Arafat

Remove all ads!

He has came near to the end of his road. And as Chinese always put it, "coffin sealed, judgement settled".

Earlier during my class today, i heard a comment from a student a row infront of me which was somehting along the line "So is he dead yet? ... he shoulda cause he is causing enough trouble". At first, such typical ignorance comment from an American disgust me. This comment hunted me throughout the rest of the class, not to mention i was paying much attention about the underlying theme of biometabolism. Arafat is old, the earliest i remembered was 1959 (because that was the year when my country included 3 other states to its federation) when he did something in Kuwait. For a person to stay that long at the top of his game, i think, one does need to apply some ugly tactics (over cetralization of power etc.) Just like being Christian is good enought to become president of America for Americans, defying the western countries unconditionally supported Iseral is good enough for me to be a 'good guy'. Furthermore, remember the guy who said bad things about Jews in a Muslim countries convention last year? He was the former prime minister of my country, so you know what country i am from, eh? But as the lecturer draws to an end, my view on Arafat changed, slightly.

For so many years, Palastine was nothing but Arafat. Arafat this, Arafat that, occasionally you have Hamas bombing this and that. If one wants talk to Palastine, one has to go through Arafat. In any case, i don't think it is a healthy situation. Does Arafat and PLO represent Palastine? Certainly no but he himself does dictates the direction of Palastine. On the other hand, i am sure that if without Arafat and PLO, Palastinians wouldn't acheive anything but suicide bombing. He did have some effort in piecing together a Plastinian state. Didn't he won a Nobel pieace for shaking hand with Rabin?

And as you can see, my information is blur and vague. Thus i came here. i knew there are people who lived in the time before i do and might knew more about Arafat more that i do. More importantly, i knew Ragusa can, as usual, link us to several massive reading material about Arafat and the goods and bads about him.

 

My perception of Arafat is pretty much the same as yours, that he has always been around. Outlived scores of Israeli leaders. He may be a thug, a murderer, a terrorist and a tyrant but the old fart must have had mad skillz to be on top for so long.

Why is it that the most competent politicians use their competence for the above listed things?