Martin Indyk and Irwin Cotler

WORLD ORT
Arafat Takes A Bite Of
Israel’s Secret Weapon

By Tim Boxer

AYBE what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should do is dispatch a kosher hot dog stand to Ramalah to rein in Yasir Arafat and his terror hordes.

The Palestinian leader loves kosher hot dogs. This was apparent back in 1999 when the late David Hermelin, Clinton’s ambassador to Norway, arranged a summit at his home for President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat.

Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the story at a World ORT dinner at the Grand Hyatt in New York. The organization, dedicated to teaching youngsters a trade in the former Soviet Union and other countries, held its general assembly in the U.S. for the first time in its 124-year history.

Indyk said that Hermelin airlifted French fries and non-cholesterol buns from his native Detroit.


Richard Goldstone, Martin Indyk and
Lord David Young

When Arafat spied Hermelin’s daughter videotaping the event, he broke out in his mannered grin and pronounced, “Delicious, delicious, delicious.”

“She now has a film of Arafat eating a delicious kosher hot dog,” Indyk said.

On a more serious note Indyk, who helped Clinton facilitate the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, warned that once a Palestinian state is formed in Gaza and the West Bank, it would expand naturally, through demographics, to include Jordan, already populated with a majority of Palestinians.

“Once Israel’s fence is completed next year,” he said, “the pressure to move all settlements behind the fence will be inexorable.

“Israel’s future will be in becoming a city state from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and Haifa. I hope it won’t be a Sparta, but an Athens.”

Other speakers at the dinner included Richard Goldstone, retired justice of the Supreme Court of South Africa; Irwin Cotler, Canada’s minister of justice and attorney general, Lord David Young of Graffham, past president, and Sir Maurice Hatter, the incoming president.


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