Where Have You Gone, Yasser Arafat?

PaliLeaks fallout: The Guardian‘s columnist Seumas Milne sure misses Arafat:

It’s a study in the decay of what in Yasser Arafat’s heyday was an authentic national liberation movement.

An authentic national liberation movement?

Yasser Arafat perfected terrorism, introducing airplane hijackings to the world, creating a gangster state-within-a-state in both Jordan and Lebanon, all before returning to the West Bank to ultimately fan the flames of violence.

Don’t be too surprised that Milne wistfully wonders, Where have you gone, Yasser Arafat? Harry’s Place blames Milne — the former editor of Comment is Free — for making the section a pigsty of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism:

Milne’s greatest contribution to the Guardian Comment Pages has been to turn it into a soapbox for the RESPECT and Stop the War Coalition projects: a Red-Green-Brown alliance between Stalinists, Trotskyites, and Islamists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Milne evidently regarded his appointment to Comment Editor as an opportunity to promote the obnoxious politics of this alignment.

Whether Milne supports the Berlin Wall, the Israeli security wall, or the Great Wall of China, one thing should be clear:

Killing civilians ain’t national liberation. It’s terror.