Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian examined in depth Yasser Arafat’s last days in an effort to piece together the cause of his death. Goldenberg (who is no stranger to HonestReporting) acknowledges the bafflement of the doctors and the lack of evidence to conclusively support or refute the rumors that he was poisoned. According to The Guardian, the red flags of Arafat’s declining health began appearing as far back as September. Besides stubbornly keeping a demanding schedule, Arafat was deeply suspicious of his own doctors. Writes Goldenberg:
Arafat was also in regular communication with Ashraf Kurdi, a Jordanian neurologist who first treated him in 1992 after he survived a plane crash in the Libyan desert. But as even his doctors will admit, Arafat had a villager’s suspicion of modern medicine and its practitioners, much as he liked the status of having doctors as friends. “Arafat didn’t trust many people,” Kurdi admits. “This was his nature. He didn’t like to see doctors in general because each one tried to give him a different medicine, and he was afraid to take the wrong one, because of poisoning.” He was even reluctant to take the medicine prescribed for his tremor, a condition that was often mistaken for Parkinson’s disease.
But rumors and conspiracy theories take on a life of their own, as evidenced by the continued fascination with the death of King Tutankhamen 3,000 years ago. Or is the Mossad to be blamed for his death too?
