President Obama's trip to the Middle East
saw him making speeches and conferring with Israeli, as well as Palestinian leaders.
While Obama was in Ramallah with Palestinian
President Abbas, they held a joint press conference. Unfortunately for President Obama, the optics
didn’t look good as he addressed the assembled journalists under a
Yasir Arafat banner.
Arafat probably one of the worlds most renowned terrorists
before Osama Bin laden came on the scene, is responsible for thousands of
deaths to innocent civilians. For a President of the United States to be caught under a
poster of this man, is an extremely bad gaffe. The photos will be used as propaganda
by many groups around the world to recruit terrorists.
According to the group known as the “Committee for Accuracy
in Mideast Reporting in America,” Arafat is the father of modern day terrorism. Perhaps that is why Sean Hannity echoed that opinion
today on his radio show, as he railed against the President getting caught
under the Arafat poster. See list of Arafats terror strikes here.
But modern day terror tactics were not an invention of Yasir
Arafat, they were in fact invented by Ireland's military leader and brilliant
tactician, Michael Collins. Many consider him to be the father of modern day terror
tactics as well as the father of the Irish
Republic.
In 1916 Collins invented those tactics as he sat in a Welsh
prison…put their by the British. Those tactics as employed by his Irish
Republican Army, forced the British to the bargaining table after centuries of effort
by Ireland’s
citizens failed to do it.
According to terrorism expert James Biesterfield in a very
informative article published in IrishCentral,
September, 2011:
From a purely
analytic viewpoint, Michael Collins was absolutely critical in the advancement
of modern terrorist & insurgency organizations. In following the timeline through the 20th Century terrorist groups, it
appears that virtually ALL groups have and are following, the IRA Model.
The PLO and Yasser Arafat used and improved upon this model
in the 1960’s/ 70’s. This led to a vast number of terrorist fighters from all
over the world attending training at PLO camps located in Libya during
this period. Following this, we began to see cooperative efforts on the part of
terrorist groups (i.e. Lod Airport, Rome
Airport, Mogadishu, etc).
For good or bad, credit should be given where due. One mans freedom fighter can be another mans
terrorist.