Reply #18: Arafat was too susceptible to swimmin pools and movie stars

[DuctapeFatwa]

As a freedom fighter and a field commander, he was superb. His courage, sometimes bordering on the insane, his charisma and his ability to motivate people - and keep them motivated - is hard to beat. See Uri Avnery's "Prisoner of Ramallah," anyone who hasn't.

But once he fought his way to the front of the line, once he had the ear of those in the west who questioned whether the price of Alpo for the guard dog might not be getting just a teensy bit steep, Arafat became bedazzled by his new status as cause celebre, anti-establishment symbol and trophy beige dinner guest at the tables of the rich and famous, and maybe without entirely realizing what he was doing, his major focus became remaining a star of the jet set as opposed to fighting to win at the table as he had in the field.

As a result, Palestinians and Israelis alike have spent the past yikes, how many years now? sucked into this fiction that the only thing standing between war and peace in the Middle East is an agreement based on a non-starter.

This is not to minimize Arafat's status as a national symbol. He is and will always be the Father of the Modern Palestinian State. Nor do I mean to trivialize the cruel and hideous deception to which the United States has subjected the Israeli people, both indigenous and immigrant. As is always the case, they have had their stooges, their dollahos, who were, and still are, willing to screw their own citizens to the wall for personal gain of one sort or another, but Arafat had the chance to call them on it, in fact, he has had several chances, and I will go out on a limb and say he could still do it today. But today he is old and sick, maybe he couldn't, even if he had a moment of sufficient lucidity to recognize that he should.