The PLO Mission to the United States is located in downtown Washington, D.C., less than two miles from the White House.
This is a scary reality, given the terrorist nature of the organization. Indeed, the U.S. government describes the PLO, or Palestine Liberation Organization, as a terrorist group, and the State Department has named important parts of the PLO to its foreign terrorist list. Yet it is this same U.S. government that has kept and continues to keep this mission intact. Who will finally have the common sense and will to shut the mission down?
In December 1987, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987. The act unequivocally called the PLO — an umbrella group for several violent entities — a “terrorist organization” and made it “unlawful” for the PLO to “establish or maintain” an office inside the United States. Citing various fanatical actions carried out by the group, including “the murders of dozens of American citizens abroad,” the act stated:
[T]he Congress determines that the PLO and its affiliates are a terrorist organization and a threat to the interests of the United States, its allies, and to international law and should not benefit from operating in the United States.
What the Congress and President Reagan fought to create, future U.S. presidents would seek to undo — circumventing the act by issuing waivers allowing for the maintaining of a PLO mission in the United States and for the American funding of the PLO. Every six months, beginning in 1994, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama issued such waivers, using the excuse that they were “important to the national security interests of the United States.”
In reality, the waivers had nothing to do with “national security.” They were instead seen as necessities in sustaining the last three presidential administrations’ obsession with the creation of a PLO state — essentially a terrorist state — called “Palestine,” to be headed by PLO leader Yasser Arafat followed more recently by the PLO’s Mahmoud Abbas.
In April 2005, U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) introduced a bill (H.R. 2036) that would have forced the “withdrawal or termination” of presidential waivers with regard to an American PLO office. The bill was co-sponsored by Representatives Charlie Norwood (R-GA) and Dan Burton (R-IN). However, the bill was referred to subcommittee the following month and never made it out of there.
While the waivers can put off the closure of the PLO’s mission in D.C., what they cannot do is erase the 40-plus year terror-filled history of the group, which includes such high profile attacks as the 1972 Munich massacre of the Israeli Olympic team and the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking, where 69-year-old wheelchair-bound American tourist Leon Klinghoffer was shot dead and thrown overboard.
The two main organizations which led the PLO in the past during its most violent periods are the groups that lead it today. They are the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini (Fatah) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Unfortunately for both, and contradictory to some in the White House who have labeled the PLO “moderate,” the violence never stopped.
On the official Fatah website, which has images of Arafat and Abbas emblazoned on the top of it, the group is highly critical of those who will not call for “jihad” (holy war) against the United States. On July 19, 2009, while describing the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein as a “victim,” Fatah posted a piece on its site saying the following:
Al-Jazeera does not dare ask the leadership of the International Muslim Brotherhood the reason for its silence over the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and why it did not call for jihad against the occupation, as it did in the late seventies when Soviet forces occupied Afghanistan.
Prominently featured on the Fatah site is the logo for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (AMB), an organization that is found on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). As stated on both the Fatah and the AMB sites, AMB is the “military wing” of Fatah. Both sites publish AMB’s terrorist communiqués, describing in detail the group’s violent acts carried out against Israelis. A number of its attacks have been suicide bombings.
Also on the Fatah site is the logo of the second largest of the PLO’s groups, the PFLP. Like the AMB, the PFLP is listed on the State Department’s FTO list. And like Fatah, the PFLP has its own militant wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (AAMB).
Established in 1967, the PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Some of the graphics found on the PFLP’s official website attest to its Marxist background, incorporating such communist symbolism as the “hammer and sickle.”
The terrorist nature of the PFLP is also well present on its website. Along with photos of masked men brandishing automatic rifles, the site broadcasts AAMB’s terror communiqués. Furthermore, the group praises other terrorist organizations. Recently, the PFLP posted to its site a salute to Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah, congratulating the group for what it called “the third anniversary of its victory [against Israel] in the July war of 2006.”
Another of the central PLO organizations is the Palestine Media Center (PMC). The PMC is the official news agency of the PLO. On the PMC website, which features the same PLO logo as the PLO Mission to the U.S., one can read the PLO covenant as adopted in 1968 — unedited — calling for the destruction of Israel.
When the U.S. president puts his name on a waiver to allow for the continuance of a PLO office in the United States, in actuality he is putting his name to the support of terrorism against the United States and her friend Israel. That does nothing to serve the “national security interests” of the U.S. It only serves the interests of America’s enemies, here and abroad.
If President Barack Obama really wishes to serve the interests of the United States, he will immediately move to rescind the latest waiver — that being the one he signed on April 9, 2009 — and close down the PLO mission. You cannot fight the War on Terror at the same time you are enabling the terrorists by erasing legislation that was put in place to stop them.
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