Yasser Arafat Dies at 75; No Successor Set
Arafat, Father and Leader of Palestinian Nationalism, Is Dead
Before we get caught up in allowing Arab and Palestinian politicians to fall all over themselves in extolling the virtues of the late Yassir Araft, let’s keep one thing in mind. Arafat came to prominence as a terrorist whose express mission (and one that was written into the mission statement of the PLO) was to destroy Israel and drive it into the Mediterranean Sea. It was a past that Arafat never fully repudiated. He was a thug and a brutal murderer, more than willing to shed the blood of innocents to achieve his political ends. So, when you hear people lionizing Arafat as a “man of peace”, please try to remember that there was NOTHING peaceful about Arafat’s political career.
Then there is the matter of the millions, perhaps billions, of dollars that Arafat has succeeded in squirreling away. NO ONE seems to have any idea where this money is, and since dead men tell no tales…. While “his people” lived in squalor in refugee camps barely fit for human habitation, Arafat had access to untold millions. In the end, Yassir Arafat was just another politician who claimed to represent “his people” and yet did little except steal from them.
Good riddance to a murdering thug who, if there is any justice, deserves to be judged harshly by history.
