Posted on 07/22/2007 12:29:59 PM PDT by COUNTrecount
Yasser Arafat died of AIDS, a rival Palestinian leader has claimed in an interview that's spurred new political infighting over Arafat’s mysterious 2004 death.
Ahmad Jibril, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, alleges that current Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his staff confirmed to him that Arafat was afflicted with AIDS.
Like other Palestinians, Jibril had suspected that Israel had poisoned Arafat, who was being treated in Paris for a complex blood disorder.
"When [Abbas] came to Damascus with his team, I asked them, 'What happened to the investigation into the death of [Arafat]?'" Jibril said on the Hezbollah group's Al-Manar TV.
"They were silent, and then one of them said to me: 'To be honest, the French gave us the medical report that stated that the cause of [Arafat's] death was AIDS."
Israel Today reports there had long been speculation that Arafat, though married, "had numerous homosexual relationships."
A spokesman at the Palestinian Authority in Washington declined to comment on Jibril's claim yesterday. But one senior Palestinian diplomat told us: "There's nothing to support such accusations. Jibril never liked Arafat and sided with Arafat's enemies. So whatever he says about him is questionable."
Jibril added in the interview that Abbas and every other member of Arafat's Fatah party "should be happy that we got rid of the plague, which had been imposed upon them. … The Fatah movement now has an opportunity to renew itself."
Blogging for The New Republic, James Kirchick wrote this week that "no amount of evidence will convince the Palestinians that Arafat was a homosexual, or that his death was caused by anything other than Israel’s machinations."
There is no mention of AIDS in Arafat’s final medical records. Doctors who examined them in 2005 told The New York Times that the pattern of Arafat's illness was inconsistent with that of a typical AIDS patient. But Ashraf al-Kurdi, Arafat's personal physician, claimed in an Israeli newspaper that French doctors had told him Arafat had AIDS when he died. The physician, who said Arafat had tested HIV-negative three months earlier, suspected Arafat was infected with HIV to hide the poison that supposedly killed him.
I don’t know if this was the picture or not, but it made me laugh the time he was trying to camel lip the guy’s hand and it yanked it away.
I thought it was terminal “rusty butt”.
oops should have read “he yanked it away”.
I guess there no way to give an award to a disease, HUH!
He died from bad crack..
That certainly goes a long way toward explaining why the left liked him so much — he was light in the loafers.
Wasn’t Arafat in his 70’s when he passed away?
Why did he go to France for treatment, don’t they have decent medical care in Palistien?
These guys will say anything to start a fight.
So much for getting those 72 virgins!
Prolly shoulda went to Cuber... I hear they is the best.
Yes, that's what the article said, essentially. No need to be redundant now! :O)
Has Bubba taken a blood test recently?
No doubt AIDS is becoming more of a problem in the Arab world with all the rapes going on...
MEMORIALIZED WITH A SING-ALONG ON YOUTUBE - http://youtube.com/watch?v=EKB4u6FNK6I
Allah’s will and all that.
Please, tell me that wasn’t a pun!
The great secret of Islam . . . them virgins ain’t female!
Giggle yourself over Lance Bass or Richard Simmons. We already know Arafat was an exploitive, political whore... There is no need to invent odd theories about how he died.
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