LONDON — Yasser Arafat’s order to close a Palestinian university exhibit re-enacting a terrorist attack on Israel is being seen by observers as “too little, too late.”
The Palestinian Authority president bowed to pressure Tuesday to close the exhibit at Al Najah University in Nablus, celebrating the August suicide bombing at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, which claimed the lives of 15 people.
Arafat’s delayed response was condemned by Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the Los-Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, as “outrageously too little, too late.”
Speaking from Jerusalem, where he is spending the High Holy Days, Hier said: “This is the goading of the victims of the terror attack. It was saying, ‘You are crying, we are laughing.'”
Hier complained that Arafat had initially failed to respond to protests over the exhibition, which opened Sunday at the West Bank university.
In one room of the exhibition, students were dressed as suicide bombers, clasping a Koran in one hand and a gun in the other, conducting what was intended to be their final interview before setting out on their suicide mission.
Another student, dressed in a military uniform and mask, was featured setting a supposed bomb. This scene took place at a replica of a restaurant with the word “kosher” written in Hebrew above the door. Sbarro is a popular kosher restaurant frequented by religious Jews.
According to Hier, the exhibit also included a large rock with a figure behind it wearing a black hat, black trousers and jacket with a recording inside the rock calling out, “O believer, there is a Jewish man behind me, come and kill him.” The exhibit also paid tribute to three leaders of the terrorist group Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the attack.
“President Bush says that people are either with us or against us, yet Arafat has allowed this outrageous exhibition under his own nose at a time when Arafat wants to be a part of an international coalition against terrorism,” Hier said. “It certainly feeds into the idea that the Palestinians don’t want peace.”
A veteran expert on Arab affairs also found it significant that Arafat had delayed for two days before banning the exhibition.
“It seems Arafat is trying to see how much intifada he can get away with in the framework of a cease-fire,” said the analyst, who asked not to be identified.