Showing posts with label Arafat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arafat. Show all posts

Sunday, September 03, 2023

Diplomacy and peacemaking is not a smooth process. It requires a huge amount of preparation, planning and flexibility. 

It is always illuminating to look behind the scenes of the Oslo process. Gidi Grinstein, the youngest person at Camp David in 2000, is releasing his account of the events that he witnessed as well as his opinions of what to do moving forward to mark the 30th anniversary of Oslo.

His book, "(In)sights: Thirty Years of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process"  is his attempt to set the record straight after so many others gave their own versions of what happened at Camp David. 

Grinstein writes from the perspective of someone who truly wants to see peace. No one can doubt his love of Israel and Zionism - he was part of the team that founded Birthright Israel - but his perspective is decidedly on the Israeli Left.

I found his account fascinating, but perhaps not for the reasons he intended.

Obviously Grinstein tries to spin the events towards his own politics. Instead of giving a straight chronological account of what happened, he spends a great deal of time on the "sausage" behind each negotiating point and then an overview of what has happened since then, along with his own opinions as to where things failed and what Israel should have done instead, in retrospect.

While Grinstein was the junior member at Camp David, he is perhaps the one person with the most knowledge of the big picture. He served as the Secretary and Coordinator of the Israeli Delegation for the Negotiations with the PLO from 1999-2001 under Ehud Barak.

Grinstein admires Barak a great deal, but his description of Barak is of someone who is cold and calculating, who is more than willing to throw his own people under the bus for his own ends. He keeps his own cards close to his vest, so no one working for him has a clear idea of what their goals are. Grinstein extols Barak as "the smartest man in the room" who keeps his people working in a "matrix" of smaller tasks, while only Barak knows his real plan. This means that Barak creates his own backchannels to undermine the people officially working for him when he deems it necessary, he bypasses the chain of command, and he ensures plausible deniability.

Which, when you think about it, is a lot like Yasir Arafat. 

Before he worked for the Prime Minister's office, Grinstein worked for the Economic Cooperation Foundation. The ECF, founded in 1990, was itself one of those backchannels for creating relationships with, and building a peace plan with, the PLO. It was a power that helped bring about the Oslo Accords. 

To me, one of the most jarring parts of the book was where Grinstein describes how the ECF helped end Bibi Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. The ECF, which worked hand in glove with Yitzchak Rabin, opposed Netanyahu - and this Israeli think-tank colluded with the PLO to bring him down. Netanyahu demanded more concessions from the PLO in order to keep the Oslo process going, and the ECF convinced their friends in the PLO to pretend to agree to Netanyahu's demands, prompting him to sign the Hebron Agreement and the Wye River Memorandum based on lies. This caused the right wing of his coalition to revolt and new elections were called that brought Barak into office, just as the ECF intended.

Grinstein seemingly has no compunction about Israelis collaborating with the US and PLO to bring down an Israeli prime minister. The cause of peace justifies all.

Even Grinstein admits that the peace negotiators never really seriously thought about the possibility that Arafat had no intention to really sign a permanent agreement that would end the conflict and what would follow. They became friends with the PLO negotiators, and he lovingly describes how well his team would be treated when they visited Bethlehem or Ramallah and the personal friendships they struck up with the Palestinian team. He mentions and is fully aware of the wave of terror attacks during the 1990s, Arafat's incendiary speeches in Arabic, his actions being fully consistent with his "phased plan" to destroy Israel, but all of that is brushed aside in the pursuit of peace, just as using underhanded methods to bring down an Israeli prime minister is framed as a positive thing.

The only person who predicted the failure of the Oslo process, and that it would lead into war, was US Ambassador to Egypt Daniel Kurtzer, who hosted the negotiators for a Shabbat dinner. He had better insight than the entire Israeli peace delegation, who didn't even consider this.

Barak bet everything on the idea that Arafat could be pressured into signing an agreement. He was wrong. But there is very little hand-wringing on that mistake that brought about the second intifada. In fact, Grinstein emphasizes that Arafat was not the direct instigator of the intifada - even as he admits that Arafat had planned for such an event months ahead of time, and that his own security forces, trained and armed by the US, turned their weapons against Israeli forces in the first days of the fighting. He emphasizes that Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount that supposedly triggered the war was fully coordinated with the PA but still doesn't blame the PA for its role - instead noting that the Jerusalem police response to the violence helped escalate it. 

Again, Grinstein isn't blind. But he seems to purposely keep one eye closed. 

Similarly, he emphasizes that, in retrospect, Barak should not have pushed for an all or nothing deal, and worked towards a provisional Palestinian state that could be further refined with later negotiations. This, of course, would have been a huge concession by Israel to recognize a Palestinian state up front. But while he praises the Quartet for employing that idea in their Road Map for Peace, he glosses over that the Palestinian leaders rejected the Road Map out of hand, and have consistently said that they do not want a provisional state. 

Also jarring is that, as far as I can tell, the Israeli peace negotiating teams -- both Track I and Track II - apparently were exclusively made up of non-religious males, overwhelmingly if not exclusively Ashkenazic. He notes that the only Israeli woman at Camp David was a secretary. He never mentions that any of the participants in the many meals hosted in the West Bank or Europe had to make accommodations for kosher food. Most of Israeli society is not represented by these peacemakers, who all seem to believe that they are smarter than anyone else in how to look at the big picture, and not really self-critical when it comes to their miscalculations and false assumptions that led to the failure of the peace process. Diversity was not a priority for these liberals. 

