, and talk about those issues
that Jesus taught," observes the ex-football player, sounding like a
bible-belt audio-animatron.
Is Largent suggesting that the capital's movers and shakers can't come
together for reconciliation and healing without a terrorist in their midst?
Does he expect the prayer breakfast to work a miraculous transformation in
Arafat that subsidies from American taxpayers and territorial concessions
from Israel have failed to achieve?
Among Christian conservatives, the move is widely deplored. Randy Tate,
executive director of the Christian Coalition, who says he won't be
attending the function, told me: "This event confers legitimacy on a
terrorist. Yasser Arafat's only prayer is that Israel is destroyed."
The Traditional Values Coalition, representing over 40,000 evangelical
churches, is asking members of Congress to boycott the event.
On Monday, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the coalition, wrote to
legislators, "Until Arafat repents the many murders of innocent people that
he has encouraged or silently approved, there should be no place for him at
the Prayer Breakfast table or any other table of civilized people for that
matter."
In the past month alone, Arafat has released over 60 terrorists from his
revolving-door prisons, in direct violation of his commitments under the
Oslo Accords and the Wye Protocol. (Ho hum, what else is new?)
These criminals include agents of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who are directly
responsible for the murder of Americans Matthew Eisenfeld, Sara Duker, Ira
Weinstein, Leah Stern and Yael Botwin in terrorist bombings over the past
three years.
Arafat still issues calls for "jihad" and praises suicide bombers before
Arab audiences. He exploits negotiations the way his mentor, the German
chancellor of the '30s, used the Central European peace process to achieve
bloodless territorial gains while preparing to deal with the Zionists of his
day.
My knowledge of Christian theology is imperfect. However, as I understand
it, repentance comes before forgiveness. Otherwise, why atone?
Largent has a reputation for being pro-life. What of the right to life of
Arafat's victims -- men, women and children whose body parts are scattered
over the Middle Eastern landscape?
The Oklahoma congressman is known as a champion of family values. There are
families in Israel still grieving for fathers, husbands, sons and daughters
who died on Arafat's command.
Another GOP politician (who's much further from my brand of Republicanism
than Steve Largent) has a far more realistic perspective on socializing with
terrorists.
In 1995, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had Arafat ejected from a concert
for world leaders at the Lincoln Center to mark the 50th anniversary of the
United Nations.
"I would not invite Yasser Arafat to anything, anywhere, anytime,
anyplace," the mayor resolutely declared. Giuliani disclosed that as a U.S.
attorney in the '80s, he had investigated Arafat's ties to a number of
terrorist incidents, including the brutal slaying of American Leon
Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro cruise ship.
"I would rather not have someone who has been implicated in the murders of
Americans there, if I have the discretion not to have him there," Giuliani
explained.
Like the blood of Able, the blood of Arafat's victims cries out from the
earth. Such cries for justice will drown out any supplications rendered in
the presence of a butcher who aspires to genocide.
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