When the thief enjoys heroic status

by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
November 24, 2010

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1111/when-the-thief-enjoys-heroic-status

Believe it or not, part of Yasir Arafat's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $3 billion - with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands. Although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And, none of these dealings were made public.

Yasir Arafat is the founding father of Palestinian nationalism. He is also the godfather of 20th century terrorism. The nationalist movement that he created ab ovo remains unique in history as the only one throughout the entire world whose defining paradigm is terrorism, and whose raison d'etre is the destruction of a sovereign state and the decimation of its Jewish population. Even after Arafat's death, still loyal to his legacy, the Palestinian Authority remains focused on the destruction of Israel rather than on a healthy nationalism and the building of an economically viable, Palestinian state. Arafat not only legitimized, but actually romanticized the murder of innocent civilians, turning terrorism into a populist revolutionary tool. He put airplane hijacking on the political map. He legitimized terrorism, beginning with the moment that he was welcomed to the UN General Assembly on November 13, 1974, kaffiyah on his head and side-arm at his waist, and got a standing ovation from the delegates present. When the Nobel committee awarded him its Peace Prize in 1995, he fulfilled the Orwellian fantasy of reality turned upside down, and truth turned inside out. Evil had become good, wrong had become right, and a mass murderer drenched in the blood of thousands had become a national hero to millions.

Arafat was a protégé of the Communist bloc and succeeded in making his cause a cause of the international left that survived the collapse of the Communist system. The alliance between radical Islam and the secular left that ripened during the post-9/11 war on terror was forged in the battles that Arafat waged. Arafat resuscitated Jew-hatred and made it the official policy of the UN when the Arab bloc leveraged the passage of a UN resolution equating Zionism with racism in 1975. By relentlessly portraying Israel as evil, Arafat revived the heinous stereotype of the malignant Jew to international respectability, eclipsing the effects of the horror of Nazism and proving correct Josef Goebbels' lesson to Hitler that if you repeat the same lie often enough, people will believe it.

Yasir Arafat is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and 95,000 Lebanese Arabs who were killed by his minions during his twelve-year reign of terror in that country. Nearly 500,000 Lebanese were made homeless in the same period. Arafat is also responsible for ruin and poverty that pervades the West Bank. From 1967-1994, under Israeli rule, the economy of the West Bank Palestinians prospered. GDP grew at an average rate of 13 percent per year, tourism sky-rocketed, seven universities were created, infant mortality plummeted, life expectancy increased, and the well-being of the Palestinian Arabs improved substantially by World Bank measures. At one point almost 300,000 Palestinians were working in the Israeli economy, with earnings well above their counterparts in neighboring Arab states. Spurred by this prosperity, the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip soared from about 950,000 in 1967 to over 3,000,000 in 1994. Arafat is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and 95,000 Lebanese Arabs who were killed by his minions during his twelve-year reign of terror in that country. Nearly 500,000 Lebanese were made homeless in the same period. Arafat is also responsible for ruin and poverty that pervades the West Bank. From 1967-1994, under Israeli rule, the economy of the West Bank Palestinians prospered. GDP grew at an average rate of 13 percent per year, tourism sky-rocketed, seven universities were created, infant mortality plummeted, life expectancy increased, and the well-being of the Palestinian Arabs improved substantially by World Bank measures. At one point almost 300,000 Palestinians were working in the Israeli economy, with earnings well above their counterparts in neighboring Arab states. Spurred by this prosperity, the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip soared from about 950,000 in 1967 to over 3,000,000 in 1994.

But after the Oslo Accords transferred authority in the West Bank to Arafat in July 1994, the decline of its economy followed swiftly. Arafat plunged the West Bank and Gaza into a ten-year reign of terror, poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. After Oslo, billions of dollars in international aid flowed into the PA, from the EU, the US, and Arab countries. Yet the Palestinian people saw almost nothing of this bounty. Rather than using that aid to build his state, with schools, hospitals, roads, and social services, Arafat created a massive kleptocracy of cronies and loyalists who siphoned off vast fortunes to personal accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.

And, here is some information on Yasir Arafat's marriage with Suha Tawil [daughter of a prominent Palestinian Christian journalist and her banker husband], who according to many news reports, lived a luxurious life in Ramallah, while most of the Palestinian people were starving. Suha created an aid organization to improve the status of women in Palestinian society. While most women in Gaza had few rights in the authoritarian Islamic system that prevailed there, Suha enjoyed the rare privilege of driving a car and tooled around the impoverished area in a blue BMW. When Arafat married her, he was 62 while Suha was 28. The secret marriage came as a surprise to most Palestinians because Arafat had always said he was "married to the Palestinian cause."

While Arafat is known for his military dress, unkempt appearance, and austere lifestyle, Suha developed a reputation for extravagance after moving to Paris, where she received a $200,000 monthly allowance from the PA budget. Her dyed-blonde hair, frequent purchases of expensive French designer clothes and high-profile social life provoked critics in the territories to distribute leaflets with reports from the Arab and Western media about her shopping sprees. She told Vogue magazine that her husband once compared her to former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos after seeing her large shoe collection. Suha's activities also attracted the attention of French prosecutors, who announced in October 2003 that they had opened a money-laundering probe into the transfer of $11.4 million from Switzerland into her French bank accounts at Arab Bank and at BNP Paribas Bank, a French bank.

The Palestinians living inside the Palestinian Authority have been given far greater international financial support than most other suffering peoples. Since the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, the U.S. government has committed more than $1.3 billion in economic assistance to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since the end of 2000, Arab states have transferred to the PA monthly financial aid of $45 million [since April 2002 this sum was increased to $55 million]. The European Union transferred to the PA approximately $9 million monthly. By the end of 2001, the Palestinians had received $4 billion [the figure turned closer to $5.5 billion] since the 1993 Oslo agreements. This is the equivalent of $1,330 per Palestinian. By comparison, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II provided $272 per European.

These PA revenues do not include the $8-14 billion in assets the Palestine Liberation Organization is believed to have accumulated over the years through drug trafficking, illegal arms dealing, money laundering, fraud, extortion, and legal investments. The PA has also engaged in the counterfeiting of Israeli, Jordanian, and Kuwaiti currency. In April 2002, the Israeli army found large quantities of counterfeit Israeli currency in Arafat's compound in Ramallah.

Finally, there is unresolved mystery behind the death of this Jihadist looter. According to several reports, Arafat died of AIDS, as it is well known to many that, during his life time, Yasir Arafat was heavily addicted to sodomizing young Palestinian Jihadists and children. He had special staffers to search 'good company' for Arafat either through threat or in exchange of money.

These are only few of the glimpses of Yasir Arafat's massive corruption, fraud and nepotism along with his unruly styled luxurious private life. Most interestingly, Muslim world, instead of hating this man, for his series of wrong doings, are considering him as a 'hero'. Can any sensible individual or society consider such a huge thief as hero?

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