There is a lot of good information in this book, and it is illuminating - sometimes in ways that it is not meant to be. It is not edited well, unfortunately - for example,  it talks extensively about the ECF without explaining what it is, and there are still numerous typos and misspellings (French Premier "Shirak"), it repeats the same anecdotes a couple of times. Hopefully these will be fixed by the time it goes to press. 

The book is planned to be released in Israel in two weeks and in the US in December.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, August 31, 2023



















Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, August 24, 2023




Yasir Arafat is often quoted to have said, “I am ready to kill for the sake of my cause; wouldn't I lie for it?”

I couldn't find a reliable source for this quote. However, as I was looking, I did find another where Arafat freely admitted to lying.

It is quoted in a 1998 biography of Arafat by Said Aburish, "Arafat : From Defender to Dictator." 
In Tunisia in 1987, [Arafat] both shocked and amused an Iraqi academic who politely suggested that many Arab leaders accused him, Arafat, of lying. The academic, with no axe to grind, was suggesting a change of tactics. Staring at the Iraqi with incredulous, extra-bulging eyes he said, 'Why not? For Palestine, I'd lie all the time.' Momentarily, his guest was at a loss for words. Then he burst out laughing and Arafat joined him with a broad smile which, according to the Iraqi, lightened his face and made him look like a little boy.
In Arabic, I saw the quote slightly differently: "Why shouldn't I lie? For the sake of Palestine, I am willing to lie all the time."

Aburish also described how he himself was in potential danger by his decision to be honest about Arafat in this biography (which included interviews with Arafat himself)   rather than be a patriotic Palestinian who accepts his lies:
 For example, despite evidence to the contrary, Arafat still insists that he was born in Jerusalem. Accepting his version of the story, to him the duty of all loyal Palestinians, would have cancelled my independence and vitiated my purpose. Rejecting his account of history, either openly or after feigning the opposite, would - according to his logic - have represented a betrayal worthy of punishment. It would have made writing this biography far more dangerous.

This goes beyond lies. This means that Palestinians are expected not only to accept the lies of their leaders, but they will be punished if they tell the truth instead.

This cannot be overstated. We have seen numerous times where Palestinians reflexively lie to adhere to The Narrative of unmitigated Israeli evil and suffering exclusively at the hands of the Jews, rather than admit - for example - that a child was killed by a terror group rocket. And journalists also follow the narrative, careful not to say anything to upset the authorities, whether it is Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, unless they are in a safe territory.  

This entire society based on lies was built, in large measure, by Yasir Arafat. 

(h/t Ibn Boutros)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Friday, November 25, 2022


It used to be that Mahmoud Abbas, like Yasir Arafat before him, would issue a pro forma condemnation of deadly terror attacks against Israel. 

As of this writing, he hasn't said a word against the twin Jerusalem attacks, nor the Ariel terrorist attacks. 

He doesn't even pretend anymore to be against terror. Earlier this year he only reluctantly condemned some attacks when under pressure from Israeli and US officials. 

Meanwhile, this article in Al Quds News is upset that the UAE and Turkey did condemn the Jerusalem blasts, calling it "normalization:"
The UAE and Turkey were not content with drowning in normalization with the "Israeli" enemy, in all fields, at the expense of the cause and the Palestinian people. Rather, they were quick and brazen to condemn the two heroic Jerusalem operations, which were carried out by the revolutionary Palestinian youth, in response to the crimes of the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people and its desecration of the holy places.
...
Observers believe that these irresponsible positions come in the context of the state of submission in the positions of the current Palestinian leadership and some Arab and regional leaders, which come within the framework of the destructive settlement and normalization approach, describing the role of Turkey, which condemned the heroic operation, as "hypocritical."

They considered that the resolutions of international legitimacy affirmed the right of peoples suffering from occupation and aggression to resist it in all forms, especially armed resistance. Therefore, the response of our people and its rebellious youth to the occupation is a natural and legitimate response to the crimes of the occupation and its continuation.

As for the statements of condemnation by the normalizers with the entity of the Zionist enemy, (the UAE, Turkey and others), they are a sign and evidence of the level of weakness, humiliation, submission and shame of these countries in front of the Zionist enemy, and the total alienation from the issues of the nation and its center is the Palestinian cause, including the sanctities, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is exposed by the daily desecration by settlers who do not hide their project to build the alleged Temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which enemy governments are working to demolish, God forbid.
This is a mainstream Palestinian position.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, November 14, 2022

From Ian:

Gleefully abandoning Israel
Kasher's post was so incendiary that Facebook removed it for violating rules of decent conduct. But Kasher didn't let up. He continued to expectorate that "a Jewish people with this face is not my Jewish people, and not the Jewish people among which I wish to be counted as a son." As a result, he announced that he now prefers not to be called a Jew but rather only "a person of Jewish origin."

He then went on to reject "invalid" calls for unity with the two camps he views as mutations. "The differences between me and the people of the mutations are not marginal and should not be ignored for the sake of a higher goal," he wrote. "There is no true unity and there never will be."

