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Arafatuous By Edward L. Daley (11/19/04)

(Mr. Daley is the Owner of the Daley Times-Post. To view more of Mr, Daley's writings please visit his site)

Books of Interest

On November the 11th, 2004, Judith Miller of the New York Times wrote an article about the death of the infamous terrorist leader Yasser Arafat titled "Yasir Arafat, Father and Leader of Palestinian Nationalism, Dies at 75". Her inane, eight-page obituary began with the following words:

"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."

She went on to opine that "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."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/arafatobit.html

Upon reading this I had to wonder if Ms. Miller, had she been a 'Times' columnist in the spring of 1945, wouldn't have penned Adolf Hitler's obituary in much the same way. Just imagine it, if you will...

--Adolf Hitler, who died this morning in Berlin, was the wily and enigmatic father of Nazism who for over 12 years symbolized his people's longing for a distinct political identity and expanded German state. He was 56.

No other individual so embodied the Germans' plight: their pugnacity, their restlessness, their hunger for a return to a homeland lost to the Versailles Treaty. Mr. Hitler was once seen as a romantic hero and praised as a statesman, but his luster and reputation faded over time.--

In my opinion, those last two paragraphs are just as accurate as Judith Miller's are. Of course, common decency and respect for the memory of Hitler's victims would not have permitted their publication by any responsible news organization 59 years ago, and I have only written them
here as an example of how NOT to describe vicious, anti-Semitic megalomaniacs.

While Ms. Miller made mention of a few of Arafat's hateful deeds in her piece, she did so in such a way as to appear fairly accepting of the idea of people using terrorism to achieve their political and/or religious goals. Why she chose to treat the man who is widely known as one of the architects of modern terrorist methods, as if he'd been some sort of respectable world leader, is beyond me.

Like so many journalists the world over, Ms. Miller exhibits a complete lack of regard for the tremendous suffering of Arafat's many victims in her writing. She obviously didn't seem to think it was important to provide her readers with any detailed descriptions of the various acts of barbarity he was responsible for over the course of his lifetime. She also failed to appreciate how contemptible some of her more flattering characterizations of the man might be to most Jewish people, and for that she should be ashamed.

If you managed to get through her article without feeling angry or, at the very least, annoyed at her lack of attention to the fact that the subject thereof was one of the most despicable human beings to ever walk the earth, I can't imagine what (if anything) you were feeling.

As I sat in my den the other day considering my approach to writing this article, the flag of the United Nations was flying at half-mast in tribute to Yasser Arafat, and representatives from countries around the globe gathered to pay their respects at his funeral. The thing that I kept asking myself then, and am still asking today, is WHY? What is it about that malignant tumor of a man that has caused so many people over the years to divorce themselves from all reason when the subject of
Palestinian terrorism is raised?

I still have not been able to come up with a satisfactory answer, and if anyone out there has one to offer, feel free to share it with me at your earliest convenience. In the meantime, please consider the following paragraph which I wrote as an example of the kind of obituary I believe best suits the likes of Yasser Arafat.

He was not a statesman, nor was he heroic. He was little more than a savage, Jew-hating parasite who's usefulness to humanity ended on the day he devoted his life to the decimation of the Israeli people. He was a liar, a thief, and a murderer of children, and if God is paying any attention at all, Arafat's eternal soul is burning in hell at this very moment.

By Edward L. Daley
Owner of the Daley Times-Post
http://www.times-post.com