Did Israel Really Assassinate Arafat?
July 5, 2012 16:50 by Pesach Benson
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Today’s Top Stories:
1. Ronen Bergman (YNet) and Lenny Ben David (Times of Israel) weigh in on talk of Israel assassinating Yasser Arafat. As for news coverage, I liked how AP‘s Josef Federman handled the story. But the The Independent‘s Donald Macintyre reduces Arafat’s terror record to a he said/she said spat, with choice qualifiers:
Arafat was frequently denounced as a terrorist leader by some of his Israeli adversaries, including Ariel Sharon, who was Israel’s Prime Minister at the time of Arafat’s death. Yet, with the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Palestinian leader was the co-architect of the Oslo peace accords in the early to mid-Nineties.
But he was also blamed by Israel for leading the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which began in September 2000 after the collapse of peace talks between Arafat and the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Tensions were further inflamed when Mr Sharon, then still in opposition, toured the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, surrounded by armed guards; the religious site is sacred to both Jews and Muslims.
Meanwhile, a Reuters photo essay whitewashes Yasser Arafat’s “life and legacy.”
2. A state-run news service removed an online poll whose results didn’t match Tehran’s nuclear party line. More than 60 percent of the respondents said Iran should drop its uranium enrichment to bring sanctions to an end. The LA Times writes:
Because only 2,000 people responded, the website declared, the results did “not represent the whole population of Iran.” . . .
And in another twist, the Associated Press reported Wednesday that Iranian state TV charged that the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Persian-language service had hacked into its website to change the results of the poll to make it appear that respondents favored dumping nuclear enrichment if that would lead to a reduction in sanctions. The BBC said in a statement that the claims were “both ludicrous and completely false, and the BBC Persian Service stands by its reporting,” the Associated Press reported.
More on the poll at Radio Free Europe.
3. The Ramallah demonstrations of the last few days are anti-Oslo and driven by a younger generation of Palestinians. After reading Linda Gradstein’s report in The Media Line, it’s worth asking: Has the Arab Spring finally reached the West Bank?
The protests were sparked by a planned meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel’s Vice Premier Shaul Mofaz, who was Israel’s army chief-of-staff during the second intifada, or uprising, and some Palestinians accuse him of being a war criminal. But of concern is the fact that the second and third demonstrations took place even after the complained-of meeting had been cancelled.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Forget about the Tel Aviv bubble. Reuters discovers the Ramallah bubble of flashy cars and trendy cafes:
Government spending and living on credit at all levels of Palestinian society is rampant and, as the euro zone crisis has shown, may prove to be the economy’s undoing.
Meanwhile, the BBC picks up on an Oxfam report (pdf) which blames (who else?) Israeli settlements for jeopardising Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley.
jeb stuart
8:17 pm
Jul 05, 2012
I think there is plenty of evidence that Arafat’s participation in the Oslo Peace Accords was undertaken in bad faith and whether or not Rabin had not been assassinated by an Israeli extremist would never have taken the path of peace unless it meant an end to Israel by negotiation, diplonmacy and the corruption of the UN. The legacy or myth of the Oslo Peace Accords and Arafts preserved false image is as much to preserve the democratic myth that peace was onbtainable and obstructionism is only perpetrated by the Israeli’s and that they have much more to give, a them Obama has set like millstone on Americans.
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jeb stuart
8:26 pm
Jul 05, 2012
I think there is plenty of evidence that Arafat’s participation in the Oslo Peace Accords was undertaken in bad faith and whether or not Rabin had not been assassinated by an Israeli extremist would never have taken the path of peace unless it meant an end to Israel by negotiation, diplonmacy and the corruption of the UN. The legacy or myth of the Oslo Peace Accords and Arafats preserved false image is as much to preserve the democratic myth that peace was obtainable, and Clinton the chief archtect. This is as much to preserve Clinton’s ,Democratic party,and Obama’s image as a successful peacemakers as Arafats , also by blaming Israel as obstructionist.
Redundancy, trouble with server,.
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Paul Tenenbaum
9:12 pm
Jul 05, 2012
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Harold G
1:28 am
Jul 06, 2012
Read the book Amatuer by Ed Klein, hardly a GOP zealot or right winger. His long chapter on the Jews and Israel is scary.
He is ruining this country, and will sell out Israel in a heartbeat. PM Netanyahu still dislikes
Obama, just publicly has to smile. There is no love lost between them. This has been confirmed
by a Congressman from my district that has had conversations with the PM.
By the way the name amatuer is given to Obama by Bill Clinton.
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SallyA
10:48 pm
Jul 05, 2012
Pesach- Can you check the veracity of this claim from the article about the Ramallah credit bubble:
“Israeli authorities deny the Palestinian Authority and therefore Palestinian mobile phone providers access to the high-tech 3G frequency, while granting it even to Jewish settlements.”
What’s the other side to this claim?
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Jeffrey Nakar
2:44 pm
Jul 06, 2012
Instead of seeing all the problems in the West Bank as being bound to continue “until the occupation ends.” perhaps they should be viewed as continuing until the Palestinians agree to negotiate and make peace.
Meanwhile, thanks to the generosity of the international community, not least Israel which built roads and universities and hospitals for the Palestinians in the 1970′s and 80′s when there were none, the Palestinians have benefitted from a huge boost in living standards during the years of occupation and now have the highest general standard of living in the Arab world.
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Did Israel Really Assassinate Arafat? | Blogs about Israel aggregation
4:48 pm
Jul 15, 2012
[...] Continued on Page 2 [...]
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dorothy
6:46 pm
Jul 18, 2012
And if they did, would u call that assasination or self defence? He always said he will throw the jews into the sea.
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Leonard KAHN
8:49 pm
Jul 19, 2012
The French doctors know what caused Arafats death and they are telling that he died of Aids
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jonathan
11:09 pm
Jul 19, 2012
really? Arms sold to the UAE wound up in the hands of terrorists? Who’d have thought that the world’s capital of weapons dealing would sell to to terrorists?
wow. How can the Swiss be so naive?
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