Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘arafat’

Arafat is dead… and the fat lady is singing a song that probably resembles the theme song of “The Apprentice” – you know, “Money money money money, MONEY”

Update: Watching CTV’s pre-prepared obituary on the 11 o’ clock news. I think I need an aspirin cause the whitewashing is giving me a headache. For some perspective, see the Canadian Jewish News’s retrospective of the terrorist’s life of failures.

Update #2: CNN has it now. So does Reuters, BBC, Ha’aretz, and Associated Press. Prepare for more sickeningly whitewashed obits.

Update #3: The Suha Arafat soap opera plot sickens. Allison has reports of bribes offered to her to agree to pull the plug on her husband, and the supposed affair that she’s been having with her financial advisor. Israel Insider reports that her boyfriend, Pierre Rizk, was directly implicated in the massacre at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. You know, the one that Ariel Sharon gets constantly blamed for, even though it was actually carried out by Maronite Phalangists – apparently including Rizk. Something tells me that the details are just starting to emerge on this one.

Here’s Lynn on speculation that Arafat’s death will bring an immediate opportunity for peace:

There seems to be a broad assumption among the pundits these days that the (acknowledged) passing of Arafat will open the door for peace.

[ . . . ]

Allow me to rain heavily on this parade. The poison that Arafat has implanted, at the behest and with the able assistance of every Arab government in the Middle East, will not dissipate with his last artificially induced breath. It’ll linger on for a long, long time. In fact, I’d say that one significance of the passing of Arafat may well be this: that when and only when his memory becomes a curse among his own people, when the palestinians cringe at hearing his name, when they spit on whatever grave he ends up in — only then will that door to peace begin to come ajar.

Imagine, just for a moment, a Germany in which Hitler remained a universal symbol of pride and honor after WWII. Would the Allies have been able to fashion a sustainable peace with such a Germany?

Yasser Arafat is really, truly dead now… or maybe not… or maybe yes:

Palestinians senior sources in Paris report Yasser Arafat is dead. Palestinian leader is said to have expired minutes after Palestinian PM Qureia visited him at Percy hospital in Paris.

Latest word is that Arafat will be buried in Ramallah. Palestinian delegation will fly home Tuesday night after reaching agreement with Suha Arafat’s lawyers. News conference cancelled.

Or then again, maybe not:

A Percy Hospital spokesman has refuted reports that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat had died. The statement was made after a flurry of rumors began circulating about his death, which were then denied by Palestinian officials.

You know, this whole thing has caused an additional state of existence to come into creation. Before, there were two: dead or alive. Now there are three: dead, alive, or Arafat.

Speaking of Six Feet Under, the Arafat story keeps getting weirder and weirder. PA leaders are visiting the comatose leader, and speculation is they’ll pull the plug tomorrow or Wednesday. Meanwhile, Suha Arafat is lashing out at her husband’s cronies, accusing them of “trying to bury [Arafat] alive”. Could this be just a simple case of a heartbroken spouse unwilling to let go? Doubtful. A power struggle is a more likely explaination, and there’s widespread speculation that the roots are financial in nature. Arafat is not yet cold in his grave (which will probably be in Gaza) but the vultures are certainly circling.

The latest rumours that have been flying over the weekend include:

• He’s still in a coma
• He’s not in a coma
• He opened his eyes and spoke to doctors – this rumour was quickly dismissed
• Speculation that he’s dying of AIDS – again, completely unfounded
• His condition is unchanged, whatever that means
• Arafat is dead but French officials have been asked to withhold announcing it for 36 hours to provide time to make arrangements (that last one coming from a less-than-credible “news source”)
• France is kicking Arafat out because its hospital no longer wants to compromise its credibility by continuing to claim he’s alive (via Lynn)
• The latest is that he has liver failure and might be transferred to Cairo

The only thing that seems clear, amidst all the foggy evidence, is that Arafat wanted to achieve myth-like status by deliberately clouding the circumstances of his death.

