Freedom's Fidelity

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Arafat is Dead


"In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter---bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

-Stephen Crane

So the man that renders the distinction of 'Nobel Peace Prize Winner' nebulous is now dead. There will be a massive power struggle in Palestine, it will be bloody and may erupt to civil war... Arafat's bloody legacy lives on. He blocked peace deals and prolonged violence, which ended up costing the lives of many of his own supporters and countless innocents. He stole millions and perhaps billions in aid and died a wealthy man as his people lived in a hopeless culture of poverty and death and never came close to achieving the Palestinian statehood he professed to desire. Using the Palestinian's victimhood as a cause celebre', a sort of mascot, he maintained a wicked status quo of death and martyrdom for the young men of Palestine. He was the man who would do nothing and the man with whom nothing could be done without. Useless.... good riddance.

Update:Jeff Jacoby says it best:

YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."

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.

Like I said... good riddance.

posted by Paul  permalink | |