As Yasser Arafat lies on his deathbed in Paris, media and politicians throughout the world are taking pains to speak kindly about the 75-year-old man who made a career out of being a terrorist.
The South African news site News 24, in summing up Arafat’s career, refers to him as the founder of the Palestinian Students’ League in 1949. The site then relates he formed the Fatah guerilla movement in 1965 and became Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman in 1969 after Israel attacked his base in Jordan.
Under the title “Key Dates” in his life, News 24 omits any reference to Arafat’s terrorist activities. Instead, it mentions his address to the United Nations, his surviving an Israeli air strike on the PLO in Tunisia, the Oslo agreements and his winning of the Nobel Prize for Peace. The list concludes with the Israeli cabinet in 2002 declaring him an “enemy, his refusal to go into permanent exile and his recent airlift to France.
The Switzerland Information site says Arafat “will be remembered as the leader who led the way to negotiations with Israel and hopes for peace, but who ultimately failed.” The site, “Swissinfo”, describes him as being the “military leader” of the PLO. It continues, “Arafat was associated with violence and hijackings in the late 1960s and 70s. But, in later years, he took on the role of statesman and mediator.”
It concludes that “analysts are skeptical about the current prospects for peace” in the Mideast because of Israel’s refusal to grant Arabs the “right of return” which would allow millions of Arabs to overwhelm Israel. It adds that a “prerequisite for peace from the Israeli side is that the Palestinians clamp down on the militant groups that have carried out frequent suicide bombings.”
The New York Times, in its usually style of referring him as “Mr. Arafat,” wrote that “with Arafat gone, the argument of the United States and Israel that there is no partner for them to talk to is obviously not valid anymore.” The Times does not identify the future partner.
The MSN internet news service writes, “Yasser Arafat was the subject of some pretty bad jokes,” such as one in which a fortune teller tells Arafat he will die on a Jewish festival. The mystic explains, “Mr. Chairman, any day you die is a major Jewish holiday.”
MSN tells its readers “the worst and cruelest Arafat joke is the state he has left his people in--or…the absence of a state.”
But it then refers to his actions as having “saved the Palestinians.” Arafat is described as a “terrorist pioneer” who made “brilliant and cold-blooded use of television to tell the world of the Palestinian cause.”
Most news sources view Arafat as having failed to negotiate successfully with Israel, and virtually every source omits reference to his career as a terrorist.
The South African news site News 24, in summing up Arafat’s career, refers to him as the founder of the Palestinian Students’ League in 1949. The site then relates he formed the Fatah guerilla movement in 1965 and became Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman in 1969 after Israel attacked his base in Jordan.
Under the title “Key Dates” in his life, News 24 omits any reference to Arafat’s terrorist activities. Instead, it mentions his address to the United Nations, his surviving an Israeli air strike on the PLO in Tunisia, the Oslo agreements and his winning of the Nobel Prize for Peace. The list concludes with the Israeli cabinet in 2002 declaring him an “enemy, his refusal to go into permanent exile and his recent airlift to France.
The Switzerland Information site says Arafat “will be remembered as the leader who led the way to negotiations with Israel and hopes for peace, but who ultimately failed.” The site, “Swissinfo”, describes him as being the “military leader” of the PLO. It continues, “Arafat was associated with violence and hijackings in the late 1960s and 70s. But, in later years, he took on the role of statesman and mediator.”
It concludes that “analysts are skeptical about the current prospects for peace” in the Mideast because of Israel’s refusal to grant Arabs the “right of return” which would allow millions of Arabs to overwhelm Israel. It adds that a “prerequisite for peace from the Israeli side is that the Palestinians clamp down on the militant groups that have carried out frequent suicide bombings.”
The New York Times, in its usually style of referring him as “Mr. Arafat,” wrote that “with Arafat gone, the argument of the United States and Israel that there is no partner for them to talk to is obviously not valid anymore.” The Times does not identify the future partner.
The MSN internet news service writes, “Yasser Arafat was the subject of some pretty bad jokes,” such as one in which a fortune teller tells Arafat he will die on a Jewish festival. The mystic explains, “Mr. Chairman, any day you die is a major Jewish holiday.”
MSN tells its readers “the worst and cruelest Arafat joke is the state he has left his people in--or…the absence of a state.”
But it then refers to his actions as having “saved the Palestinians.” Arafat is described as a “terrorist pioneer” who made “brilliant and cold-blooded use of television to tell the world of the Palestinian cause.”
Most news sources view Arafat as having failed to negotiate successfully with Israel, and virtually every source omits reference to his career as a terrorist.