Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Hussaeini was born on 24 August 1929 in Cairo**, his father a textile merchant who was a Palestinian with some Egyptian ancestry, his mother from an old Palestinian family in Jerusalem. She died when Yasir, as he was called, was five years old, and he was sent to live with his maternal uncle in Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, then under British rule, which the Palestinians were opposing.

He has revealed little about his childhood, but one of his earliest memories is of British soldiers breaking into his uncle's house after midnight, beating members of the family and smashing furniture.

After four years in Jerusalem, his father brought him back to Cairo, where an older sister took care of him and his siblings. Arafat never mentions his father, who was not close to his children. Arafat did not attend his father's funeral in 1952.

In Cairo, before he was seventeen Arafat was smuggling arms to Palestine to be used against the British and the Jews. At nineteen, during the war between the Jews and the Arab states, Arafat left his studies at the University of Faud I (later Cairo University) to fight against the Jews in the Gaza area.

The defeat of the Arabs and the establishment of the state of Israel left him in such despair that he applied for a visa to study at the University of Texas. Recovering his spirits and retaining his dream of an independent Palestinian homeland, he returned to Faud University to major in engineering but spent most of his time as leader of the Palestinian students.

He did manage to get his degree in 1956, worked briefly in Egypt, then resettled in Kuwait, first being employed in the department of public works, next successfully running his own contracting firm. He spent all his spare time in political activities, to which he contributed most of the profits.

In 1958 he and his friends founded Al-Fatah, an underground network of secret cells, which in 1959 began to publish a magazine advocating armed struggle against Israel. At the end of 1964 Arafat left Kuwait to become a full-time revolutionary, organising Fatah raids into Israel from Jordan.

It was also in 1964 that the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established, under the sponsorship of the Arab League, bringing together a number of groups all working to free Palestine for the Palestinians. The Arab states favoured a more conciliatory policy than Fatah's, but after their defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, Fatah emerged from the underground as the most powerful and best organised of the groups making up the PLO, took over that organisation in 1969 when Arafat became the chairman of the PLO executive committee. The PLO was no longer to be something of a puppet organisation of the Arab states, wanting to keep the Palestinians quiet, but an independent nationalist organisation, based in Jordan.

Arafat developed the PLO into a state within the state of Jordan with its own military forces. King Hussein of Jordan, disturbed by its guerrilla attacks on Israel and other violent methods, eventually expelled the PLO from his country. Arafat sought to build a similar organisation in Lebanon, but this time was driven out by an Israeli military invasion. He kept the organization alive, however, by moving its headquarters to Tunis.

He was a survivor himself, escaping death in an airplane crash, surviving any assassination attempts by Israeli intelligence agencies, and recovering from a serious stroke. His life was one of constant travel, moving from country to country to promote the Palestinian cause, always keeping his movements secret, as he did any details about his private life. Even his marriage to Suha Tawil, a Palestinian half his age, was kept secret for some fifteen months. She had already begun significant humanitarian activities at home, especially for disabled children, but the prominent part she took in the public events in Oslo was a surprise for many Arafat-watchers. Since then, their daughter, Zahwa, named after Arafat's mother, has been born.

The period after the expulsion from Lebanon was a low time for Arafat and the PLO. Then the intifada (shaking) protest movement strengthened Arafat by directing world attention to the difficult plight of the Palestinians.

In 1988 came a change of policy. In a speech at a special United Nations session held in Geneva, Switzerland, Arafat declared that the PLO renounced terrorism and supported "the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to live in peace and security, including the state of Palestine, Israel and other neighbours".

The prospects for a peace agreement with Israel now brightened. After a setback when the PLO supported Iraq in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the peace process began in earnest, leading to the Oslo Accords of 1993. This agreement included provision for the Palestinian elections which took place in early 1996, and Arafat was elected President of the Palestine Authority.[...]

When the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in Israel in 1996, the peace process slowed down considerably. [...]

Since there is no biographical description of Yasser Arafat in Les Prix Nobel for 1994, this account was written by the editor of Nobel Lectures, Peace 1991-1995, published by World Scientific Publishing Co. From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1991-1995, Editor Irwin Abrams, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1999

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.

** The place of Arafat's birth is disputed. Besides Cairo, other sources mention Jerusalem and Gaza as his birthplace.

Comment: For years, defamatory attacks have been launched against Yasser Arafat, generally accusing him of all kinds of evil deeds including stealing vast sums of money from the Palestinian people, moral depravity, and other crimes and misdemeanors too numerous to mention. As it is in all times, propagandists seek the blacken the names of those whose moral right threatens their greed for power and plunder.

Please notice in the above biography the comment that, even when he was in "private life," successfully running his own contracting firm, Yasser Arafat contributed most of the profits to the furtherance of the Palestinian cause.

Certainly, the Zionists, seeing Arafat as an obstacle to their hegemony over the Palestinian lands, regard Arafat as a "tool of Satan, a "hardened criminal," and want everyone to see him as a "cruel tyrant," a pestilence and certainly insane with his own drive for power.

But let us consider, for one moment, his ultimate submission to the peace process. This decision has been criticized by both sides. The Zionists say it is just a "cunning maneuver" designed to hide Arafat's true evil intentions against them. Many Palestinians saw it as proof of "feebleness" if not downright cowardice.