What makes Asa Kasher's diatribe so disturbing is its source. Until now, Kasher had been considered one of this country's respected and reasonable thinkers, someone who authored the IDF's code of ethics in warfare and who defended its targeted assassination policies in academic and legal forums worldwide. He is an Israel Prize laureate. Now it seems that Kasher has lost his bearings in a haze of hatred and self-hatred.

Religious Zionist Party Chairman Bezalel Smotrich responded to Kasher's remarks, saying they saddened him. "People like Asa Kasher, whose wisdom, integrity, and morality I wanted to appreciate, are now unmasked as lacking national responsibility, personal integrity, and minimal morality."

Addressing his "brothers on the Left," Smotrich said his camp was "given a mandate to promote what we believe is right and good for the State of Israel. We are positively going to fulfill this mandate. But you should know that your attempts at intimidation are baseless and unnecessary. No one is going to destroy democracy, turn Israel into Iran, harm someone's individual rights, or force Israelis to change their personal lifestyle."

My conclusion is that "Ben-Gvir-Phobia" (as opposed to reasonable concern about his rise) is a purposefully blown-out-of-proportion fear of the Right that serves as cover for people who apparently weren't comfortable with staunch Zionist and real Jewish identity to begin with. It leads to off-the-rocker reactions like those of Friedman and Kasher, who seem only-too-happy to jettison their associations with Israel and Judaism.

We shouldn't go there. Israel's democratic and Jewish discourse is sound even as it tends towards the conservative side of the map, and Israel's religious, defense, and diplomatic policies will not easily be hijacked by Ben-Gvir-ism. The radicals that truly worry me are those that seek to crash Israel's diplomatic relations and Israel-Diaspora relations with false, apocalyptic prognostications of Israel's descent into barbarism.

Perhaps the best advice is to ignore angry self-declared prophets like Friedman and Kasher. Perhaps I shouldn't have written about them at all. I am certain that they do not represent mainstream opinion in either the American-Jewish or Israeli communities. The Israel they fabricate and scorn ain't the real, responsible and realistic Israel I know.
Ruthie Blum: Let’s replace the term ‘national unity’ with ‘majority rule’
It’s no wonder, then, that the “anybody but Bibi” bloc disintegrated as soon as the latest election campaign kicked off. Grasping that the best he could hope for—even with the virulent anti-Zionist parties’ support—would be to prevent Netanyahu from being able to form a coalition, Lapid’s goal was to remain interim prime minister for as long as possible until a sixth round of elections.

He thus discouraged voters from opting for smaller left-wing parties. The upshot was that Meretz didn’t pass the threshold and Labor garnered only four mandates. He also colluded with the far-left Jewish-Arab Hadash-Ta’al Party not to join forces with its radical Islamist counterpart, Balad, which then didn’t make it into the Knesset.

Then there was Gantz, who ran against, rather than with, him. To do this, he established a party whose name in English, hilariously, is “National Unity.” Neither this nor his enlisting of former Israel Defense Forces Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot as a draw helped him come close to surpassing Lapid, let alone Netanyahu.

The icing on the “unity” cake was on display during the coalition consultations with Herzog. The only parties to recommend Lapid were his own, Yesh Atid, and Labor, headed by Merav Michaeli, who publicly blamed Lapid for the electoral defeat.

Angry at her for having dared to cross him in this manner, he stormed out of the Knesset last Sunday when she took to the podium to deliver a speech at the ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The “unity” was heartwarming.

To be fair to Lapid, who is about to assume the role of opposition leader, “unity” is a meaningless concept in general, unless applied to a specific tenet or circumstance at a given time. The same goes for Netanyahu’s newfound coalition, which undoubtedly is and will continue to be fraught with frequent squabbles.

Still, the contrast in this respect between the outgoing and incoming governments is stark. Whereas the sole glue for Lapid’s coalition was anti-Bibi animosity, Netanyahu’s espouses a set of values and objectives shared by a higher percentage of the population.

Whether this constitutes “unity” is questionable. But it’s what democracies call “majority rule.”
PreOccupiedTerritory: People Who Think Actual Terrorist Arafat Changed Ways Refuse To Accept Former Kahanist Has Moderated (satire)
The evolution of a far-right figure who, among other beyond-the-pale rhetoric, once expressed admiration for a man who massacred dozens of Palestinians at prayer, into an influential kingmaker who professes a shift to more tolerant views, has prompted skepticism among his political opponents, many of whom had little problem believing that the mass-murderer Yasser Arafat sincerely disavowed violence, despite the latter’s flagrant use of such means to achieve his political ends after signing peace agreements.

Numerous commentators, politicians, and other public figures in Israel have spent months, some even years, denouncing Itamar Ben-Gvir as a fascist Islamophobe who must be kept as far from governmental power as possible – warnings that have taken on greater urgency since the alliance of his Otzma Yehudit Party and the Religious Zionism Party garnered fourteen seats in elections two weeks ago, putting Ben-Gvir in position to extract policy and personnel concessions from Binyamin Netanyahu, the prospective prime minister of an emerging right-wing coalition. Ben-Gvir has in recent years renounced some of the extreme positions that characterized his activism in prior decades, such as calling Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a traitor and threatening harm to him; Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by another extremist with views that overlapped Ben-Gvir’s. That political evolution, however, has failed to sway Ben-Gvir’s critics, who find unconvincing his protestations of moderation, even as many of them make excuses for the arch-terrorist who ran the Palestine Liberation Organization and commitment to pursue his political aims through negotiation rather than terrorism, but disregarded that commitment repeatedly.