With Arafat most likely brain-dead, in an irreversable coma, or already dead, we can expect a spate of whitewashed obituaries glossing over Arafat’s record and legacy and making him out to be some kind of people’s hero.

To counteract all that nonsense, Meryl has a roundup on pieces on Arafat’s true legacy.

Yasser Arafat was a mass-murderer and a terrorist. He lied to the entire world, promising peace while plotting war. He thwarted his people’s attempt for statehood at every single turn. He massacred Olympic athletes, hijaked planes, sent thousands of suicide bombers to blow up innocent Israelis, and murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese. His legacies consist of little other than terrorism and hatred, and that’s exactly how he deserves to be remembered.

Update: Irreverantly hysterical quote of the day from Meryl: “He’s no longer an Arafish, he’s an Aravegetable. And he’s going to be rotten soon enough.”

I had to post this Jerusalem Post screen capture, from 12:45pm ET, because I doubt we’ll ever see anything like this again:

This is even worse than trying to predict the US election winner.

If and when the reports of Arafat’s death are confirmed, Meryl’s making a $25 donation to Magen David Adom as part of her Dead Dictators Pool Matching Fund initiative. I happen to think that it’s an ironically appropriate way to mark the passing of a dictator who caused so many innocent people to need MDA’s services, and I plan on joining her in matching it. If you’d like to do the same, visit her site for details.

For Canadian readers, you can send your donations to CMDA. (And yes, contrary to the issues of a couple of years ago, it’s tax-deductible.)

Reuters, by the way, is calling this the “possible Arafat death”. It’s almost funny watching the reporters falling all over each other to get the contradictory news straight.

CBC is reporting that Arafat is dead.

I can’t say I will grieve for him or mourn him. He was a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent people – including large numbers of his own people.

But this is as much the end of an era as the beginning of one. Palestinians are sure to mourn en masse, even the majority of them who hated the man. He’s the only leader they’ve ever really had. And his death creates an enormous power vacuum that’s sure to lead to Palestinian civil war. What the next 72 hours will bring is anyone’s guess.

Update: The various media networks can’t seem to agree yet even on whether Arafat is dead or alive. CNN says he’s in a coma in critical condition. Reuters cites Israeli TV in saying he’s “clinically dead”. But Ahmed Qurie is denying this saying he’s critical but still alive. One thing for sure: if he comes out of a coma after being declared dead, Arafat will have achieved the one thing still eluding him: godlike status.

Update #2: AP confirms that French media are reporting Arafat clinically dead, in an irreversible coma.

Update #3: Reuters now says he’s still alive, making Arafat the only man in the world who can be both dead and alive at the same time.

Arafat might – might – be in a coma:

“Arafat is in a coma and in a critical condition,” a senior Palestinian official told Reuters. He was transferred to the intensive care unit on Wednesday at around 5 p.m. (11 a.m. EST).

“He has no immunity whatsoever,” another aide said.

Rumors about Arafat’s health swirled on Thursday as some Middle East media denied he was in a coma while others saw him close to death.

Frankly I think the confusion stems from the fact that the media is used to taking the literal word of Palestinian aides for things. When that word agrees – such as on the “evil Israelis” – then it’s seldom questioned, even in cases of obvious invention (the Jenin “massacre” that wasn’t comes to mind). It’s simply unfathomable to Western media that people could be speaking speculation as fact, or freely inventing facts when they don’t have any.

I don’t know if we’ll ever know what’s wrong with Arafat, whether he recovers or not. Except there’s one thing we will know with clear-cut certainty: the Jews did it.

Update: Proving my point, now Arafat’s aides are denying the coma story. Geez, he’s in a friggin’ hospital! You’d think this would be easily verifiable… either he is or he isn’t. But the rumours are getting so abundant that it’s starting to seem like a deliberate PA strategy.