What seems to be true is that Arafat was not the kind of man who was attached to his own "honors" or benefits. His personal self-importance seems to have been of little concern to him. His main interests seem to have been to minimize the damage done to the Palestiinian people. By seeking peace, Arafat removed himself from being the foe against whom the Zionists could rage and make war. By depriving them of their concrete objective, Arafat destroyed the main raison d'etre of the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people.

The Zionists, not wishing to be deprived of their target, the lightning rod for their destruction of the legal owners of the land they renamed Israel, rejected outright Arafat's submission, declaring it to be a further example of his "double dealing." The Zionist propaganda machine raced into action declaring that Arafat's only motive for engaging in the peace process was to render his person and property - his vast ill-gotten gains - immune from seizure, and to provide a cloak for his nefarious schemes.

Certainly, rogue elements of the Palestinian resistance continued to attack Israelis after Arafat's orders to stand down, but for the most part, it is obvious that "suicide bombings" became a standard part of the Zionist "false-flag" approach to blackening the name of Yasser Arafat.

The fact is that Arafat's decisions were not so much due to his personal preferences that they were the necessary response to his desperate attempts to preserve the lives of his people - those people who saw that he truly had their best interests at heart.

Arafat's private character was subsumed in the public role he was obliged to play. He seems to have identified himself so closely with his people's cause that, as the symbolic representative of the Palestinians, his only life was that of servant to the NEEDS of the people.

And still, as we can see from his late attempt to have some little life of his own, marriage and a child, he was still tragically human. What is so bizarre is that even Arafat's austerity in his confinement, the fact that his wife and child were sent to safety, is criticized and seen as "shameful."

When we consider the forces against which Arafat fought, adversaries of great evil and cunning, fanaticism, overweening ambition, and just plain ignorance, Arafat committed the greatest crime of all; a crime which it was impossible to forgive: he was a tolerant man with a just grievance, who attempted to find a middle way of peace. It is by his moral rightness rather than any taint of self-interest - which would have rendered Arafat subject to being "bought off" - that brought down the fires of the Zionist Inquisition on his head.

Based on our own experiences with COINTELPRO and the "propaganda machine", we can see that the confusion surrounding the person of Arafat must be deliberate. One thing, however, is beyond doubt: by his life, by his actions, by his choices, Arafat displayed a devotion to his people and his cause seldom encountered in this world.

All evidence concerning the morality - or rather the immorality - of Yasser Arafat is worth considering carefully since it is precisely on these grounds that he is most viciously attacked and denigrated.

Since the essential value of his life's work must be judged by the effect it produces in the lives of his followers, certainly, the Zionists can hardly proclaim him to have been charitable and virtuous or that his followers were devoted and loyal. This is why they have spent so much time defaming him with charges of hyporcrisy and double-dealing, why so much effort has gone into fake Palestinian suicide bombings, and other false flag operations blamed on the Palestinians, and even Arafat directly.

But as far as Arafat himself is concerned, his behavior in the face of the extreme hardships he suffered, in the face of certain death, forever frees him from any taint of hypocrisy.

In the end, it is hard to decide which element of the story of Yasser Arafat is most significant: his undeniable heroism, or the moral bankruptcy displayed by the rest of the world.

May he rest in the peace that he worked for on Earth.

As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational "terrorists" who have no point of view worth listening to. Our position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real grievance: their homeland for over a thousand years was taken, without their consent and mostly by force, during the creation of the state of Israel. And all subsequent crimes - on both sides - inevitably follow from this original injustice. [...]

The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs' inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today. [...]

What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).

The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists' intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years)

In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn't matter. The Arabs' opposition to Zionism wasn't based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.

One further point: being Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930's and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation.

But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic "land without people for a people without land" was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the problem, as we shall see. [...]

We hear lots about Palestinian terrorism. How about the Israeli record?

"The record of Israeli terrorism goes back to the origins of the state - indeed, long before - including the massacre of 250 civilians and brutal expulsion of seventy thousand others from Lydda and Ramle in July 1948; the massacre of hundreds of others at the undefended village of Doueimah near Hebron in October 1948;...the slaughters in Quibya, Kafr Kassem, and a string of other assassinated villages; the expulsion of thousands of Bedouins from the demilitarized zones shortly after the 1948 war and thousands more from northeastern Sinai in the early 1970's, their villages destroyed, to open the region for Jewish settlement; and on, and on." Noam Chomsky, "Blaming The Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens.

"However much one laments and even wishes somehow to atone for the loss of life and suffering visited upon innocents because of Palestinian violence, there is still the need, I think, also to say that no national movement has been so unfairly penalized, defamed, and subjected to disproportionate retaliation for its sins as has the Palestinian.

The Israeli policy of punitive counterattacks (or state terrorism) seems to be to try to kill anywhere from 50 to 100 Arabs for every Jewish fatality. The devastation of Lebanese refugee camps, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, and orphanages; the summary arrests, deportations, house destructions, maimings, and torture of Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. These, and the number of Palestinian fatalities, the scale of material loss, the physical, political and psychological deprivations, have tremendously exceeded the damage done by Palestinians to Israelis." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."

