Arafat foundation: ‘no need for more proof’ of poison.

Arafat foundation: ‘no need for more proof’ of poison.(AA).The Yasser Arafat Foundation said Sunday there was “no need” for more proof the Palestinian leader was poisoned in what appeared to be a stance against French plans to exhume his body. “Since the formation of this Foundation, it has forcefully held on to the fact that Yasser Arafat died abnormally after being killed by a poison which was unidentified at the time,” it said in a statement. “The Foundation does not see a need here for more proof.” The statement was issued just days after a delegation of French magistrates said they would travel to travel to the West Bank to investigate following claims Arafat may have succumbed to poisoning by the radioactive substance polonium. No date has been given for the trip which would involve forensic officers exhuming the body and taking samples for laboratory testing in an investigation sought by Arafat’s widow Suha. Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, a source from the Foundation said they would only agree to a further examination of his body if it was conducted as part of an international investigation committee. “If there is an international committee, we will agree to the body being checked,” he said, without explaining further. Arafat died in a French military hospital near Paris on Nov. 11, 2004 and French experts were unable say what had killed him, with many Palestinians subscribing to the belief that he was poisoned by Israel. In July, president Mahmud Abbas and Suha Arafat both gave their consent for samples to be taken from his remains, which are buried in a mausoleum in the West Bank city of Ramallah.Read the full story here.

France opens murder investigation in Arafat’s death: sources.

France opens murder investigation in Arafat’s death: sources.(AA).French prosecutors have opened a murder enquiry into Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s 2004 death near Paris, sources close to the matter told AFP Tuesday. The probe comes after Arafat’s family launched legal action in France last month over claims the veteran Palestinian leader died of radioactive polonium poisoning. Arafat’s widow Suha and his daughter Zawra lodged a murder complaint on July 31 in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Arafat died at a military hospital near Paris in 2004. Allegations that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was poisoned were resurrected last month after Al-Jazeera news channel broadcast an investigation in which experts said they found high levels of polonium on his personal effects.
Polonium is a highly toxic substance which is rarely found outside military and scientific circles, and was used to kill former Russian spy turned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 shortly after drinking tea laced with the poison. Suha Arafat has said she backs exhuming her late husband’s remains from his mausoleum in the West Bank town of Ramallah. A Swiss radiology lab at the Lausanne University Hospital Centre said on Friday it has received Suha Arafat’s go-ahead to test his remains for poisoning by polonium. Arafat, who led the struggle for Palestinian statehood for nearly four decades, died in a French military hospital after being airlifted there for treatment from his Ramallah headquarters. At the time of his death, Palestinian officials alleged he had been poisoned by long-time foe Israel, but an inconclusive Palestinian investigation in 2005 ruled out poisoning, as well as cancer and AIDS. Israel has consistently denied the allegations, accusing Suha Arafat and Palestinian officials of covering up the real reasons for the former leader’s death.Read the full story here.

Yasir Arafat Is Still Dead and We Know Who Really Did Him In.

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.