“A leopard can’t change his spots,” insisted Zehava Gal-On, whose far-left Meretz Party failed to meet the electoral threshold of 3.25% of the vote, and will be absent from the Knesset for the first time in more than thirty years, but for some reason journalists keep seeking out her opinion despite its questionable relevance. “Arafat was totally different. He renounced violence and I believed him. Anything that happened afterwards was just technicalities, necessary sacrifices for peace. Doesn’t count.”

Wednesday, September 14, 2022

This morning, an IDF soldier was shot and killed by two Palestinian militants during an arrest operation.

One of the terrorists, Ahmed Abed, worked for the Palestinian Authority security forces.


Both of the terrorists, who appear to be relatives, were claimed by Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

There has been a significant increase in Palestinian Authority forces directly attacking Israel in recent months. Under signed agreements, the Palestinian police and security forces are supposed to work with Israeli security to arrest and imprison terrorists - but lately they have become the terrorists.

Joe Truzman writes in the Long War Journal:

Since last year, IDF troops have increasingly engaged in armed clashes with members of the Palestinian Authority Security Services (PSS) in the West Bank. In some cases, PSS members belonged to militant organizations.

The trend began in June 2021 when two members of the PA’s military intelligence, Adham Tawfiq and Tayseer Issa, were killed after they fired at Israeli special forces who were attempting to arrest Jamil al-Amouri, a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Jenin.

In May 2022, IDF troops arrested an officer of the PA’s Palestinian Preventative Corps during an anti-terrorism raid near Jenin. Three months later, Israeli forces arrested a member of the PA’s customs police after a lengthy armed clash in the town of Rujeib, near the city of Nablus. 

In late July, a Palestinian police officer named Mahmoud Hujeer, fired at Israeli troops at the Huwarra checkpoint in the West Bank. Hujeer was arrested after he was critically injured during the attack.

Other examples involve militants and their supporters working for the PSS. In May, Dawood Zubeidi, a member of the PSS, was shot and wounded in Jenin by Israeli forces during an anti-terrorism raid. He later died in an Israeli hospital and was lauded by al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as a commander belonging to the organization.  

The evidence suggests the PA is ostensibly losing control of its security services. While the number of PSS members launching attacks against IDF troops has not reached the level of the second intifada, the upward trend should be noted. Adding to the PA’s problems is the erosion of its authority in pockets of the West Bank.
The question is whether this is the PA losing control - or making an active decision to play both sides of the fence. The public appearances of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in recent months indicates that this might be an conscious decision to go back to Yasir Arafat's game of controlling both the "good guys" and "bad guys" and telling the West that he needs more help to control his own terrorists.

Just as Hamas policemen are also members of Hamas' terrorist Al Qassam Brigades, Palestinian Authority policemen are members of Fatah's terror group (that was supposed to have been dismantled 15 years ago.) 

It is also possible that this is part of the larger fight of who is to succeed Mahmoud Abbas, and that these "rogue" militants are being led by one of the aspiring new Palestinian leaders.

The trend of Palestinian security forces attacking the IDF has also been noted approvingly in Palestinian media, some of whom call for a new violent intifada led by the Palestinians who were armed by the West. From an Amad editorial:

The developments that characterized the act of resistance in recent months are the practical participation of the Palestinian security forces as a vital and active part...Those services and their sons, who fought with a people and under the leadership of the Founder, the longest military confrontation with the army of the national enemy for 4 years from 2000 to 2004, confirmed that the conflict will not be without the Palestinian’s right to his full national entity,...
This is a difficult and complex situation. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, October 04, 2021




Earlier today I quoted an article by a former PFLP leader who later became a senior advisor to Yasir Arafat who claimed that rich Jews controlled US defense contractors and gave their technology to Israel for free, where somehow Israel took credit for them after threatening them....it made no sense but it is unquestionably antisemitic.

Here's another antisemitic article published this past weekend from a former Palestinian political leader, Dr. Ghazi Husain, currently  legal advisor and head of administration in the Political Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Damascus.

You don't have to go far into the article to see Husain fall down the rabbit hole of Nazi-style antisemitism:

Is it possible to normalize and coexist with the biblical and Talmudic teachings, with the Zionist ideology and with the economic Greater Israel as the leader and center of the new Middle East? Is it possible to coexist between the Arabs and "Israel"?... Is it possible to coexist with the racist and terrorist Jewish settler colonialism and the hegemony of Israel and America?

The facts and events since the crystallization of Zionism as an ideology and a global political movement whose backbone is Jewish settler colonialism from the Nile to the Euphrates, and the secret decisions of the First Zionist Congress known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion clearly prove the impossibility of coexisting with the Zionist entity, which is the practical embodiment of lies and ambitions, Biblical, Talmudic, Zionism, colonialism and Israel.
He covers a lot of Jew-hating territory in only two paragraphs! And Husain is another elder statesman of Palestinian nationalism.

From the Mufti through Arafat through Abbas, antisemitism has been the backbone of Palestinian nationalism. Most of the world refuses to believe it, but the original thinkers of the movement continue to publish explicitly antisemitic articles in Arabic for Arab audiences - today.






