I find it shameful that many Italians and many Europeans have chosen as their standard-bearer the gentleman (or so it is polite to say) Arafat. This nonentity who thanks to the money of the Saudi Royal Family plays the Mussolini ad perpetuum and in his megalomania believes he will pass into History as the George Washington of Palestine. This ungrammatical wretch who when I interviewed him was unable even to put together a complete sentence, to make articulate conversation. So that to put it all together, write it, publish it, cost me a tremendous effort and I concluded that compared to him even Ghaddafi sounds like Leonardo da Vinci. This false warrior who always goes around in uniform like Pinochet, never putting on civilian garb, and yet despite this has never participated in a battle. War is something he sends, has always sent, others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent who playing the part of Head of State caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton’s mediation. No-no-I-want-Jerusalem-all-to-myself. This eternal liar who has a flash of sincerity only when (in private) he denies Israel’s right to exist, and who as I say in my book contradicts himself every five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if you ask him what time it is, so that you can never trust him. Never! With him you will always wind up systematically betrayed. This eternal terrorist who knows only how to be a terrorist (while keeping himself safe) and who during the Seventies, that is when I interviewed him, even trained the terrorists of Baader-Meinhof. With them, children ten years of age. Poor children. (Now he trains them to become suicide bombers. A hundred baby suicide bombers are in the works: a hundred!). This weathercock who keeps his wife at Paris, served and revered like a queen, and keeps his people down in the shit. He takes them out of the shit only to send them to die, to kill and to die, like the eighteen year old girls who in order to earn equality with men have to strap on explosives and disintegrate with their victims. And yet many Italians love him, yes. Just like they loved Mussolini. And many other Europeans do the same.
No, she didn't put in any paragraph breaks
“Why don’t we admit that he can neither lead, nor plan, nor take a single step that makes any difference except to him and his Oslo cronies who have benefitted materially from their people’s misery” Professor Edward Said, New Left Review.
And here's a weird one sent to me. Pokey's fave ;), Robert Fisk gave an interview - in America - expressing his distaste for Arafat:
Beyond Disappointment -The Middle East, according to Robert Fisk . For example:
...Question - So does Arafat now, for his own cynical reasons, encourage or support the suicide bombings inside Israel as the Israelis insist he does?The article is worth reading. It has other trenchant statements about Sharon and Arafat. It has fewer of his fantasy as fact items, though he pushes the Jenin massacre bit. And he only mildly pushes the Europeans as more knowledgable line.Answer - Arafat is a very immoral person, or maybe very amoral. A very cynical man. I remember when the Tal-al-Zaatar refugee camp in Beirut had to surrender to Christian forces in the very brutal Lebanese civil war. They were given permission to surrender with a cease-fire. But at the last moment, Arafat told his men to open fire on the Christian forces who were coming to accept the surrender. I think Arafat wanted more Palestinian "martyrs" in order to publicize the Palestinian position in the war. That was in 1976. Believe me that Arafat is not a changed man.
I think that if he ever actually sees a wounded child, he feels compassion like any other human being. But he's also a very cynical politician. And he knows that Sharon was elected to offer security to the Israelis. And Arafat knows that every suicide bombing, every killing, every death of a young Israeli, especially inside Israel, is proof that Sharon's promises are discredited.
On the one hand, he can condemn violence. He can be full of contrition. And in the basic human sense, he probably means it. But he also knows very well that every suicide bombing hits at the Sharon policy, and realizes how that helps him.
IMO it is clear that he knows his audience in America is less-sheeplike and more discerning about the Middle East than the sheep and apparatchiks in Europe whose bleats about superiority are self-delusions. It's funny, like the "what do they say in English, and what in Arabic" question, he plays a game like "what you say in Europe, and what you say in America".
Fallaci has opened up a hornet's nest with this charge. She is undoubtedly referring to Greek Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem Hilarion Capucci. Even if he has lodgings in the Vatican (it would be strange if he did, but perhaps Rome has some accomodation with the Greek Catholic Church), the Roman Catholic Church can neither "permit" nor deny permission to him for whatever he would like to say or whatever he would like to do. He does not answer to the Roman Catholic Pontiff!
Fallaci must know this, otherwise she wouldn't have cloaked the charge by not naming Capucci. Meanwhile, her accusation has been picked up on Andrew Sullivan's website and other places, and as the tale gets told and retold, it is made to appear that a Roman Catholic Bishop is praising suicide bombers! This is unfair.
Rome has not handled the present crisis well. The statements out of the Vatican have been too credulous of the official Palestinian line. But that doesn't justify a treacherous attempt to make Rome responsible for the words of a clergyman who is not even Roman Catholic.