Yasir Arafat Is Still Dead and We Know Who Really Did Him In.(
RR).By Barry Rubin.Yasir Arafat is still dead. True, he was once alive. I sat across from him in his Gaza office, for example. And he even had a copy of my history of the PLO on his bookshelf so he must have been of sound mind at the time. It’s not my fault. I told him to start jogging and cut down on sweets. But he didn’t listen.
On November 4, 2004, he died, a fate he previously delivered to thousands of far more innocent people.
The effort now by various Palestinian factions to imply Israel killed him is the funniest thing in the Middle East since the U.S. director of national intelligence’s congressional briefing when he said the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular democratic organization. What’s dismaying is how much play Western media are giving this charge as if it should be taken seriously. When the West behaves in this way it signals at the least a dangerously naive credulousness and at worst a profound anti-Jewish and anti-Israel complex.
The New York Times and
Washington Post take this nonsense seriously.
But there’s something else in this story, something very chilling indeed. Revolutionary Islamists especially, but many Muslims otherwise, believe that Jews tried to murder Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and even if they failed that the poison shortened his life.
The accusation that Jews are the murderer of prophets — with Muslims throwing in the founder of Christianity also — is a phrase that derives from this story. It is frequently heard from Hamas and others.
This is a blood libel, an alleged crime that then leads to the view that Jews are absolutely evil and should be wiped out. In short, it is a rationale for genocide. When Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhood say that Israel should be wiped off the map and Jews generally should be murdered, that incitement is the inevitable consequence of this line of thinking.
That Western observers are unaware of all of this history — repeated daily in inciteful sermons found in Middle East mosques — is quite evident. Such a lack of knowledge leads them to believe that the conflicts they say are easily resolvable, quickly settled by more Israeli concessions or still continuing because of Israeli actions when the causes are much deeper and the solutions far more remote.
Western societies today are obsessed with searching everywhere for racism and hate speech. Well, the idea that the Jews murdered Arafat (rather than that Arafat spent most of his career murdering Jews) falls into that category.
As for the specific claims in the Arafat case, they are easily disposed of:
First of all, anyone who saw Arafat during the last year of his life knew he was seriously ill and steadily worsening. His lips trembled, he looked disoriented, and he wasn’t as articulate as usual. Even on television you couldn’t possibly miss his distress. Parkinson’s disease was a likely diagnosis though Crohn’s disease was said to be another probable medical problem for the dictator.
His doctors obviously knew that he was in bad shape. But, and this is what’s most important, they didn’t do anything about it. The prospect of Arafat’s death was so traumatic for the movement — which had known no other leader during 43 years for Fatah, 36 years for the PLO, and its entire ten year life for the Palestinian Authority.
By not taking serious action and giving him better treatment, the key to the mystery is this: His own doctors and movement killed Arafat. So if Israel killed Arafat, then his own doctors and the entire PLO, Fatah, and PA leadership were in on the conspiracy. Indeed, Arafat himself, by not more actively seeking medical help or speaking about his problems, was also in on the conspiracy. This is unlikely.Of course, Arafat was a weird person and in our biography,
Arafat: A Political Biography, Judith Colp Rubin and I explain his psychology and personality.
One of my favorite Palestinian jokes about Arafat recounts that he is patting the head of a little girl and asks her, “Whose daughter are you?”
She answers, “Yours.” Arafat was considered by his countrymen to be so cold that he didn’t recognize his own begotten daughter. The story is almost plausible.
But I repeat: there is no reason to think Arafat was a homosexual or died of AIDS or poisoning. He was overweight, ate an unhealthy diet, worked long hours, didn’t take care of himself (he believed eating honey would keep him healthy), and had very bad doctors despite their local reputations.
So we know who killed Arafat: his doctors, entourage, movement, and of course his own body.
Yet when I go to Yahoo, what do I see but Arafat’s “mysterious” death as the lead story in the entire world, as if any accusation made against Israel must be true.
Note: Here’s a history of the Israel-killed-Arafat tale in
Palestinian Media Watch. For more analysis of why the claims are absurd see
here and
here. Note: Here’s a history of the Israel-killed-Arafat tale in
Palestinian Media Watch. For more analysis of why the claims are absurd see
here and
here. Here’s some
more information about the Israeli decision to let Arafat go to Paris. One interesting point is that it implies the French doctors took some action which might have been correct but could also imply that they are at fault for Arafat’s turn for the worse, giving them a motive for not revealing details of his treatment.
Hmmmm......The main question is WHY NOW?What are they planning in the very near future, lets say after the reelection of Obama?Read the full story
here.
