Nov. 12, 2004 US Jews stress Arafat's 'legacy of failure' By URIEL HEILMAN NEW YORK For a man who once famously refused to remove his gun holster while addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Yasser Arafat again received a hero's tribute Thursday by the international body that has become one of his most ardent backers. In New York, the United Nations lowered its flag to half-staff after officials learned that Arafat, 75, had died at a Paris hospital early Thursday morning. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was "deeply moved" by the news, according to a U.N. statement, and he conveyed his condolences to Suha Arafat and the Palestinian people. "President Arafat will always be remembered for having led the Palestinians, back in 1988, to accept the principle of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state," the U.N. statement said. "It is tragic that he did not live to see it fulfilled." Terje Roed-Larsen, Annan's special representative for the Middle East peace process, was dispatched to attend Arafat's funeral in Cairo, Reuters reported. A memorial service and tribute to Arafat was slated to be held at the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday afternoon, according to Muin Shreim, counselor at the Palestinian mission to the United Nations. He said his office had been receiving condolence calls all day from diplomats, Christian religious leaders and journalists. "There have been so many calls from different quarters of the world," Shreim said. "We will be opening a book of condolences." The Palestinian mission did not receive any calls from Israeli officials or American Jewish communal officials, Shreim said. As news of Arafat's death saturated the airwaves, many American Jewish groups rushed to put out statements saying Arafat's demise was a positive development for the future of Middle East peace and the destinies of the Israeli and Palestinian people. "The passing of Yasser Arafat ends a tragic chapter in the history of the Middle East and presents a potentially new opportunity for a long overdue peace in the region," said a statement by the American Jewish Committee that reflected the sentiment being expressed Thursday by most major American Jewish groups. Arafat failed the test of peace, the committee said, and "the legacy of that failure is the toll of death and destruction, poverty and despair, terrorism and incitement that has defined the Palestinian existence for years." During the heyday of the Oslo peace process, the American Jewish Committee was one of several U.S. Jewish groups that met with the Palestinian leader. In 1999, the United Jewish Communities, the largest Jewish charity organization in America, even considered giving Arafat its prestigious Isaiah Award for the Palestinian leader's efforts at peacemaking. The UJC backtracked when news of its considerations broke in the press and many Jews reacted with anger. "The organizations were responding to the mood that was being created, the hopefulness of the moment," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. In the late 1990s, some past chairman of Hoenlein's group also met with Arafat in New York. Since then, however, there's been a lot of rethinking on Arafat. "I think a lot of people acknowledged the mistakes they made, not holding him accountable for what he was doing," Hoenlein said. "He is the father of modern-day terrorism." Not all American Jews expressed negative views of the one-time Nobel Peace Prize winner Thursday. "The world lost the one Palestinian leader who could potentially make peace," said Mitchell Plitnick, director of education and policy at the San Francisco-based Jewish Voice for Peace. "It's unfortunate that Arafat's death is giving an opportunity for many people to reiterate the untrue story that Arafat was solely responsible for the breakdown of Camp David and the beginning of the intifada." Americans for Peace Now also extended condolences to Arafat's family and the Palestinian people. Media outlets seemed split on Arafat's death, with some crediting him for bringing the Palestinian national movement from terrorism and obscurity to peacemaking and prominence, and others saying Arafat was the primary obstacle to Palestinian nationhood and Middle East peace until the day he died. "ARAFAT DEAD And he won't be missed," blared the front-page headline of the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid. "Yasser Arafat is dead. Good riddance. The world is better off without him," the paper's editorialists wrote. The New York Times, in an editorial, said that so far "only the Palestinians have adopted a mood of pragmatic flexibility" with regard to funeral plans for Arafat, pointing out that Israel wanted him buried in a Gaza Strip cemetery adjacent to a fish market. The editorial did not mention that the Gaza cemetery is where Arafat's father and sister are buried. In the paper's news pages, Arafat was described the "wily and enigmatic father of Palestinian nationalism who for almost 40 years symbolized his people's longing for a distinct political identity and independent state." "The media coverage is really quite horrific, describing him in terms that are really quite heroic," Hoenlein observed. "I wonder when Osama bin Laden dies if they're going to do the same thing."