Question: Your book, A Cup of Trembling, claims that no real peace can come between Israel and her ...

Question: Your book, A Cup of Trembling, claims that no real peace can come between Israel and her Arab neighbors because Islam itself demands Israel’s destruction. Yet in its historic April 24 meeting the PLO’s Palestine National Council voted 504 to 54 with 14 abstentions to remove from its charter all provisions calling for the extermination of Israel and even violence against her. Surely this is the foundation for genuine peace. Doesn’t that vote prove you wrong and make your book outdated? And hasn’t Israel been proved the aggressor by its April 19 attack on a United Nations base in Kana, Lebanon, which killed and wounded scores of civilians?

Response: I do not defend everything Israel does. However, the media reports failed to tell the whole truth: that more than 30 Katyusha rocket attacks in seven days were launched from within 100-200 yards of UN compounds, with the terrorists then taking shelter in the supposedly “neutral peace-keeping” bases and the UN allowing it. Nor were Katyusha rocket attacks mentioned at all, but the reports made it appear that Israel, out of the blue, launched an unprovoked attack. While one might justify CNN’s Brent Sadler’s heartrending coverage of the mass funeral for the tragic victims, one is haunted by the question of why similar coverage and sympathy are never given to the hundreds of Israeli victims of deliberate terrorism. The UN condemnation of Israel was the 371st with not one condemnation ever voted against the Arabs for their decades of aggression and terrorism! Such maddening bias is just one more reminder of more than 2,000 years of satanic anti- Semitism!

As for the alleged amendment to the PLO charter, here we have further misinformation by the world media. While the English translations of reports on the meeting state, “the charter is hereby amended,” the Arabic version correctly refers to an amendment to be made in the future. In contrast to the general media’s favorable reports, The Jewish Press declared, “Yaser Arafat pulled off what will probably go down in history as the biggest scam of the twentieth century.” The most prominent expert on Palestinian nationalism, Hebrew University Professor Yehoshua Porat, called the whole affair a deception. An editorial in The Jerusalem Post International Edition (Week ending May 11, 1996) pointed out that Arafat’s alleged call for “peace” was anything but friendly toward Israel. In his speech he honored terrorists and lauded Israel’s chief enemies including Hamas founder “Sheikh Ahmad Yassin...Mauritania, Sudan, steadfast Iraq [applause], Libya and my brother Gaddafi.”

Deceived by the false reports, most Israelis reacted with joy. At a benefit concert in New York for the Israeli Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta announced to an enthusiastic audience that included Leah Rabin, the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister’s widow, “Tonight, I can tell you that the Palestinian National Council has revoked the clauses in its covenant that called for the destruction of Israel.” In fact they had not and have not.

London’s Daily Telegraph (5/2/96) was not fooled. It said, “The puzzle remains: how did Arafat and Peres get the entire world media to cooperate with this hoax?” Director of Peace Watch, Dan Polisar, pointed out that the PLO “only adopted a resolution that the charter must be amended without specifying which clauses would be changed, in what manner, or by what date” (The Jewish Press, Week of May 3 to May 9, 1996, pp 2, 96).Yet Rabin’s successor, Prime Minister Peres, had the chutzpah to call Arafat’s scam “the most important historical development in our region in 100 years.” That lie was calculated to aid him politically. Nevertheless, he narrowly lost the election to Binyamin Netanyahu, who has promised that he will no longer follow Peres and Rabin in trading God’s land (Lv 25:23) for “peace.”

In his “peace speech,” Arafat made numerous ominous references to the 1974 PLO Plan of Phases, a 10-point program for the destruction of Israel. The first step is to obtain territory inside Israel from which to launch her final destruction. That Plan remains in force and Arafat has repeatedly referred to it as being “right on course.” Such is the true PLO intent and will never be changed.

Obviously, even if a new PLO Charter is someday adopted which leaves out any reference to the destruction of Israel, that destruction is still demanded in the Plan of Phases and numerous other official documents. Nor can the call for the extermination of Jews be removed from the sayings of Muhammad or from the Koran (see A Cup of Trembling for documentation), which remain in force as the highest claims upon Muslims worldwide. A genuine and lasting peace for Israel? Not until her Messiah reigns over the world in righteousness from David’s throne!