Maybe I'm showing my true western mentality by thinking this, by not demonizing the man, as he's never ordered the death of anyone that I know personally, but there are a lot of people who want to see him drawn and quartered on the Temple Mount.
I don't think that I could feel that strongly about anything. I've just watched as the candidate that I voted for lost, very convincingly, and gave President Bush his "mandate", his approval for a war in Iraq that I didn't want and didn't vote for, but I still don't feel like the world is ending. Yes, I'm disappointed, but we will wake up tomorrow and maybe the world will have changed again.
The NY Times collumnist Tom Friedman is saying that everything in the middle east is riding on how the Israeli's and the Palestinian's deal with Arafats death, but I disagree to some extent. I think that the Israeli's and the Palestinian's are perfectly capable of coming to an agreement with or without Arafat, but after so much fighting and passion over one issue- how do you go back to reality? All of the men and women who have joined the extreem struggle- what's next for them?
Anyway, as always these are just my thoughts and might be off base.
CSHL- St. Brice, France 9 November, 2004