Wednesday, December 04, 2013

From Al Jazeera:
French investigators have concluded in a report that Yasser Arafat died of natural causes and ruled out the possibility that he was poisoned, a source told Al Jazeera.

"The analysis cannot lead us to affirm that Arafat died of polonium 210 poisoning," reads the report, according to the source, who has seen it. The report comes to the same conclusion the French reached in 2004 - that Arafat died of a brain hemorrhage and an intestinal infection.

A similar forensic test conducted by Russian scientists, who were invited to participate by Palestinian Authority officials, was inconclusive.
I had never seen the Russian report, but Al Jazeera put its conclusions online last month:
Considering that within the framework of mathematical, cross-disciplinary inter-disciplinary modelling the results were re-verified and included into the artificial modules structure and the working hypothesis was not confirmed, the working hypothesis regarding the subject's death being caused by penetration of 210Po into his body was recognized as unsubstantiated.
Here's the best quote:
Suha Arafat’s lawyer, Djabbar, alleged that the French investigators followed “a very conservative, narrow approach” to their analysis of Arafat’s remains. He added: “I tell you one thing, for us, the only show in town is that of the Swiss.”
The Swiss methodology, of course, was very suspect, as this article in Wired mentions.

Suha's lawyer, however, simply says that the flawed study is the "only game in town." Because to him, truth is meaningless; you are free to pick and choose the data that helps you and ignore the rest.

Which is, in a nutshell, the entire historical Palestinian Arab experience.

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

  • Tuesday, December 03, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Today reports:
The head the commission of inquiry into the death of the late President Yasser Arafat, Major General Tawfiq Tirawi, pledged to reveal the accomplices involved the assassination of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during an upcoming press conference, although he did not announce when this would occur.

Tirawi said on his Facebook page Tuesday: "I promise that the next press conference will be the last to shed light on the names of every accomplice or co-conspirator in the case of President Yasser Arafat....We are in the last quarter-hour of the investigation."

I love pre-announcing an unscheduled press conference that will never happen. The only people with Arafat were major officials in the PLO and people he trusted, the chances that a PLO-backed investigation will blame any PLO member for being an accomplice is zilch.

Then again, maybe Tirawi will resurrect the Joo-Rays theory, updating it as a long-distance polonium weapon! This way he can avoid blaming any Arabs altogether!

Four years ago, the head of another Arafat death investigation also announced that he was really, really close to figuring out what happened. We're still waiting.

Meanwhile, BBC reports that the French investigation finds that Arafat was not poisoned:
A team of French scientists probing the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004 do not believe he was poisoned, according to leaks from their report.

They have reportedly concluded he died after a "generalised infection".

...Tawfiq Tirawi, head of the Palestinian Authority's inquiry into the death, told AFP: "We need to study the report. We can't take a position on it until we've looked at it."

I wonder what his position would be?

Remember that the Russian report was also leaked to show no evidence of polonium poisoning.

The Swiss report that said that their results "moderately" supported the theory that he was poisoned relied more on the same lab's previous findings about Arafat's alleged underwear and toothbrush than on what was found on his remains directly. Apparently, the Russian and French reports concentrated only on the actual tests done on his tissues.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

  • Wednesday, November 20, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
Joods Actuel reports that a researcher has asked for more details from the Swiss institute that tested Yasir Arafat's remains for signs of polonium poisoning, but the answers place the entire report into question.

Dr. Rudi Roth asked Professor François Bochud, director of the research center of the University Hospital in Lausanne (CHUV) that did the tests, why the report didn't publish the margins for error as is standard scientific practice. He also asked why reverse-calculating the original concentrations of polonium based on the Swiss numbers yield obviously incorrect results. Director Bochud replied via email, "Because of the large uncertainties in the models and the measured values, an inverse calculation would not be not meaningful" and the researcher confessed: "Our conclusions were not based on any specific evidence but the consistency of all of the observations."

"The polonium that we did measure is actually the supported kind of polonium, the same kind of polonium that you would find naturally," admitted Bochud.

Independent scientists who looked at the Swiss report concluded that its conclusions appeared to be subjective and not based on the data contained in the report. Dr. Roth quotes Professor Atie Verschoor, Expertise Centre Environmental Medicine (ECEMed) in the Netherlands, who says, "Indeed, Bochud confirms there are important uncertainties in the model used and for that reason, and several others, no conclusions at all can be taken. That had to be the conclusion of the report."

Verschoor further said, “The error-margins are very high and caused by the fact that the material has not been kept in a controlled environment (8 years in a tomb), the decontamination operation and the calculation trying to eliminate the Po-210 quantity caused by radon in the soil. There are a lot of assumptions and they creates important inaccuracies. The researchers must have noticed it but did not document it.”

In addition, Professor Nicholas Priest, who formerly headed the biomedical research unit of the Atomic Energy Authority in Britain and who is familiar with the Litvinenko case, said that there is no real confidence interval provided by the report. He told The Independent that it is “far too dangerous and scientifically unjustified” to calculate how much polonium was in Arafat’s body on the basis of such tiny concentrations of polonium." When asked specifically whether the list of arguments in the report that support poisoning lack scientific credibility, his answer was “yes."

