As Corbyn grapples pro-terror label, Labour visits Arafat’s grave

Yasser Arafat, the man former prime minister Menachem Begin dubbed “an animal on two feet” and former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said he had to take a “pill against vomiting” before shaking his hand – is also the man who was able to bring the PLO back to Palestinian territory after it was driven out of Jordan and Lebanon to North Africa. Seen by Palestinians as a national hero, Arafat led a policy of public acts of terror, including hijacking airplanes and murdering handicapped people and throwing them to the sea – as was the fate of Leon Klinghoffer when the PLO abducted the Achille Lauro in 1985. A Labour source said: "If these people were serious about peace, they would be meeting Israelis and Palestinians working to build a better future, rather than laying wreaths for a man that unleashed waves of terror on innocent Israelis. Sadly this is just another grim reminder of the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, who himself laid a wreath on the grave of those who masterminded the torture and murder of Israeli athletes.” In Israel during the years after the Rabin assassination the commonly accepted view was that Arafat is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to reach a finite compromise between his people and the State of Israel. The main issues, including the return of Palestinian refugees and their offspring to the land and the status of Jerusalem, were never addressed in the original Oslo Peace accords and were meant to be resolved in a future that never arrived.  Corbyn expressed support multiple times to radical Islamic groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran. He seems to hold ISIS and the US on equal moral footing, saying that both have done “appalling” things – Foreign Policy reported in 2018.