The U.S. Government and media bias on terrorism in the Middle East

"It is simply extraordinary and without precedent that Israel's history, its record - from the fact that it..is a state built on conquest, that it has invaded surrounding countries, bombed and destroyed at will, to the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory against international law - is simply never cited, never subjected to scrutiny in the U.S. media or in official discourse...never addressed as playing any role at all in provoking 'Islamic terror.'" Edward Said in "The Progressive." May 30, 1996.

"Albert Einstein - "'I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State,with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain'...

"Professor Erich Fromm, a noted Jewish writer and thinker, [stated]...'In general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property, and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse...I believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the Arabs - not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitants of Palestine'...

"Nathan Chofshi - 'Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred...It is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then will the old and young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought here from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed we put up houses of education, charity, and prayer, while we babble and rave about being the "People of the Book" and the "light of the nations"'...

"In an article published in the Washington Post of 3 October 1978, Rabbi Hirsch (of Jerusalem) is reported to have declared: 'The 12th principle of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will gather the Jewish exiled who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world. Zionism is diametrically opposed to Judaism. Zionism wishes to define the Jewish people as a nationalistic entity. The Zionists say, in effect, 'Look here, God. We do not like exile. Take us back, and if you don't, we'll just roll up our sleeves and take ourselves back.' 'The Rabbi continues: 'This, of course, is heresy. The Jewish people are charged by Divine oath not to force themselves back to the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there.'" Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."

"A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression [is] not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, [is] worth a great deal even though the attempt should fail." Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, quoted in "Like All The Nations?", ed. Brinner & Rischin. [...]

"Since the 1980's,.....Israeli scholars [have] concurred with their Palestinian counterparts that Zionism was...carried out as a pure colonialist act against the local population: a mixture of exploitation and expropriation...

"They were motivated to present a revisionist point of view to a large extent by the declassification of relevant archival material in Israel, Britain and the United States. [For example,]...

Challenging the Myth of Annihilation - The new historiographical picture is a fundamental challenge to the official history that says the Jewish community faced possible annihilation on the eve of the 1948 war. Archival documents expose a fragmented Arab world wrought by dismay and confusion and a Palestinian community that possessed no military ability with which to frighten the Jews...

The Jewish military advantage was translated into an act of mass expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian population. The Israeli forces, apart from rare exceptions, expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres [of civilians] as was the case in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa'sa, Ein Zietun and other places. Expulsion also was accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation [of Palestinian land and property]...

The Myth of Arab Intransigence - [The U.N.] convened a peace conference in Lausanne, Switzerland in the spring of 1949. Before the conference, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution that in effect replaced the November 1947 partition resolution. This new resolution, Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, accepted [U.N. Mediator] Bernadotte's triangular basis for a comprehensive peace: an unconditional return of all the refugees to their homes, the internationalization of Jerusalem, and the partitioning of Palestine into two states.

This time, several Arab states and various representatives of the Palestinians accepted this as a basis for negotiations, as did the United States, which was running the show at Lausanne...

Prime Minister David Ben Gurion strongly opposed any peace negotiations along these lines...The only reason he was willing to allow Israel to participate in the peace conference was his fear of an angry American reaction...

The road to peace was not taken due to Israeli, not Arab, intransigence.

Conclusions - The new Israeli historians...wish to rectify what their research reveals as past evils...There was a high price exacted in creating a Jewish state in Palestine. And there were victims, the plight of whom still fuels the fire of conflict in Palestine." Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in "The Link", January, 1998.

"It is no longer my country" "For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished...I can't bear to see it anymore, the injustice that is done to the Arabs, to the Beduins. All kinds of scum coming from America and as soon as they get off the plane taking over lands in the territories and claiming it for their own...I can't do anything to change it. I can only go away and let the whole lot go to hell without me." Israeli actress (and household name) Rivka Mitchell, quoted in Israeli peace movement periodical, "The Other Israel", August 1998. [...]

Israel has sought peace with its Arab neighbor states but has steadfastly refused to negotiate with Palestinians directly, until the last few years. Why?

"My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of 'Palestine', you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and not the Land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who have lived here before you came. Only if it is the Land of Israel do you have a right to live in Ein Hahoresh and in Deganiyah B. If it is not your country, your fatherland, the country of your ancestors and of your sons, then what are you doing here? You came to another people's homeland, as they claim, you expelled them and you have taken their land." Menahem Begin, quoted in Noam Chomsky's "Peace in the Middle East?" [...]

"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs, We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?" David Ben-Gurion, quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nathan Goldman, former president of the World Jewish Congress. [...]

"Before [the Palestinians] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived...We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home." Israeli leader Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel" [...]

"In June 1982 Israel again invaded Lebanon, and it used aerial bombardment to destroy entire camps of Palestinian Arab refugees, By these means Israel killed 20,000 persons, mostly civilians...Israel claimed self-defense for its invasion, but the lack of PLO attacks into Israel during the previous year made that claim dubious...The [UN] Security Council demanded 'that Israel withdraw all its military forces forthwith and unconditionally to the internationally recognized boundaries of Lebanon'... [...]

