The cycle of violence continues until someone breaks it.

One very old observation holds that the only behavior over which one has complete control is one's own. "Controlling" Arafat's behavior by brutalizing the next generation looks like the frustrated big kid on the playground giving another kid a black eye because he couldn't hit the person who abused him at home. It makes him feel like he's powerful, but the other kids see a different picture.

It would be very difficult to depict Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King as a thug, because there was no material to work with. (Failing that, J. Edgar Hoover tried for "womanizer" with King. Traction failed when Coretta didn't bite.) The 8-year-old would find it very easy to believe that the Israelis who knocked down his house for being an Arab (see writing on the wall) were thugs. So the Israelis act as a wonderful advertisement for Arafat's propaganda machine.

Regards--
Mary Anne