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Sheikh Yassin
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Saddam Hussen
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Ayatollah Khomeini
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners November 19, 2004 |
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Yasser Arafat, widely believed to have died last week, is in fact in fine form, if a videotape of the on-again, off-again Palestinian leader from an Israeli source is to be believed. The clip, screened on the popular entertainment show "Only in Israel" (Rock b'yisrael), shows an amorous Abu Amar repeatedly kissing and embracing an unknown man in religious garb as his bodyguards and others watch.
The extended smooch -- accompanied by slurping, Hebrew love-words and pleasure sounds as well as a piano sonata -- has suggested to some analysts that Arafat's death may in fact have been faked, enabling the Palestinian leader to escape his three-year confinement in Ramallah and to carry on with more pleasurable activities.
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"Arafat was really dead when they said he was alive. Doesn't it make sense that he is really alive after they admit he's dead?"
Israeli analyst
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One skeptical intelligence source said that the videotape -- though not the soundtrack -- appeared to be authentic, but expressed doubt that it had been filmed in the past week, after Arafat's purported burial swarm.
The live Israeli studio audience burst into applause and cheers after the clip was screened, suggesting that warm and nostalgic feelings still exist for the Palestinian leader in Jewish circles outside Naturei Karta and Peace Now. An audience member expressed appreciation for the ardor and duration of the embrace.
"Arafat was really dead when they said he was alive. Doesn't it make sense that he is really alive after they admit he's dead?" one Israeli analyst asked rhetorically, explaining his conspiracy theory. "The days of uncertainty during which Arafat was inaccessible to anyone but Suha and his French doctors were used to ensure a clean getaway."
The possibility that Arafat is alive and well and kissing up a storm would explain the reticence of French officials and his wife and would-be widow Suha to release medical reports, or permit an autopsy on his supposed cadaver. Speculation is rife that the figure purporting to be Arafat in the week before his death was in fact a smurf hired to serve as his diminutive double.
"If this is the case, then the medical records due to be given Friday to Palestinian UN mouthpiece and Yasser's nephew Nasser al-Kidwa, not to mention the corpse buried at the Mukata, may in fact be that of the unidentified smurf," the source said.
The real Arafat, according to one source, is living it up in a seaside high-security mansion in the south of France, reportedly cavorting (see photos at left) with other "dead" celebrities like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and -- at least according to one witness -- Elvis.
Israel Insider, modestly, takes no responsibility for the veracity of this report and, like the Palestinian leadership, blames it all on others, most likely Israelis. The French government has launched an inquiry to determine how this poisonous piece penetrated the publication without its permission.
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