"We want the United States to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with making sure elections take place ... and to protect us from any Israeli effort to sabotage the elections with assassination." -Spokesman for PLO

This is beyond inflammatory. On multiple levels, we can even say this is outright deplorable. Let me try to list then here.

First, and I think most Arabs will understand this far better than Americans, this statement appeals to very ingrained prejudices that Arabs in particular have about Israel, and its security forces. Without getting into the almost otherworldly internal propaganda machine that has reached a state of perfection virtually unparalleled in the civilized world, it should suffice to say that somehow or another many Arabs get the idea that Israel has almost supernatural powers to enact mischief. Moreover, that mischief always seems to take the form of something Arabs don't like. The current Egyptian president has publicly stated that Zionists are responsible for all terrorist acts committed around the world. It has become the rage to accuse the Mossad, external Israeli security, of assassinating the anti-Syrian Lebanese politician Hariri because "only Jews are cunning enough to pull something like that off." This is maintained in the face of U.N. resolution effectively amounting to an indictment of Syria for carrying out the attack, which presupposes the revelation of significant evidence in the Syrian government documents and records summoned by the body. Syria has the means, motive and evidence of involvement, yet Arab countries continue to propagate the weakest lies to their populations. An intelligent friend of mine still maintains that Israel is responsible. When asked what the motive could be, he provides an answer as mystical as the body of evidence supporting his view. Basically, they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and for whatever reason they want, and we won't ever know why. On top of all this, the curricula of Palestinian schools, devised and funded by Hamas, teaches out of textbooks that repeat all of anti-semitism's ugliest myths: Jews kill babies for their blood, rape Muslim women, run a fascist political system like the Nazis, hold hegemonic power to disrupt world events which they exercise freely. If this seems too outrageous to be true, find a copy of the Hamas charter. Then find any news article where Hamas tries to tout its charitable activities like building hospitals, schools etc. It's not that big of a leap to connect the dots.

Second, forgive me for being blunt but the Palestinians are terrible at democracy. For decades they re-elected Arafat, who killed potential rivals, and the cycle repeated itself. First rule of democracy: killing your rivals is not considered an acceptable form of political competition. Of course, no Palestinian election has even been considered fair. You can't blame foreigners in advance for making your elections unfair when you can't even keep them fair yourselves.

What's perhaps most ironic about this comment is that Arabs use assassination as a political tool. There's one instance I can count of an Israeli using it, and that's the murder or Yitzhak Rabin. On the other hand, I can count many times Arabs have used it to exert their own political will. Egyptian president Sadat organized a successful surprise attack against Israel during the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, made territorial gains and forced concessions from Israel Now, when the war ended, Israel conceded the Sinai territory, which it had acquired in an earlier military conflict to Egypt in exchange for peace. After all this, Sadat became the first Arab president to make peace with Israel and to open diplomatic relations. This was not good enough for Arab rejectionists, and he was eventually assassinated. The first king of Jordan was assassinated by an Arab. Arafat walked away from the most generous unilateral offer ever by Israel in the 2000 accords without an iota of negotiation. No one knows the reason why, but one theory has it that he himself was fearing for his life at the hands of Palestinian rejectionists who publicly stated their intention to kill any leader who makes peace with Israel. This doesn't even count all the dissidents and potential political rivals who have been killed. I would like to hear one example of this occurring in Israel's history.

Lastly, I think this comment is manifestly made to exploit the contention arising from Israel's controversial practice of "targeted killings" that Israel is somehow carrying out assassinations and getting away with it. First of all, the targeted killings are reserved for militants. The real debate is over whether the alleged militants receive the proper due process, not whether this is some form of assassination. In this respect, Israel faces a similar debate to the one going on in the U.S. about indefinite military detentions. Note as well that the targeted individual is always reported as being a militant in the press, and moreover the source is usually Palestinian. Also, the targeted killings are precise. If the dead include some non-targeted individuals, much of the time these people have militant ties. For those innocent bystanders who are killed, the idea of ancillary or collateral damage in a military strike in a war against those who have publicly declared non-negotiable war on you is something the informal rules of war recognize, the UN has codified, and the international community should recognize as well.