By ELI KAUFMAN
Hey, Yasser, I understand you had a birthday on August 4, which would have been your 86th. Your former adviser, MK Tibi, reminded us so passionately. You see, Ahmed really misses you. I apologize for not having time to visit your resting place in Ramallah so I could deliver these heartfelt sentiments in person.Although your birth name was Muhammed, it was your nickname, Yasser, meaning “easy,” that really stuck with those who knew you well. You were such a happy-go-lucky, easy-going fellow. You definitely made a deep impression on us. That’s why I’m committing such an irrational act and sending you a belated birthday card in the form of this short thesis.We were desperate for acceptance when so many of us returned to our 4,000-year-old homeland after the Shoah. We made many attempts to partner with Palestinian Arabs for the common good. All we asked was for you to stop the violence against our civilians and recognize our historical right to the Jewish State of Israel.You really should have learned the lessons of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Their strategy of non-violent resistance worked miracles on behalf of their struggling peoples. If you had emulated Ghandi, there would no doubt have been a Palestinian state existing in peace beside a Jewish state several decades ago. Your whole strategy of seeking revenge against the IDF by killing innocent Jewish civilians never earned you a state with the people who really counted the most, that is, Israelis.It was not always a foregone conclusion that you would terrorize us and that we would have to defend ourselves in whatever way necessary. Emir Faisal, who became King of Greater Syria in 1920, and then King of Iraq from 1921 to 1933, tried back in 1919 to usher in an era of peace and cooperation between Arabs and Jews when he signed the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement. Jews were ready to invest heavily in the development of your people and help bring you into the modern era. Predictably, your people eventually decided that they didn’t want progressive Arabs like Faisal working for peace. So it’s just been downhill ever since.Instead of striving to help fulfill Faisal’s vision of peace with Jews for the sake of Arabs, you instead chose Hitler’s Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, as your hero. Al-Husseini insisted on the expulsion of most Palestinian Jews. According to his plan, only Jews living in Palestine before 1917 would be allowed to stay. Yet Arabs who had immigrated to Palestine from other countries would continue to enjoy legitimate residency. You continued Al-Husseini’s legacy and made terrorism against Jews your profession and the destruction of Israel your life’s goal.The PLO has done pretty well in your absence marketing misinformation and presenting itself as the victim instead of the perpetrator of violence. International public relations firms and organizations are enlisted to polish your organization’s image abroad, especially in the United States. For example, the PLO hired Bell Pottinger in 2011 for a monthly fee of $30,000 and Squire Patton Boggs in 2014 for $55,000 per month. Your PLO takes lobbying seriously.You never represented a real nation when you in exile declared the State of Palestine in 1988. Yet today, an overwhelming majority of the nations of the world recognize your make-believe nation’s claim to our 4,000-year-old historical homeland. The PLO and PNA now have full diplomatic relations with most of the nations of the world. You succeeded in smearing our name across the planet among those who really didn’t care for Jews anyway.S-h-h-h. I’m whispering now. It doesn’t really matter how much diplomatic recognition your make-believe state receives from banana republics or so-called enlightened nations of the West who sometimes criticize Jewish apartment buildings in our capital city more than Arabs’ butchering of their own people throughout the Middle East. It’s not that the self-proclaimed enlightened ones are ignorant of the 4,000-year-old Jewish presence in Eretz-Israel, it’s just that their visceral hatred of Jews overcomes any natural tendency toward fairness or recognition of the facts.Here is some news you can use, Yasser. An increasing number of East Jerusalem Palestinians are choosing to become Israeli citizens. There has been a real jump in Palestinian applications for Israeli citizenship over the past decade. There are now between 800 and 1,000 applications per year, of which about half are successful. The oath that they are swearing includes the following words: “I declare I will be a loyal citizen of the state of Israel.”There is a sort of revolution fatigue among your people. It seems that the applicants believe that Israeli citizenship makes it easier to get jobs, buy homes, and travel abroad. These forward looking individuals just want to lay aside your irrational hatred of Jews and get on with living happy lives as Israeli citizens.As you know, you were born in Cairo, Egypt. Wouldn’t Egypt be a great final resting place? Hint, hint. If Israelites could carry Joseph’s bones up from Egypt, then Palestinians could carry your bones down to Cairo once the majority of them realize that your strategy of hatred and terror was wrong all along. Instead of winning an independent state for them, your policy of never-ending violence against innocent Jewish civilians only proved that you were unworthy of a real state.Of course, there are some Palestinians who will never accept Israeli citizenship or peace with Jews. They can continue to live in Areas A and B, which were given to them as part of the 1995 Taba Agreement. Together, areas A and B make up about 26-28% of the West Bank. Israel gave the Palestinian National Authority full civil and security control of Area A as a test of your ability to govern. In Area B, you agreed to share security control with Israel.Areas A and B are sufficient as a permanent semi-autonomous Palestinian homeland within a Jewish State of Israel that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Based upon the PNA’s past behavior and the PLO’s propensity for terror, this semi-autonomous region will have to remain non-militarized. Welcome to Eretz-Israel.Chuck Berry wrote a song back in 1956 in which he imagined how Beethoven would react if he knew how American youth were leaving classical music in favor of rock-and-roll. The song admonished, “Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.” Rock-and-roll was here to stay.We have lasted in Eretz-Israel much longer than the Canaanites, Philistines, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, British, and all the others. We are doing better than surviving; we are thriving. We have our own Jewish state and the ability to defend it. So our plan is to be here another 4,000 years and beyond. Roll over, Arafat, and tell Al-Husseini the news. The Jewish state is here to stay.Eli's Mandate: Leave your mark, make a difference for the good, and do your part to make sure that they never again devour Jacob or make his habitation waste.Email Eli Kaufman at ocfidina@yahoo.com