I have no illusions about Obama, master of manipulation and deceit.  His latest affront to Israelis and Americans when he stood under Yasser Arafat's picture while mouthing pious words about peace should surprise no one.

It behooves every freedom-loving individual to remember the legacy of master terrorist Yasser Arafat.  Mentored under his uncle the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Yasser Arafat wreaked global terror.  Husseini openly supported Hitler and was known as the "Arab Fuhrer."  He used his "program on Radio Berlin to exhort the Arabs in the Middle East to murder the Jews in a holy war that pleased Allah."  A famous meeting with Hitler and Husseini resulted in the latter traveling to Bosnia, where he recruited Bosnian Muslims for the SS.  Even though the Muslims clearly did not fit the Aryan profile, their desire to exterminate Jews in the Final Solution melded the groups together.  In return, Husseini demanded that after Hitler won the war, all the Jews in Palestine be murdered.  At the site Tell Children the Truth, the unvarnished evidence of Husseini's and Arafat's perfidy is further explained.

Continuing in this murderous vein, Yasser Arafat is responsible for the most heinous of deeds.  At the site for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), Arafat's "Timeline of Terror" is laid out.  Furthermore, "groups under Arafat's direct or indirect command - including Fatah, Black September, Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade - were responsible for hundreds of bombings, hijackings, assassinations and other attacks, including the 1972 murder of 11 of Israel's Olympic athletes in Munich, the 1973 murder of the American ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel, and the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruiseship (resulting in the murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer)." 

Not only was Arafat responsible for attacks on Jews, but for "30 years he ordered and condoned the murder of American citizens including U.S. diplomats."  What does it say about a president of the United States who would see nothing wrong about standing under this man's picture?  But then again, considering the continuing cover-up regarding the murder in Benghazi of ambassador Chris Stevens, this seems to fall right in line with our troubling president.  Thus, Art Moore at WND asserts:

Similarly, when U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel Jr., U.S. Charges d'affaires George Curtis Moore and Belgian Guy Eid were murdered March 2, 1973, after being taken hostage, U.S. officials immediately knew who was to blame.

And like the Benghazi affair Sept. 11, 2012, politics got in the way of justice.

Let's put names to the American citizens whom Arafat murdered.  At the site Christian Action for Israel by Joseph Farah, we learn of Keren Shatsky aged 14, and Rachel Thaler, aged 16, who were victims of Arafat. 

Moreover, Arafat supplied weapons for the 1983 Lebanon attack that killed 241 Americans.  Have you no shame, Mr. Obama, for acknowledging Arafat in the way that you did?  But then again, this is the president who is willfully decreasing American military preparedness.

Furthermore, Arafat was:

... responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and 95,000 Lebanese Arabs who were killed by his minions during his twelve-year reign of terror in that country. Nearly 500,000 Lebanese were made homeless in the same period. Arafat is also responsible for [the] ruin and poverty that pervades the West Bank. From 1967-1994, under Israeli rule, the economy of the West Bank Palestinians prospered. GDP grew at an average rate of 13 percent per year, tourism sky-rocketed, seven universities were created, infant mortality plummeted, life expectancy increased, and the well-being of the Palestinian Arabs improved substantially by World Bank measures. At one point almost 300,000 Palestinians were working in the Israeli economy, with earnings well above their counterparts in neighboring Arab states. Spurred by this prosperity, the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip soared from about 950,000 in 1967 to over 3,000,000 in 1994.

Your words of conciliation ring quite hollow, Mr. President, for those Palestinians who truly seek peace and economic prosperity when you shove Arafat's face onto the television screen.

And where has all the American taxpayer money gone that was donated to assist the Palestinians?  In 2002, Rachel Ehrenfeld succinctly explained that "beyond [the millions of dollars of international aid] diverted to terrorism against Israel, money slated to help the Palestinian people has also gone directly into the coffers of its leadership."  In fact, Arafat "skimmed" money to the tune of more than $1.3 billion for his own use.  In other words, "donor money [meant to assist Palestinians] was used to support terrorism."

And now, yet again, Obama is sending money to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an avowed enemy of America and Israel.  Moreover, Obama recently promised Mahmoud Abbas that America will now be sending money to the Palestinian Authority "to bolster it financially."  Odd how American taxpayer money can go to Palestinian leaders, but Americans are suffering financially at home!

Mr. Obama, did you know that in "2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip? In addition, he agreed to dismantle 63 isolated settlements. In exchange for the 3 percent annexation of the West Bank, Israel said it would give up territory in the Negev that would increase the size of the Gaza territory by roughly a third."  Arafat refused, because peace is never the issue - annihilation of the Jews was and has always been the raison d'être of the Palestinian cause, be it under Hamas, Hezb'allah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Fatah, or the myriad slate of other terrorist organizations.

In 2009, Obama made remarks at the Holocaust Days of Remembrance Ceremony in Washington, D.C.  In his speech, he stated that:

... while we are here today to bear witness to the human capacity to destroy, we are also here to pay tribute to the human impulse to save, in the moral accounting of the Holocaust as we reckon with numbers like 6 million, as we recall the horror of numbers etched into arms[.]

So how exactly is Obama bearing witness when he continually invokes through subliminal imagery the picture of a murderer who at every opportunity thwarted the peaceful overtures that Israel proffered and who is responsible for the murder of Americans? 

Why did Obama not rebut Mahmoud Abbas's outright lie that "Palestine has taken long and additional steps for the sake of making peace"?  Furthermore, he maintains that the "Palestinian people deserve an end to occupation and the daily indignities that come with it."  Perhaps Mr. Obama should study the 2002 article entitled "What Occupation," where Efraim Karsh demonstrates that "the charges against Israel's various 'occupations' represent -- and are plainly intended to be -- a damning indictment of the entire Zionist enterprise.  In almost every particular, they are also grossly false."

Moreover, Obama patently disregards the indignities that Israelis face each time they are searched when they go to the movies or to the marketplace.  What about the PTSD that young Israelis face because of the continual rocket bombardment into schools, playgrounds, and urban centers?  Nary a word about the "bomb-wary [Israeli] children" as their teachers take them to the Biblical Zoo and try to inject normalcy in their young lives.

One must wonder when Obama will acknowledge the following:

... [t]he distinct differences between what Palestinian children and Israeli children suffer can be best outlined by the intention of their respective sides. Whereas Israeli children have had to live with being targets of Hamas, Palestinian children, by large, only suffer deaths from the conflict when their own fathers and leaders intentionally place them in danger. This is because Hamas leaders use children as human shields or place rocket sites near children in an effort to make Israel look like they are striking civilian targets. Israeli children suffer due to the intentional efforts of Hamas, while Israel does everything possible to avoid civilian casualties.

The Palestinians deserve leaders who truly care about their lives.  They deserve leaders who do not teach their children to murder Jewish children, as can be found in Palestinian ninth-graders' textbooks that assert, "[T]reachery and disloyalty are character traits of the Jews and therefore one should beware of them."  Jews are cast as Satanic, violent, and cunning, as "thieving conquerors" who have stolen Arab land and must be fought and defeated.  When will President Obama demand an end to this hate speech?

The Palestinians deserve to be told the truth about Israel's outreach programs of peace.  Instead, Obama panders to the enemies of truth, to the leaders of terror, and to the age-old anti-Semitism that pervades the world.

Is this how a president should behave?

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.