PNA Claims Israelis Assassinated Yassir Arafat

[jordan179]

From ANSAMed "Arafat:  PNA commission says Israel is the sole suspect" (Nov 2nd, 2013):

''We believe Israel is the sole suspect in the death of Arafat'', Palestinian intelligence chief Tawfiq al-Tirawi and commission member told reporters at a news briefing

Comments

[eta_ta]

Bravo
I'm in total agreement with you on all points!

[xiphias]

I guess it's possible that someone is FRAMING Russia to make it look like they killed him, but the whole point of poisoning people with radioactive material is for Russia to let people know that that's what happens when you piss us off. It's so idiosyncratic that they must do it on purpose.

I just don't get WHY Russia wanted him dead.

[jordan179]

I don't know if it was the Russians. Just because it's a Russian assassination technique does not mean that someone else couldn't have used it. Small amounts of radioisotopes could have been bought, or used, by numerous individuals and organizations.

[xiphias]

Sure, it's possible. Like you, say, there's nothing preventing anyone else from doing it.

I just don't remember anybody else ever doing it EXCEPT the Russians. Can you think of one? I'm not saying there ISN'T one; I'm just saying I can't remember one.

[banner]

The biggest secret about arafat is that he was gay. I wouldn't be surprised if he died from AIDS, and they are saying this because they can't report that! It would hurt his image.

Also the Russians stood to gain a lot by his death, he was their pawn for years, and he had ceased being useful by anything more than his death.

[xiphias]

The AIDS idea doesn't make sense to me. People who die from AIDS die of opportunistic infections: AIDS doesn't kill directly, but rather by destroying the body's ability to fight off other things. You would never have to report AIDS -- you'd just report the disease that actually did the killing. Besides, nobody would have any problem believing "natural causes" of some sort. That's what pretty much everyone DID believe. You don't need to cover up something that nobody knows or was looking for.

Incidentally, how did you find out about this secret?

I'm trying to figure out what the Russians -- well, let's be honest: Putin -- would gain by this, and all I can think of is wacky-conspiracy-convoluted enough that I can't convince myself of it.

The Russians were supporting Arafat largely as a proxy war against the United States, and Putin wants to re-start the Cold War. And ... and that's where I stop. I can't figure out how Arafat's death would help.

[jordan179]

The only motive I can see is that Arafat may have been toying with the notion of actually making peace, or at least a truce. In a compound surrounded by the Israelis he was a de facto prisoner, and the fact that his own precious hide might thus have been on the line might have led him toward a less aggressive policy.

To say that the Russians only supported Arafat because he was useful if anything understates the issue: the Russians find all the Arabs positively disgusting and basically see them as so many walking weapons with which to harass their enemies. There is as far as I know not even the mutual-elite friendly relations that, for instance, US Presidents usually have with the Saudi royal family: the Russians feel both racial and religious hatred and contempt for the Arabs.

[luagha]

It was well-enough known while Arafat was alive. His pattern of illnesses in later life matched up with Aids-related complications, and the length of time he took to die under medical care also matches up with Aids-related complications.

Even under medical care, you die much faster from Polonium poisoning and it's obvious that you are dying from radiation. We would have known when he was dying in France.

The polonium bs is just bs for gullible Arabs to make a stupid story. Polonium would be long since degraded and undetectable which is the whole point. It's just another way of trying to slough off the rumors of Arafat's Aids-related illness and gun up some kind of blame.

[superversive]

There is, I fear, no chance whatever that the Arab leaders believe the Israelis killed Arafat. They’re not that dumb. However, they rely on the fact that the Palestinian Arab masses (and the ‘Arab Street’ more generally) are that dumb - or rather, that cruelly ignorant. This is propaganda for the proles; the Inner Party is not deceived.

(Of course, the Inner Party is deceived about a great many other things. It just doesn’t chow down on its own prolefeed.)

[jordan179]

Well, I dunno, the Israelis might have done it. The main problem is that in the given situation they had no reason -- if they were not going to do it -- to do it more directly. It's not as if the Arabs were going to somehow hate them more if they did.