FINALLY
Yasser Arafat is dead. And this time, he'll stay dead.
That man, whom the AP and probably just about every other legacy press organ will hail as the "George Washington of the Palestinians," is the father of modern terrorism. When Osama bin Laden kills Americans, we have Arafat to thank for inspiring him. When our Marines find terrorist slaughterhouses in Fallujah, we have Arafat to thank for inspiring those terrorists. When the next beltbomber kills a bunch of kids eating pizza or attending their first day of school, the world has Yasser Arafat to thank for it. He invented hijacking and sought to resurrect Hitler's "Final Solution" for the "Jewish problem." The man was a monster, and before he even assumed room temperature his avaricious wife and his flunky lieutenants were arguing over who would get his loot. That's almost a fitting end for him. It would be better if they fought for his corpse and ended up dumping out of its casket into the dirt like Ayatollah Khomenei.
Greed is the other side of Arafat. Most reasonable people know he was a terrorist. But most don't know that he was also a billionaire, with a fortune in Swiss bank accounts.
He got that money the old fashioned way--he stole it. Like just about every Arab despot before him, he took money intended for his people and piled it up for himself. What could a man who lived the last years of his miserable life holed up in a compound in Ramallah do with such a stash? Afford his expensive wife, for one thing. Build a private terrorist army, for another.
The fact is, Arafat stole billions from the funds provided through him to the Palestinians by the European Union, among other gullibles. And the EU kept paying him, though it knew he was stealing from his own people. In that way, as in so many other ways, Arafat resembled not George Washington but Saddam Hussein, who also stole from the mouths of children to gild his own selfish life. He also resembled the Kim clan that robs the people of North Korea and forces them to subsist on grass and rainwater.
The world is better off without Yasser Arafat. It would have been better if he had not been born, because his effect on earth has been entirely negative and bloody.
Justice would have Arafat buried in pigskins after his secret lifestyle was exposed on Al Jazeera. Justice will not be served in Arafat's case, but it should be.
MORE: Arafat's death came a few years too late for these people--some of his many, many victims.
(via Buzzmachine)