But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.
Unfortunately, little attention was paid to how Arafat ruled. In fact, some saw the harsh and repressive nature of Arafat's regime as actually bolstering the prospects for peace.
I remember the youth movement in 1968. It started on American university campuses as a protest against the Vietnam war, then came to Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin. Within a year, you had an uprising of youth against their elders.
Ask Bill Clinton about Yasir Arafat. Clinton and Barak did everything they could in 2000 at Camp David. Arafat walked away from it.
Arafat rejected the deal because, as a dictator who had directed all his energies toward strengthening the Palestinians hatred toward Israel, Arafat could not afford to make peace.
People - whether you like to hear what people have got to say, not you have got to listen to them, and turning your back on people I found very insulting. If you're going to really make peace, you have got to confront each other and look each other in the eye, and that's what's happen - I'm always remember Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat and the reluctance in - Yasser Arafat put his hand down and the reluctance of Yitzhak Rabin, but then he had that second and then he just shook the hand.
In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, '69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it's worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started - an outright war started in 1962.
Airplanes were invented by natural selection. Now you can say that intelligent design designs our airplanes of today, but there was no intelligent design really designing those early airplanes. There were probably at least 30,000 different things tried, and when they crash and kill the pilot, don't try that again.
Politics is a dynamic process. When I was a young man in the 1970s, Yasser Arafat had just perpetrated various terrorist attacks. Just a few years later, after I had entered European Parliament, the same Yasser Arafat was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
When I started 'First Blood,' back in 1968, I was deeply influenced by Geoffrey Household's 'Rogue Male.'
Growing up in the 1960s, I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by airplanes and rockets.
I suppose I built my share of model airplanes, but I can't remember that I was a flying fanatic.
Do I trust Yasser Arafat? Of course not. Why should I? Why should anyone trust a politician, whether Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Benjamin Netanyahu, George W. Bush, or Yasser Arafat?
From the time I was a little itty-bitty kid, I was going to the airport every day. I began to study all the airplanes, and I'd draw all the airplanes.
I remember when I was in the Middle East, Yasser Arafat used to go to Bahrain and Qatar on a Thursday and then go to Saudi Arabia and get his financial help on a Saturday.
I was vaguely aware that people used to hijack planes to Cuba. But I didn't know much about how often it happened and what the motives were. I started looking into what was going on back then, and I was blown away by how common hijacking once was.