"Amnesty International also observed that, when brought to trial, most Palestinian detainees arrested for 'terrorist' offenses and tortured by the Shin Bet (General Security Services) 'have been accused of offenses such as membership in unlawful associations or throwing stones. They have also included prisoners of conscience such as people arrested solely for raising a flag.' On a related point, Haaretz columnist B. Michael noted that there wasn't a single recorded case in which the Shin Bet's use of torture was prompted by a 'ticking bomb' scenario: 'In every instance of a Palestinian lodging formal complaint about torture, the Shin Bet justified its use in order to extract a confession about something that had already happened, not about something that was about to happen.'" Norman Finkelstein, "The Rise and Fall of Palestine." [...]

"There is clearly no need to justify the Zionist dream, the desire for relief from Jewish suffering...The trouble with Zionism starts when it lands, so to speak, in Palestine. What has to be justified is the injustice to the Palestinians caused by Zionism, the dispossession and victimization of a whole people. There is clearly a wrong here, a wrong which creates the need for justification... [...]

The aim of Zionism is the restoration of a Jewish sovereignty to its status 2,000 years ago. Zionism does not advocate an overhauling of the total world situation in the same way. It does not advocate the restoration of the Roman empire...[In addition,] Palestinians have claimed descent from the ancient inhabitants of Palestine 3,000 years ago!... [...]

It was easy to make the Palestinians pay for 2,000 years of persecution. The Palestinians, who have felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical oppressors of the Jews. They did not put Jews into ghettos and force them to wear yellow stars. They did not plan holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak and defenseless in the face of real military might, so they were the ideal victims for an abstract revenge.... [...]

Unlike the situation of Jews persecuted for being Jews, Israelis are at war with the Arab world because they have committed the sin of colonialism, not because of their Jewish identity...

Presenting the world as naturally unjust, and oppression as nature's way, has always been the first refuge of those who want to preserve their privileges...The need to justify Zionism, and the lack of other defenses, has made it part of the Israeli world view... In Israel, one common outcome is cynicism, for which Israelis have become famous...

Israelis seem to be haunted by a curse. It is the curse of the original sin against the native Arabs. How can Israel be discussed without recalling the dispossession and exclusion of non-Jews? This is the most basic fact about Israel, and no understanding of Israeli reality is possible without it. The original sin haunts and torments Israelis; it marks everything and taints everybody. Its memory poisons the blood and marks every moment of existence." Israeli author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahami, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel." [...]

As we have seen, the root cause of the Palestine-Israel conflict is clear. During the 1948 war, 750,000 Palestinians fled in terror or were actively expelled from their ancestral homeland and turned into refugees. The state of Israel then refused to allow them to return and either destroyed their villages entirely or expropriated their land, orchards, houses, businesses and personal possessions for the use of the Jewish population. This was the birth of the state of Israel. [...]

Any criticism of Israel is traditionally seen by American Jews as harmful to the Jewish people, even if the criticism is true. But "my people, right or wrong, my people" is no different than "my country, right or wrong, my country". Once we start down the slippery slope where the ends justify the means we have left behind any claim to morality. Along with millions of other American Jews unaffiliated with the major U.S. Jewish organizations, we are outraged at the Israeli government's ongoing oppression of the Palestinians and feel that it has been the ruination of the high moral standing of the Jewish people. [...]

The persecution of the Jews for centuries in Europe was the worst of many stains on the European record, and the Zionists' desire for a place of sanctuary is certainly understandable. Like all other colonial enterprises, however, Zionism was based on the total disregard of the rights of indigenous inhabitants. As such, it is morally indefensible. And, as previously stated, all subsequent crimes - and there have been many on both sides - inevitably follow from this original injustice to the Palestinians.

Comment: In other words, Arafat's willingness to seek peace with the Zionists was a stupendous act of compromise. And just for the sake of tossing a few additional things into the pot to think about, let us quote the Casssiopaen Transcrips on the subject of Arafat:

Q: (L) What realm or area did Jesus come from before he was born into the earth in the body of Jesus of Nazareth?

A: 5th density. ...

Q: (L) Had he had any other incarnations in other human bodies on planet earth?

A: Yes. 1009.

Q: (L) Was Joshua, the right hand man of Moses an incarnation of Jesus?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) Are there any other incarnations of Jesus with which we would be familiar if you were to name them?

A: Yes. Socrates. ...

Q: (L) Are there any fifth density souls on the earth today or any of recent times we would recognize?

A: Yes. Arafat. Sadat. Pope John V. [...]

Q: (L) Were any of the descendants of Jesus famous individuals that we would know.

A: Yes. Yassar Arafat. Churchill. [...]

Q: (L) On a couple of occasions it has been mentioned that Yasser Arafat was a fifth density soul and that he was a descendant of Jesus of Nazareth. What is there about him that demonstrates these qualities or these genetics?

A: Have you not seen? Imagine what it would be like to be Yasser Arafat. Look at your perception. What is he doing now?

Q: (L) Well the pro-Jewish point of view is not favorable to him.

A: Well, what you describe as pro anything is an obsession. And, as we know, obsession blocks knowledge which in turn blocks the ability to protect oneself against negative occurrences. Not a good idea. If you were following circumstances, Yasser Arafat is now trying to take the world upon his shoulders by making peace with the Israelis who have been enemies for a very long time. And, therefore, he is now a peace maker and knowledge dispenser.

