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I just want to reiterate how closely the Arafat death peekaboo act matches up to the plot of Weekend at Bernie’s II, recounted by IMDB: “Larry and Richard use a voodoo revived corpse to track down hidden money to clear their names.”
Suha is Larry, Farouk Khadoumi is Richard.
Come on, people!
Also, I refer readers trying to picture the scene at Arafat’s bedside once again to this video clip.
One Palestinian source to the JPost: “They spent about one hour with the French doctors and heard a detailed report on his medical condition. He is not dead but we are counting the hours.”
So am I, brother, so am I…
(Also, Drudge’s current headline is great: “Arafat Dead, Not Dead.”)
It’s so strange that Suha Arafat doesn’t want anyone to have access to her husband. It’s as if she were hiding something.
Ah, yes, the apes and pigs. We knew it would come to this:
We are absolutely certain that the party responsible for the assassination attempt against the president is the Zionist government. We have no doubt that this government poisoned him, one way or another, in order to put him to death slowly. None of the doctors of the world – the modern and the undeveloped worlds – could treat the president and don’t know his condition. Those accursed, those apes and pigs - when they heard that the president had died they began to sing and dance. Do we not have the right to pray to Allah for his recovery, so he would be like poison in these pigs’ hearts? Did you not see them on TV, embracing each other, singing, and dancing? These apes!
From the Palestinian Friday Sermon, translated by MEMRI.
I’ve now got money riding on whether the PA admits that Arafat has kicked it by noon Wednesday. $10. So, you can imagine how disturbed I was to hear about Suha losing it in a telephone interview and claiming that Bernie — I mean Yasser — is just fine:
Yasser Arafat’s wife said her husband is “all right” and lashed out at his top lieutenants Monday, accusing them of traveling to Paris with plans to “bury” him “alive.”
In a screaming telephone call from Arafat’s hospital bedside, Suha Arafat told pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television that she was issuing “an appeal to the Palestinian people.” She accused his top aides, who are traveling to Paris later Monday, of conspiring to usurp her husband’s four-decade long role as Palestinian leader.
“Let it be known to the honest Palestinian people that a bunch of those who want to inherit are coming to Paris,” she shouted in Arabic, in her first public comments since Arafat fell ill a month ago.
“You have to realize the size of the conspiracy. I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive,” she said, using Arafat’s nom de guerre. He is all right and he is going home. God is great.”
Yes, yes, conspiracy. Where have I heard that word before?
OK, now, the “Weekend at Bernie’s” and “Weekend at Bernie’s II” paralells are getting creepy.
Check out this story, which has been floating around during the week:
The door to the French military hospital where Yasser Arafat is said to have been declared clinically dead has been closed to all but family members while the rest of the Palestinian leadership watches helplessly.
The reason, says the global intelligence news service Geostrategy-Direct, is that Arafat continues to hold the purse strings to the Palestinian finances.
I think if you compare this story to this video clip from “Weekend at Bernie’s II,” you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Now we hear that the decision to take Arafat off “life” support rests in the hands of the lovely Suha:
The decision to take PA Chairman Yasser Arafat off life support rests with his wife, Suha, Palestinian sources in Ramallah said Friday evening, Israel Radio reported. The sources added that Mrs. Arafat has been the one to decide, and will continue to be the only person to decide the flow of news about Arafat’s condition.
Israel Radio also reported that French doctors at Percy Military Hospital ordered all of Arafat’s aides to leave his room on Friday. Only Suha Arafat was allowed to remain at her husband’s bedside.
This would make a great movie… Oh, wait.
Arafat burial negotiations continue:
The Jerusalem Post was contacted by a source close to Arafat on Friday afternoon claiming that the Chairman had been dead since Thursday afternoon, but the newspaper has been unable to find any official confirmation of this.
This source, in common with reports carried on some TV stations, claimed that official confirmation of Arafat’s death was being delayed until arrangements for his funeral were finalized.
Well, he’s still with us as I go to sleep tonight.
My girlfriend insists that he opens his eyes every time the nurse leaves the room.
My best friend from high school wants to get a party together over the weekend to celebrate.
I just want to get down to Blockbuster and rent this baby.
"Yasser’s back… and he’s still dead."
I swear I’m not obsessed with Arafat dying… OK, I am.
