Quote:
The Secretary-General was deeply moved to learn of the death of President Yasser Arafat. 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.
I like the neutrality of that statement, "one of those few leaders who could be instantly recognized by people in any walk of life all around the world." Yeah, lots & lots of ppl recognize him alright...for, um, what he is/was...
Quote:
In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."
Where's that "moral clarity?" C'mon... On this one, I would've preferred Rudy Guliani's moral clarity over Bush's.
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God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.
Nail on the head. Grotesque describes well the feeling I had when I heard him say it. I was like, "Huh? Say waaah?"
Quote:
Yasir Arafat, who died this morning in Paris, was the wily and enigmatic father of Palestinian nationalism who for almost 40 years symbolized his people's longing for a distinct political identity and independent state. He was 75.
No other individual so embodied the Palestinians' plight: their dispersal, their statelessness, their hunger for a return to a homeland lost to Israel. Mr. Arafat was once seen as a romantic hero and praised as a statesman, but his luster and reputation faded over time. A brilliant navigator of political currents in opposition, once in power he proved more tactician than strategist, and a leader who rejected crucial opportunities to achieve his declared goal.
At the end of his life, Mr. Arafat governed Palestinians from an almost three-year confinement by Israel to his Ramallah headquarters. While many Palestinians continued to revere him, others came to see him as undemocratic and his administration as corrupt, as they faced growing poverty, lawlessness and despair over prospects for statehood.
A co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994 for his agreement to work toward peaceful coexistence with Israel, Mr. Arafat began his long political career with high-profile acts of anti-Israel terrorism.
In the 1960's, he pioneered what became known as "television terrorism" - air piracy and innovative forms of mayhem staged for maximum propaganda value. Among the more spectacular deeds he ordered was the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 1986, a group linked to Mr. Arafat but apparently acting independently seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship and threw overboard an elderly American Jew in a wheelchair.
In 2000, after rejecting a land-for-peace deal from Israel that he considered insufficient, Mr. Arafat presided over the Palestinians as they waged a mix of guerrilla warfare and terror against Israeli troops and civilians that has lasted more than four years.
Indeed, shifting between peace talks and acts of violence was the defining feature of his political life. In his emotional appeal for a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, he wore a holster while waving an olive branch. After his pledge of peace with Israel in 1993, Palestinians associated with him carried out suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He officially condemned such violence but called for "martyrs by the millions" to rise for the Palestinian cause.
Mr. Arafat assumed many poses. But the image that endures - and the one he clearly relished - was that of the Arab fighter, the grizzled, scruffy-bearded guerrilla in olive-green military fatigues and his trademark checkered head scarf, carefully folded in the elongated diamond shape of what was once Palestine.
He seemed to thrive when under siege. Surrounded in the spring of 2002 by Israeli tanks in two rooms of his compound in Ramallah, he cried out, "Oh God, grant me a martyr's death."
Until 1988, he repeatedly rejected recognition of Israel, insisting on armed struggle and terror campaigns. He opted for diplomacy only after his embrace of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 - and the collapse of the Soviet Union - left his movement politically disgraced and financially bankrupt, with neither power nor leverage.