Gives new meaning to an alleged saying of Jesus:

Matthew 23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 23:38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

Which reminds us of another exchange with the C's:

09-24-01
Q: (L) What is going to happen with the Middle-eastern situation; this Afghanistan or whatever?

A: Herding of population to much finer order of control.

Q: (L) What is the purpose of this control; this increasing control.

A: Preparation for war in Palestine.

Q: (L) But nobody has said anything about having a war in Palestine. They're all talking about having a war in Afghanistan. How does Palestine fit in here?

A: It is the ultimate objective of Israel.

Q: (L) Why would they want to have war in their own country? Well, aside from the fact that they've been having a war in their own country for a long time. I guess they want to bring it to a final conclusion. What is going to be the result of this plan?

A: Destruction of Jews.

Q: (L) Well obviously this is not what THEY are planning, is it?

A: No.

Which brings us to:

Revelation: 13:9 If any man have an ear, let him hear.

13:10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

"Now the road is open, and we are telling the Israelis, welcome - if you want to implement the road map, then implement it. It was the path of President Arafat, and we will go on the path of Arafat."

Nabil Shaath, Palestinian foreign minister

"The next phase will not be the same without Yasser Arafat. He was the only one who understood the importance of national unity and there will never be a Palestinian leader willing to bear the consequences of saying 'no' to the Americans and Israel."

Jibril Rajoub, Arafat aide

"Arafat was the embodiment of the Palestinian question and his absence will certainly be greatly felt. But to all those who think that his passing away will open all the doors for peace, we say that this is false and that the answers never really lay with the Palestinians as much as with the Israelis."

Hossam Zaki, spokesman for the Arab League

"Both Israelis and Palestinians, and the friends of both peoples throughout the world, must make even greater efforts to bring about the peaceful realisation of the Palestinian right of self-determination,"
Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general

"The values and high virtues that Arafat embodied during his struggle for the Palestinian cause will inspire the Palestinian people so that they preserve their cohesion and unity and pursue their path to win back their national, legitimate and eternal rights".

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisian president

"Although he has not lived to see the birth of a Palestinian state, we will work with the Palestinian authorities and the international community to contribute to realising the aspirations of the Palestinian people."

Ben Bot, Dutch foreign minister, in a statement issued on behalf of the European Union

"The best tribute to President Arafat's memory will be to intensify our efforts to establish a peaceful and viable state of Palestine as foreseen by the road map. With the passing of Yasser Arafat the Palestinian people have lost their historic leader. More than any other, his life stands for the tragic and turbulent history of the Middle East. A period of grief starts for all Palestinians."

Javier Solana, European Union foreign policy chief

"Yasser Arafat strove during his lifetime to lead the Palestinians to independence and establish a sovereign, viable Palestinian state. It was not granted to Yasser Arafat to complete his life's work."

Gerhard Schröder, German chancellor

"It is with emotion that I have learned of the death of President Yasser Arafat. France, like its partners in the European Union, will maintain, firmly and with conviction, its commitment to two states ... living side by side in peace and security. The road map, approved by Yasser Arafat, opens up that prospect."

Jacques Chirac, French president

"Arafat gave hope to millions of the downtrodden and despised, by instilling in them the knowledge and consciousness that despite current difficulties, they hold the gift of freedom in their hands."
Thabo Mbeki, South African president

"Yasser Arafat spent his entire life for the Palestinian cause. We pray that his mission is completed after his death."
Junichiro Koizumi, Japanese prime minister

"The Holy See joins the pain of the Palestinian people for the passing of President Yasser Arafat. He was a leader of great charisma who loved his people and tried to guide them towards national independence. May God in His mercy receive the soul of the illustrious deceased and grant peace to the Holy Land with two independent and sovereign states in full reconciliation between them."

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, Vatican spokesman

"Could I express the British government's deepest sympathy and condolences for the death of President Arafat. He was a towering figure not only in the Palestinian world but in the Arab world, and it is difficult to imagine the Middle East without him."

Jack Straw, foreign secretary

"Throughout a lifetime in struggle, President Yasser Arafat has not only been a father to the Palestinian people, he has been an inspiration to people throughout the world as he led the struggle for a sovereign Palestinian state ... The most fitting legacy to President Arafat is for the international community to act immediately to ensure that the Israeli government removes its troops and illegal settlements from Palestinian lands and a return to the negotiating table."

Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin leader

Comment: Glowing and deserved praise, yet disingenuous given that if these same leaders had been as supportive of Arafat in life as they now seem to be in death most of the decent people of the world may not now be mourning his demise.

Yet we must be grateful for small mercies we suppose. Contrast these comments of world leaders with the words and deeds of the Israelis towards Arafat and the Palestinian people. Sharon has finally achieved his long held goal, he has liquidated Arafat and opened the door to the achievement of his other long-held goal, the destruction of the Palestinian people en masse, and with them the ordinary Jews of Israel.

Yasser Arafat is one of the generation of great leaders who arose after World War II. The stature of a leader is not simply determined by the size of his achievements, but also by the size of the obstacles he had to overcome. In this respect, Arafat has no competitor in the world: No leader of our generation has been called upon to face such cruel tests and to cope with such adversities as he.

