It never ceases to amaze me that so many people actually considered Arafat a legit leader. This man was the face of modern terrorism, and he put several common terrorist practices into place, including the hijacking of airliners, taking innocent hostages and killing diplomats. Besides that, Arafat was the cause for no peace agreement being reached in the Middle East, and after attending the Camp David peace talks with then-President Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Arafat turned around and declared the al-Aqsa intifada, causing more bloodshed and violence to occur by his watch. Great guy, huh?
"Everyone has now discovered who is the real terrorist organization," Arafat said in a 1988 Playboy Magazine interview. "It is the Israeli military junta who are killing women and children, smashing their bones, killing pregnant women." Perhaps Arafat, in his supreme spin on Israel's military, had forgotten about May 1974, when, as the leader of the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization, three PLO terrorists entered the Israeli town of Ma'alot and captured a local school, resulting in the deaths of 21 children. I suppose he just forgot about them. Or maybe he didn't even care.
In a column by BBC reporter Barbara Plett entitled "Yasser Arafat's Unrelenting Journey," the reporter, describing the airlift of Arafat out of his compound, said, "when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry...without warning." Wait a second, she started to cry? Does anybody else find it disgusting that someone would cry over the death of this human piece of trash? Did she cry about the countless victims of Arafat's PLO? This man's death deserves no tears.
Another British news source, The Guardian (which, after President Bush's re-election, ran a black front page containing the words, "Oh, God."), following Arafat's death, had an article by columnist Derek Brown who spoke of Arafat's "undisputed courage as a guerrilla leader" and "his extraordinary courage" as a peacemaker. Is this guy living in an alternate universe? I think Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, in his article "Arafat the monster," summed up the arrogance in Brown's comments best when he said, "it is an odd kind of courage that expresses itself in shooting unarmed victims - or in signing peace accords and then flagrantly violating their terms." Truer words were never spoken.
Arafat's death will no doubt make the process of peace in the Middle East an easier task to accomplish. Couple that with the fact that Arafat's successor will likely be a moderate and the prospect of finally achieving peace in that region suddenly seems even more viable. The world is definitely a better place without Arafat in it, and the news of his death was one of the best stories this year. We can only hope that Osama Bin Laden will follow suit, and croak right alongside Arafat's grave.