Many people have been persuaded to believe that the various Arab-Palestinian terrorist organizations were daring guerrilla fighters springing out of the Arab population within "Palestine," determined to regain their lost homeland from the cruel Israeli occupier. They were pictured as modern day Fidel Castros of Cuba, Che Guevaras in the Bolivian jungle, Mao Tse-Tungs of China or even American Revolutionaries! This is the type of characterizations that capture the imaginations of Europeans and Americans.

"Fatah" is the military arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Other than an occasional lone Israeli soldier, Fatah operations have been directed almost exclusively against civilian targets… school buses, shopping centers, bus terminals, civilian airplanes, movie theatres, etc.  Attacks from across the borders were invariably against the Israeli border villages --- their men, women and children, their domestic animals and their homes.

Another cardinal fact about Fatah is that it did not spring from the Arabs of Palestine, whom it claims to represent. The organization was founded in Lebanon in 1958… nearly a decade BEFORE Israel was forced to "occupy" the West Bank and Gaza in its defensive war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967.  Obviously, the "occupied land" of which Fatah and all other Palestinian terrorist groups spoke of then and continue to speak of now is ALL of Israel itself!

Fatah’s first official offices were opened in Algeria (1963).  Next it moved its headquarters to Beirut, Lebanon. Then in the mid-1960’s they moved to Damascus, Syria.  It was while they were headquartered in Syria that Fatah first launched terrorist operations against Israel most often first crossing through Jordan or Lebanon and then sneaking across into Israel.  All the attacks were hit-and-run raids on civilian targets. Seldom did they stray far from the border since they could not expect shelter from the Palestinian Arabs!  The entire West Bank and Gaza were still under Jordanian and Egyptian "occupation," respectively. They would not be "occupied" by Israel for another four years. Again, the occupied land in question was Israel itself.

Yasser Arafat, Fatah’s leader, has claimed that he was born in Jerusalem. That may or may not be true. What is known is that he was brought up and educated in Egypt after his parents had emigrated from Palestine. It is important to note that they were NOT "refugees" or "exiles." They had simply moved to Egypt in the 1920s … more than twenty years BEFORE the State of Israel came into existence! So if Yasser wants to fix blame where it belongs, he should be cursing on his parents’ graves for making the choice to leave Palestine and stop blaming the Jews of Palestine who chose to stay and create a Jewish State.

Return to HomePage Index