When he appeared on the stage of history, at the end of the 1950s, his people was close to oblivion. The name Palestine had been eradicated from the map. Israel, Jordan and Egypt had divided the country between them. The world had decided that there was no Palestinian national entity, that the Palestinian people had ceased to exist, like the American Indian nations — if, indeed, it had ever existed at all.

Almost all Palestinians lived under dictatorships, most of them in humiliating circumstances.

When Yasser Arafat, then a young engineer in Kuwait, founded the “Palestinian Liberation Movement” (whose initials in reverse spell Fatah), he meant first of all liberation from the various Arab leaders, so as to enable the Palestinian people to speak and act for itself. That was the first revolution of the man who made at least three great revolutions during his life.

It was a dangerous one. Fatah had no independent base. It had to function in the Arab countries, often under merciless persecutions.

Those years were a formative influence on Arafat’s characteristic style. He had to maneuver between the Arab leaders, play them off against each other, use tricks, half-truths and double-talk, evade traps and circumvent obstacles.

He became a world champion of manipulation. This way he saved the liberation movement from many dangers in the days of its weakness, until it could become a potent force.

Gamal Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian ruler got worried about the emerging independent Palestinian force. To choke it off in time, he created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and put at its head a Palestinian political mercenary, Ahmed Shukeiri. But after the shameful rout of the Arab armies in 1967 and the electrifying victory of the Fatah fighters against the Israeli Army in the battle of Karameh (March 1968), Fatah took over the PLO and Arafat became the undisputed leader of the entire Palestinian struggle.

In the mid-1960s, Yasser Arafat started his second revolution: The armed struggle against Israel. The pretension was almost ludicrous: A handful of poorly armed guerrillas, not very efficient at that, against the might of the Israeli Army. And not in a country of impassable jungles and mountain ranges, but in a small, flat, densely populated stretch of land. But this struggle put the Palestinian cause on the world agenda. The PLO was recognized as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people”, and thirty years ago Yasser Arafat was invited to make his historic speech to the UN General Assembly: “In one hand I carry a gun, in the other an olive branch.”

Immediately after the October 1973 Yom Kippur, Arafat started his third revolution: He decided that the PLO must reach an agreement with Israel and be content with a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. That confronted him with a historic challenge: To convince the Palestinian people to give up its historic position denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and to be satisfied with a mere 22 percent of the territory of pre-1948 Palestine. Without being stated explicitly, it was clear that this also entails the giving up of the unlimited return of the refugees to the territory of Israel. He started to work to this end in his own characteristic way, with persistence, patience and ploys, two steps forwards, one step back.

Historic justice demands that it be clearly stated that it was Arafat who envisioned the Oslo agreement at a time when both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres still stuck to the hopeless “Jordanian option”, the belief that one could ignore the Palestinian people and give the West Bank back to Jordan. Of the three recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, Arafat deserved it most. From 1974 on, I was an eyewitness to the immense effort invested by Arafat in order to get his people to accept his new approach. Step by step it was adopted by the Palestinian National Council, the Parliament in exile, first by a resolution to set up a Palestinian authority “in every part of Palestine liberated from Israel”, and, in 1988, to set up a Palestinian state next to Israel.

Arafat’s (and Israeli) tragedy was that whenever he came closer to a peaceful solution, the Israeli governments withdrew from it. His minimum terms were clear and remained unchanged from 1974 on: A Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

I respected Arafat as a Palestinian patriot, I admired him for his courage, I understood the constraints he was working under, I saw in him the partner for building a new future for our two peoples.

Just imagine if someone suggested that the destruction of a couple of towers in New York, and a single wall in the Pentagon, and the death of some 3,000 people, not all of them Americans, do not deserve the anger of 260 million Americans. There are more people killed in accidents and crimes in a day. An earthquake or a hurricane could have caused similar destruction and loss of lives.

What is the big deal? The buildings can be easily rebuilt. The families of the victims and the owners of affected buildings can be nicely compensated. Life goes on. End of story.

But no. America was rightly upset, rightly angry, and rightly resolute on punishing those responsible for mass-murdering Americans and insulting America. We do disagree on why this happened, what is the appropriate response, and who should be punished. But we certainly agree that America was attacked and insulted and must respond in kind. Punishment should match the crime.

Similarly, how could any just person suggest that the uprooting of millions from their ancestors’ homeland can be easily compensated somewhere else? I understand that in America people move around. Except for Natives, all came from other continents. In the Old World, it was different. A land where my ancestors were buried, my history was made, my culture is based can’t be easily replaced. Given the choice, an old family house in a poor village is a world better than a luxurious Manhattan apartment or a Swiss chalet.

If the Jews of the world feel the same toward a homeland they left four thousands years ago, what of the Palestinians who were kicked out only forty or fifty years ago and have no place they could call home.

But if that is the case for the Palestinians, what is the stake for Muslims and Arabs? I could ask the same question of Americans. What was in it for the West to intervene on behalf of Christians of East Timor, Sudan and the old Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?

In Islam, we are a big family, all for one, one for all. Fellow Muslims are regarded as brothers and sisters. What affects one in Chechnya or Kashmir hurts us all.

In addition, Palestine is a holy land. Jerusalem is as holy to Muslims as it is to Christians and Jews.