Priest added, "I think the study is seriously done, but their conclusions were to my mind somewhat biased as to please the people who were paying for the report."

Here is Dr. Roth's report summarizing the opinions of several experts that he spoke to along with some who were quoted in the media.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

  • Tuesday, November 12, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
Tawfiq Tirawi, head of the PA's "National Commission to Investigate the Assassination of President Yasser Arafat" said that there are 100 people working in the organization.

It is unclear what exactly this commission does, even though Tirawi says that it employs the hundred people distributed in committees including security and medical research, investigation, and other components.

The funding for this farce is seemingly coming from Western aid to the PA.

Meanwhile, PA president for life Mahmoud Abbas agreed with the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to "internationalize" the investigation into the "killing" of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, either to the Security Council or the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Abbas said during a TV interview that he formed three committees to follow up on the inconclusive forensics reports, in the areas of security, medical and legal, saying that he had asked the international investigators to examine the body, including Russia, Switzerland and France. (A recent report showed that the PA and Suha Arafat paid for the Swiss investigation, in another misuse of international funds.)

Abbas, known by his nom de guerre Abu Mazen, did point out "We can not charge Israel until the investigation is completed." How big of him.

In other Arafat circus news, David Barclay - the forensics expert who Al Jazeera hired to interpret the Swiss report in ways that the Swiss never intended - wrote an article for Al Jazeera about why he believes Arafat was poisoned. Al Jazeera doesn't mention that he is being paid by them. There's ethical journalism for you.

Friday, November 08, 2013

  • Friday, November 08, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
From AP:
Israel is the only suspect in the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, the chief Palestinian investigator in the case alleged Friday, a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by radioactive polonium.

The investigator, Tawfik Tirawi, said the probe would continue, but did not say what more the Palestinians could do to try to solve the mystery.
Just so you know how objective Tirawi is, he has been publicly charging Israel with the death of Arafat for years. Naturally,...
He did not present evidence of Israeli involvement, arguing only that Israel had the means and motive to do so. Israel has repeatedly denied it was behind Arafat's death, and did so again Friday, in light of the new allegations.

At Friday's news conference, Palestinian investigators summarized the findings of the Russian experts, whom Abbas had asked for a separate probe.

Dr. Abdullah Bashir, the medical expert on the Palestinian team, said the Russian scientists did not find sufficient evidence to determine that "polonium-210 caused the radiation that led to the death." He did not elaborate.

However, both teams determined that Arafat did not die of disease or old age, "but rather, by poisonous material," Bashir said, adding that "this supports our theory."

The Russians were also looking at the possibility of other poisons, Bashir said, adding that more study was required.

Tirawi, meanwhile, was evasive when asked repeatedly whether he believed Arafat was killed by polonium.

"It is not important that I say here that he was killed by polonium," he said. "But I say, with all the details available about Yasser Arafat's death, that he was killed, and that Israel killed him."

At another point, Tirawi described Israel as the "first, fundamental and only suspect in the assassination of Yasser Arafat."
In 2012, however, Tirawi stated that "We are certain that there are Palestinian hands that contributed to the elimination of Yasser Arafat," and that they "will be subject to severe penalties and doomed to death."

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

  • Wednesday, November 06, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Gulf News:
Palestinian authorities have received the reports of Swiss and Russian forensic investigations into the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, an official said Tuesday, without disclosing the findings.

“The report was delivered” by the Swiss laboratory, said Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads the Palestinian investigation into Arafat’s death.

Official Palestinian news agency WAFA said a Russian team appointed by the Palestinian Authority also handed in its report on November 2 and that its conclusions would be made public in due course.

Some 60 samples were taken from the remains of the late Palestinian leader in November last year for a probe into whether he was poisoned by polonium.
The French report is not ready yet.

A Russian official has already been quoted as saying that no polonium was found on their tissue samples.

So the PA, which has officially and repeatedly said Israel murdered Arafat from the beginning, is now the sole party that can decide what to do with the reports?

The PA has officially described Tirawi's group as the "Inquiry Commission of the late President Arafat's assassination." You just know that if any parts of the reports don't support the PA's predetermined conclusion, they will be buried.

The PA will have a press conference saying that Arafat was murdered, the media will trumpet the headlines,  and when the actual report leaks out a few months that casts doubt on their announcement the lie will already have been entrenched.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Russian news agency Interfax reports:
The head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency (FMBA) Vladimir Uiba believes that the cause of death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could not be polonium poisoning.

"He could not have been poisoned with polonium. Russian experts conducting a study said traces of this substance were not found," - said Uiba to "Interfax" on Tuesday.

He added that experts FMBA conducted a detailed examination of the remains of Arafat. However, they regularly inform the Russian Foreign Ministry on the progress of investigations.
However, the article continues:
On Monday, October 14, the newspaper "Kommersant" quoted sources reported that an official investigation into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has already completed and led to conclusions: Palestinian leader was poisoned with polonium.
It appears that the Lancet article I noted yesterday had been completely misrepresented by Al Jazeera as if it was a confirmation by independent scientists that Arafat had been poisoned, when it was in fact a paper written by the same people that Al Jazeera hired to begin with the test his clothing.

News outlets ran with the false Al Jazeera version of events as if there were new revelations, but there weren't.



