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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Arafat is still dead

Nov 11, 2004 5:30 am By Robert Spencer

Watch for an avalanche of unctuous eulogies for this jihad terrorist and master manipulator. Why, here comes one now, from AP (actually, this one is not nearly as bad as what I am sure we’ll be seeing soon):

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Yasser Arafat, the guerrilla leader turned Nobel Peace Prize winner who forced his people’s plight into the world spotlight, died Thursday at age 75 “” still reviled by many as a terrorist.

Read that carefully. “…the guerrilla leader turned Nobel Peace Prize winner…” As if he couldn’t have won it without ending his guerrilla activities, and as if there really was some change in his modus operandi. Both assumptions largely false. And then there’s “still reviled by many as a terrorist,” by which AP means something comparable to “Mahatma Gandhi died today, revered by millions but still reviled by some benighted fools as an agitator.” In this case, however, it would have been more accurate to say “This terrorist fooled enough people to get the Nobel Prize, but in the end, he was just another terrorist murderer.”

Arafat died at 3:30 a.m. in a French military hospital. His last days were as murky and dramatic as his life. Arafat was flown to France on Oct. 29 after nearly three years of being penned in his West Bank headquarters by Israeli tanks.

He initially improved but then sharply deteriorated as rumors swirled about his illness. Neither doctors nor Palestinian leaders would say what killed Arafat.

“Murky and dramatic”? What is murky and dramatic about his death? No one will say what killed him; the obvious conclusion is that he died of something embarrassing. He was poisoned — maybe by the cutthroats who have been playing “He’s dead, he’s not dead” for a week, or he died of AIDS, as has been widely rumored. “Murky,” maybe, but “dramatic”? This is not James Bond getting sawed in two by a laser beam.

Meanwhile, the old killer is lionized at home:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets of the Gaza Strip in a spontaneous show of grief. Dozens of gunmen fired into the air, and marchers waved Palestinian flags.

Mosques blared Quranic verses and children burned tires on the main streets, covering the skies in black smoke. People pasted posters of Arafat on building walls.

Within hours, former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was chosen to succeed Arafat as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia was expected remain in charge of day-to-day governing….

Palestinian flags at Arafat’s battered Ramallah compound were lowered to half staff. Television broadcast excerpts from the Quran with a picture of Arafat in the background.

“He closed his eyes and his big heart stopped. He left for God but he is still among this great people,” said senior Arafat aide Tayeb Abdel Rahim, who broke into tears as he announced Arafat’s death.

And also lionized abroad:

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was saddened by Arafat’s passing.

“President Arafat was one of those few leaders who could be instantly recognized by people in any walk of life all around the world. For nearly four decades, he expressed and symbolized in his person the national aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair sent condolences to the Palestinian people.

“President Arafat came to symbolize the Palestinian national movement. … (and) led his people to an historic acceptance and the need for a two-state solution,” Blair said.

At least one sentence here points up the fact that he was Palestinian Arabs’ worst enemy, and by sponsoring terror and allowing the jihad ideology to grow unchecked, he destroyed all hope for peace:

Ordinary Palestinians prayed for his well being, but expressed deep frustration over his failure to improve their lives.

Arafat’s failure to groom a successor complicated his passing, raising the danger of factional conflict among Palestinians.

A visual constant in his checkered keffiyeh headdress, Arafat kept the Palestinians’ cause at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But he fell short of creating a Palestinian state, and, along with other secular Arab leaders of his generation, he saw his influence weakened by the rise of radical Islam in recent years.

…which made him turn ever more toward that radical Islam — not that that was a great departure for him, as he had invoked jihad for decades. And as for “falling short” of creating a Palestinian state, he had plenty of chances — which he himself torpedoed.

Revered by his own people, Arafat was reviled by others. He was accused of secretly fomenting attacks on Israelis while proclaiming brotherhood and claiming to have put terrorism aside. Many Israelis felt the paunchy 5-foot, 2-inch Palestinian’s real goal remained the destruction of the Jewish state.

Arafat became one of the world’s most familiar faces after addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York in 1974, when he entered the chamber wearing a holster and carrying a sprig. “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun,” he said. “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

That is what’s known as a “threat.”

Two decades later, he shook hand at the White House with Rabin on a peace deal that formally recognized Israel’s right to exist while granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The pact led to the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for Arafat, Rabin and Peres.

But the accord quickly unraveled amid mutual suspicions and accusations of treaty violations, and a new round of violence that erupted in the fall of 2000 has killed some 4,000 people, three-quarters of them Palestinian.

The Israeli and U.S. governments said Arafat deserved much of the blame for the derailing of the peace process. Even many of his own people began whispering against Arafat, expressing disgruntlement over corruption, lawlessness and a bad economy in the Palestinian areas.

Yes. I have spoken with many of them who knew what he was: a bloodthirsty hypocrite and media manipulator.

A resilient survivor of war with Israel, assassination attempts and even a plane crash, Arafat was born Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa on Aug. 4, 1929, the fifth of seven children of a Palestinian merchant killed in the 1948 war over Israel’s creation. There is disagreement whether he was born in Gaza or in Cairo, Egypt….

After the Arabs’ humbling defeat by Israel in the six-day war of 1967, the PLO thrust itself on the world’s front pages by sending its gunmen out to hijack airplanes, machine gun airports and seize Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.

“Seize”? “Seize”? How about “murder in cold blood”?

“As long as the world saw Palestinians as no more than refugees standing in line for U.N. rations, it was not likely to respect them. Now that the Palestinians carry rifles the situation has changed,” Arafat explained.

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