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November 11, 2004
Yasser Arafat, the Egyptian engineer who assumed the role of "freedom fighter" and invented the "Palestinian people" by introducing airplane hijacking and suicide bombing into the world and then deceived, extorted, and killed his way to international fame and fortune, bilking his society of billions of dollars, is, after a week of high tragicomic farce, finally and formally deemed dead.
Israelis, with few exceptions, considered him a liar, a charlatan, and a mass murderer. Many felt fooled over the years by the perception that Arafat, despite his pretensions to a "peace of the brave," clung throughout his life to the goal of the eradication of Israel, whether by a pan-Arab military blow or in phases of gradual attrition. He is judged responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, most of them Israeli but also many foreign nationals, including American diplomats.
Arafat introduced terrorism into the modern consciousness, initially through high profile airplane hijacking and later by introducing the concept of suicide bomb as a means of martyrdom, techniques which have since been adopted by the Arab world and beyond.
Arafat is also blamed in Israel for having debased the value of making peace with Arabs in the region. The disillusionment of moderate Israelis in the "peace process" and the possibility of co-existence, was largely the result of public pronouncements and commitments by Arafat never matched with facts on the ground.
The failure to stop pursuing terrorism, combined with a legacy of extortion and racketeering on a massive scale, made him and his immediate circle fabulously wealthy from funds contributed by foreign governments for the welfare of Palestinian society which itself grew disillusioned by his corruption. The fiasco surrounding his last days, the in-fighting between his wife and the Palestinian leadership, revealed the degree to which the driving forces in Arafat's life were driven by the selfish pursuit of power that only masses of ill-gotten money could buy.
In the end, the man who packed a pistol onto the UN podium and received a Nobel Peace Prize wearing his quasi-military uniform, died alone and unfulfilled, abandoned but by those who sought to exploit and extend his death throes to preserve their own self-appointed positions and to extract what remaining booty they could. The corruption that characterized his life finally found expression in his mental and physical dissolution. Abu Amar, the father of modern terrorism, was at last left pitifully alone to face the terror that awaits an evil man in death.
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