For us, Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, are an extended family. Of course, we care about the schoolgirl who was shot twenty times by an Israeli solider who wasn’t justly punished for it. Surely, we feel bitter about what happened to the little boy who was targeted by Israeli soldiers and died in his father’s hands. You bet we feel the pain of hundreds of families, whose homes were destroyed in days by Israeli bulldozers as a collective punishment.

We don’t need to be Arabs or Muslims to feel sorry for them, any decent human should, as Americans, rightly, expected us to feel about the victims of 9/11. The world felt the pain of both Americans and Palestinians and demanded justice. The difference is: America is a nuclear superpower, and can take justice into its hands, never mind the UN, world law and opinion. The Palestinians can only hit back against the sophisticated, overwhelming Israeli killing machines, with stones, small fire, and human bombers.

Now that our stand, as Muslims and Arabs, is, hopefully, clear, let me explain why we blame America, more than Israel, for our pain. First, America was the first in the world to recognize Israel. It took President Truman 10 minutes to do so in 1948. On the other hand, it took generations for the US to recognize any Palestinian representative. The US was the last country in the world, other than Israel, to recognize the PLO, years after the UN recognized it as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians.

For fifty years now, the US chose to blindly support Israel against the Arabs. It vetoed tens of Security Council resolutions. It voted, mostly alone, with Israel some eighty UN resolutions. It supplied Israel with hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and sophisticated arms and guaranteed loans. In short, by providing the bloodline to an otherwise failed state, the US is more than a partner in crime. It is the mother ship.

MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 10 November: Yasser Arafat has been all but legally dead for many days now. He has been kept 'between life and death' in a very 'complex situation' (to use the crafty words that have come from key officials) for financial and political reasons rather than for medical reasons. A mad scramble has been underway by various parties -- including his 'wife' Suha as well as his U.S. and Israeli-approved successors -- to get as much of the money and power as they can manage at this critical time. Much more important however to the Israelis and the Americans -- and to the Europeans as well -- is what they can all manipulate to happen now with Arafat finally eliminated.

By a preponderance of the circumstances and the evidence Yasser Arafat has effectively been stealth assassinated by the Israelis as MER first reported and explained last Saturday. His long-time personal physician has been removed from the scene after announcing he had been blood poisoned. The French 'military doctors' have been ordered not to reveal the cause of death and the details of what has happened to Arafat. Most others not playing ball with the the U.S. and Israeli approved 'new Palestinian leadership' have been pushed aside in the past few days. The widely despised 'Palestinian Foreign Minister', Nabil Sha'ath, long working with Israel and the U.S., was put in front of the cameras yesterday to attempt to publicly discredit the death by poisoning verdict and to help confuse and coverup as much as can be managed before the funeral and burial.

The Israelis never really thought Arafat would be buried in relatively obscurity in 'a family plot' in Gaza -- though they pushed for it thinking they just might manage that final insult on top of everything else. They knew all along the burial would likely take place at the Muqata in Ramallah and have thus appeared to give their reluctant 'permission' with all kinds of secret restrictions worked out with their new team of 'Palestinian leaders' -- Sha'ath, Abu Mazen, and Abu Ala. They are working now to undermine the possibility that Arafat might first be taken to Arab League Headquarters in Cairo. And 'negotiations' over just what is now going to happen continue to hold up the official announcement of Arafat's death even as a senior 'approved' Muslim Cleric has been rushed to Paris to give a kind of religious OK to 'pulling the plug' as soon as the crucial political details are finally approved by all parties, including Israel and the Americans.

Veteran Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat has been laid to rest at his battered Muqata compound in the West Bank town of Ram Allah.

Shortly after his coffin was lowered on Friday into a marble-and-stone grave, the crowd began a prayer joined by Palestinian leaders, including newly appointed Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) chairman Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmad Quraya.

Arafat had been due to lie in state ahead of the burial, but the programme was disrupted by chaos at the compound, where thousands of mourners surged past security forces.

"He was buried ahead of time because of the emotion of the crowd. We had no choice," one official said.

Wounded by gunfire

Before the burial, thousands of mourners rushed to the coffin and police fired into the air to disperse the crowd that held up the removal of his body from the aircraft that flew in from Egypt.

Medics said four people were wounded by gunfire in the
crowd.

Arafat, who became a Third World liberation icon and won a Nobel Peace Prize, died at the age 75 in a French hospital on Thursday from an undetermined cause.

The chaotic scenes in Ram Allah were in sharp contrast to a funeral service earlier at a Cairo air base, where the public was kept away and even some world leaders were mistakenly shut out by overzealous Egyptian guards.

A few kilometres from the burial site, an explosion in a car
killed two people in a reminder of the continuing violence in the region.

After two weeks, the medical databases at Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart must be crammed with information about Arafat's condition - scans, biopsies, reams of blood test results - that would have defined for doctors within minutes the condition of Arafat's kidneys, liver and lungs. But these remain top secret.

The hospital officially announced Arafat's death in a terse statement delivered by the hospital spokesman, General Christian Estripeau, who told reporters there would be no details released on tests, the cause of death or whether there would be an autopsy. When reached by telephone later on Thursday, Estripeau said there would be "no information."

In fact, all the information about Arafat's sudden death that has dribbled out comes from his Palestinian aides, who provide facts through a non-medical and highly politicized filter. These few misshapen puzzle pieces are insufficient to create a picture of what went wrong.