Monday, October 14, 2013

Over the weekend, the Lancet published an article called "Improving forensic investigation for polonium poisoning" which is being misrepresented by the media, especially Arab media.

AFP reports:
Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which "support the possibility" the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned.

In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat's belongings.
This is not the results of the tests done on exhumed samples from Arafat. This is simply a regurgitation of what the Swiss researchers said last year, just published in a new place.

The very end of the AFP report confirms this:
Beatrice Schaad, head of communications at the Vaudois University Hospital Center which is in charge of the institute, said the case report was the "scientific version" of what was given to the media.

"There is nothing new compared with what was said" in 2012, she told AFP. "There is still no conclusion that he was poisoned."
For those who cared, the specific results were published last year as well. And the numbers still don't add up.

The current Lancet article says:
According to biokinetic modelling (see appendix), the measured activities of ²¹⁰Po of several mBq per sample are compatible with a lethal ingestion of several GBq in 2004.
As I noted last year, Arafat's underwear urine stains were measured to have an astounding 180 mBq, over one hundred times the expected amount one would have expected to see in 2012, based on radioactive decay, of a dosage of polonium that would kill a man in a month.

Again, not that I am a fan of conspiracy theories, but these results would make sense only if the polonium was planted afterwards.

And, as I have noted, there were major irregularities when Arafat's body was exhumed, in that the PLO insisted that Russians be involved in the exhumation, and that only a Palestinian Arab pathologist was allowed to physically take the samples, with no one else observing him. If someone wanted to get advice on how to plant polonium on the samples - as well as polonium itself - Russia would the first choice.

Maybe this is why the investigation has been taking so long. If the polonium was planted, the researchers would probably be seeing results that are inconsistent or that otherwise don't make sense.

Monday, September 16, 2013

  • Monday, September 16, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
Remember last year when Yasir Arafat's bones were dug up to see if a Swiss laboratory could determine if
he died of polonium poisoning?

Remember how the amount of polonium found on his underwear would have indicated an amount that would have killed a normal person in less than a day, although he was sick for weeks?

Remember how the exhumation of Arafat's body was far from transparent, but only a PA pathologist was allowed to touch it and how the PA insisted that Russian experts be on the scene as well - even though Russia had nothing to do with it?

At the time, we were told that it would take about four months for the Swiss to come to a conclusion about the matter.

Then the Swiss said they'd be finished by late spring. The Spectator thought the report would be released by the first day of summer.

The latest word comes from Xinhua, on August 13:
Test results of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's corpse would be handed to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the middle of September, a PNA official said Tuesday.

A Swiss lab that examined samples from Arafat's remains would complete the results around the middle of September, said Tawfiq Al-Tirawi, head of the Palestinian committee that follows the investigation into Arafat's death in 2004.

"So far, the Swiss lab did not give us any initial indications or results on the deaths of Arafat's death," Al-Tirawi told Xinhua. However, he added that there were no obstacles preventing the results from being handed down and declared next month.
Well, its the middle of September, and we still haven't heard anything..

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but if the PLO asked the Russians for help in planting polonium on the samples while onsite, it might explain the delays. It would be very difficult to plant such tiny amounts in the tissue samples and keep them consistent with each other, as well as with making it look like a slow poisoning death. If the Swiss are seeing inconsistent results they might suspect something, but they are not criminal investigators and any theories about someone purposefully planting polonium would be outside their mandate.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

  • Thursday, September 12, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
From YNet:
Palestinian riot police prevented dozens of angry protestors from breaking into a building where the offices of Al Jazeera TV channel are located in the center of Ramallah.

The Fatah Youth movement called for a demonstration against Al Jazeera after a guest attacked the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Ibrahim Hammami, a pro-Islamist writer and head of the Palestinian Affair Center said that Abu Ammar, another name Arafat is known by, is a traitor. Arafat, who died in 2004, is still seen a symbol for the Palestinian people.

Two days before the show, on the 20th anniversary of signing the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Hamami wrote on his Facebook page that Arafat accomplished the Israeli dream 20 years ago.

A few days before that, Al Jazeera published a documentary called “The Price of Oslo,” unveiling what they called new historical information showing that the PLO recognized Israel and turned its back on the “revolution.”

At the demonstration, protestors held signs and pictures of the late Arafat, while chanting slogans.
“Yasser Arafat is a red line,” said employee Nibras Hussein, after she was not allowed to leave her job to partake in the demonstration. “Most people are working at this time. I am sure much more people wanted to protest Arafat’s insult but can’t leave their jobs.”

In front of the building, more protesters came to participate in the demonstration. Amna Mustafa was one of them: “I came to say I reject the Zionist-American conspiracy that is being waged through Al Jazeera channel by insulting and distorting the national figures and symbols,” Mustafa, a 33-year-old protester, said.
See how peaceful he is?
Notice the nature of the insult - not that Arafat was a terrorist, but that he was too peaceful! This is what gets the Palestinian Arabs upset. Similarly, Al Jazeera coverage of the Oslo anniversary concentrated on how the PA was too conciliatory towards Israel.

You will not have to look hard to find Israelis or Jews willing to call Sharon or Begin or Shamir "terrorists." But you will never find any Arab in an Arab country who would publicly say the same about Arafat. Both the insults and the defenses in the Arab world consistently come from the perspective that "my side is more anti-Israel, more intransigent, than your side is."