So, here’s CNN saying what I’ve suspected all day (I’ve dubbed it the "Weekend at Bernie’s" scenario):
Since Muslim custom requires burial within 24 hours of death, no one
will declare Arafat dead until they figure out where to bury him.
I have a number of suggestions, but they’re all indelicate.
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_10.html
RAMALLAH - Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has died. He was 75 years old.
Israeli and Palestinian officials said Arafat died on Thursday in a military hospital in Paris. They said Arafat was deemed clinically dead, but still attached to life support systems on the insistence of his wife, Suha.
“He is dead, but neither Arafat’s wife nor the Palestinian leadership is ready to announce this,” a PA official said. “The announcement could take place on Friday.”
…
Israeli officials confirmed that Arafat died on Thursday. They said Arafat was termed brain dead and physicians have stopped attending to him.
OK, fine, hold the celebration temporarily. But it could be today. Goddamn that cockroach.
Am I going to have to kill him myself?
He’s dead!!!
Well, wishes for Arafat’s death have so far gone unfulfilled tonight. The bugger has a pretty good record of surviving (all these old murderers do, don’t they?).
Regardless, I’ll get to see him die someday soon. And he’ll be outlived by the state of Israel — and by millions of Israelis who will live in peace and never give in to his pseudo-nation of murdering scumbags.
At least we know he’s suffering.
Arafat goes to the hospital for urgent surgery.
I’m thinking: surgical strike?
Champagne and cigars if this comes through.
Why does The New York Times consistently feel the need to give op-ed space to terrorists and their lawyers?
And why does this terrorist lawyer refer to Palestinians as “Christians and Muslims” more than once in his propaganda piece? Nice trick, I suppose, given the technical accuracy of the construction. Maybe I missed all of those Palestinian-Christians blowing up Jewish children, though.
I’m inclined to say that Reasoner Charles Paul Freund’s work on Arab pop culture is some of the only analysis of that region I find truly, deeply engaging — but that may just be because he’s one of the very few optimists on the subject.
Though, that may be reason enough.
Anyway, he has an interesting post over at Hit & Run about the Arab version of American Bandstand.
Extended snippet:
Libya, of all places, has been in the throes of celebrity fan culture. A young singer named Ayman al-Aathar has won this year’s Superstar competition…
The BBC reports that during the contest, posters of the singer were displayed throughout the capital. When al-Aathar and his last remaining competitor, a Palestinian singer, visited Libya to promote the final program, they were met at the airport by crowds of excited fans…
Even Gaddafi greeted the two singers, though he was concerned “that such events were distracting people from the on-going conflicts in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.”…
Much of the Arab world’s high culture has been subject to restriction within politically acceptable limits on the theory that nothing should be allowed to distract people from the Arabist agenda. It’s noteworthy that in the Arab world, as elsewhere, it is low, “vulgar” culture that is out of political control.
Read the whole thing.
The Times comes in for a lot of criticism on the right for its coverage of Israel — particularly for shying away from showing the hideousness of Palestinian evil.
So, it is worth noting when the Gray Lady does something right, as it did on Wednesday, by showing a casualty of a bus bombing that killed at least 16 Israelis on its front page.
Hillel Halkin, as is almost always the case, has a very interesting column in The New York Sun about the concept of “dual loyalty.” The hook, of course, is the Larry Franklin (Pentagon) case.
Halkin writes:
While the “dual loyalty” charge has generally been treated as an anti-Semitic canard both by Jews and non-Jews well disposed toward them, the matter is not quite so simple. An American Jew who takes his Jewishness seriously does not and cannot have the same attitude toward Israel that an Italian-American or Polish-American has toward Italy or Poland, even though this is the kind of comparison that has commonly been made in dismissing the notion that there is any problem.
Native-born Americans of Italian or Polish ancestry are not Poles or Italians; while they may feel a sentimental attachment to the country of their ancestors’ origin, this is rarely strong enough to make them care deeply about its fate. A strongly identified Jew, on the other hand, must care deeply about Israel’s fate, because Israel is the state of the Jewish people and a sense of Jewish peoplehood is an intrinsic part of being Jewish. A large number of American Jews feel attached to Israel in a way that no other American ethnic group feels attached to any other country, and it is not only false but also demeaning for Jews to deny this.
In this sense, “dual loyalty” is not an anti-Semitic libel but a fact of life. Many Jews do feel an allegiance to Israel that is as great as their allegiance to America, not because they do not love America — it would be hard for them not to love a place in which Jews have lived better and in a friendlier atmosphere than they have anywhere else in their long history — but because they love Israel, too.