As their beloved leader deteriorated in the past two days, Arafat's aides announced only that he was in a deep coma on life-support machines, having suffered a brain hemorrhage - a stroke caused by bleeding into the brain. But such a fatal event can have many underlying causes, and does not explain why Arafat's health had deteriorated so precipitously in the past month.

In France, a patient or the next-of-kin must give permission for doctors to release information. In his carefully worded statements, Estripeau suggested that this permission was not given: "It is not up to the defense forces' health services to reveal information given to the family," he said today.

Strokes are generally sudden affairs, and Arafat's was almost certainly a secondary result of his underlying and undisclosed illness. At the time of his medical evacuation to Paris two weeks ago, aides revealed that he was suffering from a low platelet count and had undergone a platelet transfusion. Since platelets are involved in blood clotting, patients with low platelet counts are predisposed to brain hemorrhages, and this may have contributed to Arafat's death.

But low platelet counts in the blood are a common finding in a wide range of illnesses, including severe infections, liver disease, end-stage cancer, and even AIDS. And doctors made no mention of a hemorrhage until Wednesday, suggesting that it was a recent event.

On Nov. 4, doctors and aides announced that Arafat was being transferred to the intensive care unit because his condition had deteriorated. No mention of a brain hemorrhage was made at that time, although such bleeding would have been immediately obvious on a CAT scan.

It is accepted medical practice throughout the world that patients or their families have the right to keep medical information private. In France, politicians and celebrities frequently keep their medical lives secret, but in many countries, such as the United States, public figures are expected to reveal private health information and hospitals tend to encourage it.

"There can be tension between what the public would like to know and what the family feels comfortable talking about, but our policy is that the privacy of the patient and the patient's family comes first and is paramount," said Myrna Manners, spokesperson for the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which has treated many world leaders including the Shah of Iran.

But, she added: "Rather than have rumors or speculation run amok, we feel its better to have a clear process and a bit of information. We encourage that."

There are various reasons why Arafat's inner circle would want to keep the cause of his death a secret. Perhaps he suffered from a disease that they considered embarrassing. Or perhaps the doctors who treated him during the early phases of his illness in Ramallah missed a treatable medical condition, letting him deteriorate to the point it was too late to cure him once he was moved to Paris.

In the end, the actual timing of his death - like in much of his life - was probably tinged with a hefty dose of politics and religion.

At some point after he was transferred to intensive care, Arafat was placed on a ventilator, a machine that assists in breathing. Such assistance can be required because of lung problems - like pneumonia - or in cases where the brain-centers that control breathing are not functioning properly. Both deep comas and large strokes can damage these centers temporarily and require that a patient be placed on a machine.

Once a patient's breathing is maintained by a ventilator, the exact timing of death often becomes something of a matter of choice. More important, it also becomes subject to religious variations concerning the ethics of caring for terminally ill patients.

Islamic scholars have generally prohibited the discontinuation of life support machines, since the Koran advises: "Don't throw yourself into death." Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, reacted violently to press reports yesterday that Palestinian officials had arrived in Paris to "pull the plug" on Arafat.

"We don't accept euthanasia," he said, Arafat "is in the hands of God."

But in France, as in much of the world, death is now defined by the death of the brain, or "brain death." A patient on a ventilator can be breathing and have a pumping heart- at least for some time - even though he is medically and legally dead.

Many Islamic scholars say that a patient can be disconnected from life support once he is brain dead, since he is no longer really alive. But some conservative Muslim groups, as well as many conservative Jews, still maintain that the person lives so long as the heart is beating.

It is not known if Arafat was removed from life-support machines or if his heart stopped beating while he was still on them.

These are some of the public threats in the past few years. One can only imagine what has been said when the cameras and microphones were not present.

Israeli Cabinet, September 11, 2003: "Recent day's events have proven again that Yasser Arafat is a complete obstacle to any process of reconciliation. ... Israel will act to remove this obstacle in the manner, at the time, and in the ways that will be decided on separately."

Ariel Sharon: “We took action against Ahmed Yassin and Abdelaziz Rantisi (both assassinated) and a few other murderers when we thought the time was right. On the matter of Arafat we will operate in the same way, when we find the convenient and suitable time. One needs to find the time and do what has to be done.”

Ariel Sharon: “I wouldn’t suggest either one of them should feel secure. I wouldn’t propose that any insurance company gives them coverage" (reference to Arafat and other Palestinian leaders).

Editorial, The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem, Israel, 11 Sept 2003: “The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly as possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative.... Arafat’s death at Israel’s hands would not radicalize Arab opposition to Israel. The current jihad against us is being fueled by the perception that Israel is blocked from taking decisive actions to defend itself…. Killing Arafat, more than any other act, would demonstrate that the tool of terror is unacceptable.”

Ehud Olmert: Deputy Prime Minister of Israel told Israel Radio that killing Arafat "is definitely one of the options" under consideration by the government. International Herald Tribune, 24 September 2003

International Herald Tribune, 24 September 2003

Silvan Shalom: Israel's foreign minister said yesterday in an apparent attempt to soften remarks by the vice premier who said that assassination was an option. “Israel has not adopted a formal decision to kill Yasser Arafat”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/16/world/main573485.shtml