Arafat's family is threatening to sue Al Jazeera unless Hamami apologizes.

(h/t EBoZ)

Monday, July 22, 2013

A student took a J-Street sponsored tour of Jerusalem and Ramallah - and there was nothing remotely even-handed about it.

While the point of the article is about how her fellow college students were so lacking in critical thinking skills that they swallowed the lies they were given whole, one could not tell that this trip was organized by a supposedly Jewish, "pro-Israel/pro-peace" organization as opposed to an Arab propaganda outfit. And this J-Street  trip winds up in a most sickening way:

We hopped on our charter bus and went to meet with a member of the PLO negotiating team on the well known Emek Refaim street in the German Colony. Not surprisingly, the man was filled with anger. He started off by saying how difficult it is to be a Palestinian in the German Colony seeing Israeli flags waving from houses that were once homes of Palestinians.

He then continued on for the next 40 minutes playing the blame game: “Why can’t there be peace? Because of Bibi. There are two things in this world that will never change – and that is Netanyahu and Allah.”

As he went on and on, I became lost in his web of contradictions and realized that this man has been in the peacemaking game too long. I found it odd that the students I was traveling with did not seem bothered by the bitterness of the PLO negotiator, nor did they mention how they wished we could have heard from an Israeli negotiator as well, which I believed would be beneficial to compare and contrast the two sides.

...Finally, we were on our way to Ramallah. I was searching for the images the media so often likes to portray – of a city destroyed by war, stricken with poverty. However, I noticed how modern and beautiful the city was, as we drove past sushi restaurants and five-star hotels. We went to the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and met with a man who was not of Israeli or Palestinian descent, but Asian. This man had no relation to Israel or Palestine – just your typical civil servant.

He spoke about human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories. He lamented over Israeli settlers cutting down trees of Arab farmers, vandalizing mosques and other actions of the sort. He completely glossed over the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel (because that isn’t a big deal, right?) and barely touched on the stone throwing by Palestinians at Israelis driving through the West Bank (which has killed many).

The fact that he bypassed these subjects so smoothly was the first thing that was of concern to me. The second thing of concern was that this man did not know a word of Arabic or Hebrew. I wondered, how is he supposed to gain a first-hand experience of the trials and tribulations of the West Bank, Gaza and Israel when he files reports from within his airconditioned building without speaking to anyone on the ground?
Probably the strangest part of the entire trip was going to the PLO headquarters to visit Yasser Arafat’s memorial. I felt we stood there for an uncomfortably long time. I did not want to be disrespectful, but I in no way wanted to be mistaken as honoring him. I felt chills as I stood at the monument of a man who was thought of as a hero by the suicide bombers who killed so many Israelis over the years.
Yes - J-Street takes students on a trip to pay homage to a terrorist with the blood of hundreds of Jews on his hands!

(h/t Lauri)

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

  • Tuesday, November 06, 2012
  • Elder of Ziyon
On November 26, the bones of Palestinian Arab terrorist leader Yasir Arafat are being dug up.

Given the withering disapproval that Mahmoud Abbas has been getting for declaring that he would no longer want to live in Safed, this is an opportunity for another set of elections in the territories - and Arafat's bones should run.

Why not elect the skeleton of the only leader they ever had and who they romantically pine for? The bag of bones would win in a landslide!

There are other advantages to keeping Arafat's bones above ground.

He can be counted on not to make the same mistakes on TV that Abbas made. And his speeches will be less boring than Abbas'.

He is not in danger of being assassinated by Israel.

His political positions will never change, showing the strength of conviction that Arabs admire so much.

World leaders can invite Dead Arafat to their state dinners and UN events, just like the old days. He'll be praised as a moderate by New York Times columnists and "Middle East experts," just like the old days.

And Suha will get just as much love and affection as she did from him when he was alive.

No one will dare protest against such a revered figure, and Hamas would be rendered ineffective against the charisma of Arafat's corpse.

The new dead Arafat can no longer steal hundreds of millions of dollars from his beloved people.

There is a decent chance that he would win another Nobel Peace Prize.

From Israel's perspective, Arafat's corpse won't negotiate - but then again, neither did Abbas, so there is no change there. And new dead Arafat will not lie as much as either Abbas or the old Arafat. He also can't secretly mastermind terror sprees.

I think this is an idea whose time has come.


Tuesday, October 30, 2012

  • Tuesday, October 30, 2012
  • Elder of Ziyon
I was going through a Fatah Facebook page and saw someone posted a video that they said was "very important."

It was a slightly edited version of a video that Palestinian Media Watch had posted long ago from a 1995 PA TV broadcast.



Arafat: "When the Prophet made the peace of Hudaybiya, [Muhammad's followers] Omar Ibn al Khattab and Ali Ibn Abi Talib said: "How can we accept an agreement like that?" "How can we accept such humiliation of our religion, Oh, Messenger of Allah?" And when we signed the agreement in Oslo if anyone has an objection to that agreement, I have a hundred."

Note: Arafat compares the Oslo Accords with the Hudaybiya Pact, which the Prophet Muhammad signed with the Quraish tribe with the intention of breaking it later.
So not only do many Arabs know that Arafat was lying at Oslo and that the Palestinian Arab leadership had no intention of making real peace with Israel - they are proud of it!

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