In his 1974 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Yasser...

In his 1974 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Yasser Arafat said: â€Å"The difference between the revolutionary and the terrorist lies in the reason for which he fights†¦for the justice of the cause determines the right to struggle.† In this same speech, Arafat addresses the international community and provides commentary on a multitude of different subjects. He traces what he believes to be the positive and increasingly popular growth of the United Nations, mentioning the inclusion of three new member states: Guinea-Bissau, Bangladesh, and Grenada. This diversification of the UN membership, according to him, is an indicator of the general trend in the world at that time towards â€Å"freedom.† In this bit of tendentious logic, as one has†¦show more content†¦In Arafat’s case, then, terrorism is only a characteristic of the mature industrial â€Å"Western† state, whereas â€Å"revolutionary† nations have a duty-perhaps even a â₠¬Å"logically rational† one-to condemn â€Å"designs against peace,† herein supplanting the notion of â€Å"equality.† To be perfectly clear, Arafat is here intimating that the liberal-democratic standard by which â€Å"the West† most conspicuously identifies and is identified, must be upheld by â€Å"the West† outside of â€Å"the West,† and in relation to the rest of the world. I mean here to say that he is chiefly referring to ideals rather than praxes-i.e., such as the â€Å"preservation of universal peace† causing peoples to â€Å"live free of oppression,† over and above basic human decency, such as cordiality (an admittedly more concrete and well known concept.) This he obviously uses to leverage the international community, pointing to the legal ramifications of the UN Charter and the Universal