Read the rest here.
Hillel Halkin, an Israeli liberal and defender of the security fence, finally takes a tour of the controversial barrier and writes about it for The New York Sun:
The [IDF] colonel claimed — and was able to back himself up with facts, figures, and anecdotes — that, although the Palestinians on its other side are often unhappy with the fence, they are the first to concede that it has in some ways improved their lives.
Now that terror attacks and suicide bombings — let alone ordinary crime like car theft and burglary — coming from Kalkilya into Israel have been reduced by the fence to practically zero, thus occasioning a parallel reduction of Israeli military incursions and curfews, life on the Palestinian side is more peaceful and economically prosperous than it has been for years.
The armed Intifada in the Kalkilya district is, at least for the moment, all but dead, in no small measure due to the fence, which has resulted in the saving not only of many Israeli lives but also of many Palestinian lives.
…
By imposing for the first time since 1967 a basic separation between Jews and Palestinians, it has taken a large step toward freeing them of each other. It is unfortunate that the world, which has been calling for such a separation for years, refuses to recognize its advantages now that it is happening.
Why simple separation is such an abomination to the Europeans is beyond me. Or maybe it’s not. But I’d prefer to think that it is.
Hillel Halkin, one of the most thoughtful commentators on Israel around (and a Gore-rooter in 2000), has written an excellent column in The New York Sun evaluating just what a John Kerry presidency might mean for Israel.
His verdict:
President Bush has turned out to be the most pro-Israel president in American history — and under far from conducive circumstances. Whereas Mr. Clinton backed a Jewish state that was, during most of his term, actively engaged in the peace process and in good standing in the world, Mr. Bush has stood behind a country reduced to semi-pariah status by a frighteningly successful world propaganda campaign against it.
…
The crucial question is how much less pro-Israel a Kerry presidency would be — and here there is really no knowing. Campaign statements and party platforms are not useful prognosticators. Moreover, even taken at face value, the Democratic Party’s Israel plank is not entirely reassuring. While it opposes both the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and a full Israeli withdrawal to the disadvantageous 1967 borders, it entirely omits to mention the disputed security fence — a not so subtle hint that Israel cannot expect to get Mr. Kerry’s support for the fence — in the past criticized by him for being “provocative and counter-productive” — as it has gotten Mr. Bush’s.
It would certainly not be good for Israel if a Kerry administration reverted to the Clinton administration’s attitude of viewing dictatorial Arab leaders in Damascus and Ramallah as fit negotiating partners for Israel whose needs and objectives count for as much as Jerusalem’s. And it would be even worse if those left-liberal forces in the Democratic Party that view Israel as do countries like France or Spain were to exert an influence over American foreign policy in the Middle East.
A Kerry administration might not necessarily be bad for Israel, but it could be. A second Bush administration would be better for Israel if it improved its relations with Europe, but it will be good even if it doesn’t. The conclusion? A bird in the Bush is worth two in the wrong Democratic hands.
Halkin does add, however, the point — easy to forget over here in America — that poor relations with Europe are no small matter in Israel. As they say, read the whole thing.
An Arabic version of “Star Search,” called “Superstar,” has a contestant this year who is a 28-year-old singer from the West Bank. According to The Jerusalem Post:
Huge screens will be placed in the main squares in Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Gaza City to encourage the people to support Ammar Hassan…
The Palestinians are planning huge celebrations if their representative wins.
Let me guess: There will be guns fired into the air.
An Iranian judo champion, it seems, is dropping out of the Olympics so as not to compete against an Israeli and give weight to the crazy idea that Israel exists. I’m glad the Iranian president said this and not me:
“The move by the Iranian world judo champion [Arash Miresmaeili] in protest to the massacre of Palestinian people by the Zionist regime will be recorded in the history of Iranian glories,” Khatami said, as reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency.
I’d hate to imply that Iran’s “glories” might be limited to, well, hating Israel.
But actually, there’s less (or more) to the protest excuse than meets the eye, according to the lastest news reports:
Officially, Miraesmaeili was listed as a non-starter because he weighed in above the 66 kilogram-limit for his class.
Ouch. Nailed by the “no fatties” rule.
Al Jazeera carries this article, which says that Jews in Israel heavily favor George Bush over John Kerry. Gee… Wonder why.
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