On 'Palestinians', their leader and his burial

Since 1948, when the last 28% of the former British mandate of Palestine was partitioned, 'Palestine' has ceased to exist. Two years before that, Jordan became independant from Great-Britain. Jordan of course being the other 78% of the original British Mandate. The people who live in Jordan are the same people who lived there before it was called Jordan, namely... You guessed it, Arab Palestinians! They now call themselves Jordanians.

In 1948, 48% of the remaining 28% (are you still following this?) was offered to the Arabs who chose not to become Jordanians. 52% was offered to the Jews. The latter accepted, the former refused, choosing instead to go to war, or having the rest of the Arab world do it for them. They lost, and lost again, and again, and they've never stopped loosing. But then, they've never stopped warring either.

It was Arafat who renamed himself and anyone who followed him 'Palestinians'. It was a marketing masterstroke, and made all the more succesful by the fact that the entire world bent over backward to adopt the name for the terrorist and his minions. But until then, no Arab called himself a 'Palestinian'. In fact, the only ones that did call themselves that were the Jews, who until 1948 had no country of their own except the land that rightly belonged to them but had been renamed by the Romans from "The Land of Israel" to "Philistine", just to spite the rebellious Jews (The Philistines were ancient enemies of the Jews). It is actually kind of fitting that another mortal enemy of the Jews would choose a name that was thought up to spite the Jews, and assist in their annihilation.

And the ultimate irony of course is that Arafat was born in Cairo. That's Egypt for the geographically challenged among us.

On countless occasions, Yasir Arafat has regaled listeners about his Jerusalem birth and childhood. He fondly recalls his birthplace in a stone house abutting the Western Wall, then how he lived with his Uncle Sa'ud in Jerusalem. Like Said, Arafat presents himself as a victim of Zionism - someone who lost his wordly belongings and his place in the world due to Israel's coming into existence. But in fact, as two intrepid French biographers, Christophe Boltanski and Jihan El-Tahri revealed a few years, ago (in their 1997 book, Les sept vies de Yasser Arafat), "Mr. Palestine was born on the shores of the Nile."

The French researchers tell an amusing story of discovery. They went to the University of Cairo and innocently asked for the registration of one Muhammad 'Abd ar-Ra'uf 'Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husayni at the School of Civil Engineering in 1956. This, Arafat's birth name, means nothing to the Egyptian clerk, who "sits down behind a rickety wooden table, almost completely hidden by the pile of dusty files bound in black leather" and "blows off a layer of grime in a most professional way," then hands over the records. In a blue ink faded by time, the researchers find that their man, living at 24A Baron Empain Street, Heliopolis, "was born on August 4, 1929, in Cairo." With this information in hand, they dash over to the State Registry and find Arafat's actual birth certificate, which confirms the date and place.

Arafat then lived in Cairo until the age of 28 and identified as an Egyptian. His first political affiliation was an Egyptian student organization closed to Palestinians. He fought for an Egyptian group against Israel in 1948-49 and subsequently served in the Egyptian military. He first traveled to Moscow, in 1968, on an Egyptian passport. Arafat all his life has spoken Arabic like an Egyptian, something that has sometimes impeded his career; on first encountering him in 1967, a biographer recounts, "West Bankers did not like his Egyptian accent and ways and found them alien."

They once asked Mallory, a mountaineer who twice attempted to climb Everest, why he wanted to climb the mountain. His answer: "Because it's there".

Arafat had much the same reason for wanting to kill Jews. They were there. Of course, the vast majority of the Arab world felt exactly the same, so I guess it was the popular thing to do, perhaps even a way to go places in this world.

For another primer on this subject go here.

Anyway, guess what? Arafat is dead, and good riddance. He chose as mentor a close personal friend of Hitler, married a woman who was half his age and butt-ugly, caused more grief for his people than anyone else on this world could have dreamed up (and no one else could have gotten away with it either!). He lived out old-age demented and locked up, was finally spirited away to a French hospital as a drooling clown, and then died while his wife and his closest aides bickered over his stolen money.

Quite a legacy.

And then there was the burial. If you never saw a 'Palestinian' and didn't know the meaning of the word, if ever you were wondering what type of person would feel sad after Arafat dies, let alone worship this degenerate as the saviour of your people, all you ever needed to do was watch the arrival of his corpse in an Egyptian helicopter, and the subsquent mayhem that ensued. If this type of hysteria and mass-psychosis is not enough to convince anyone that talking to them is a complete waste of time, then I don't know what it will take.

You know what? These barbarians deserved each other. A group of people that against all facts and better judgment will keep following a person they KNOW and even ACKNOWLEDGE is corrupt, has denied them a country of their own, robbed them blind, indoctrinated them into a state that makes it impossible for ANYONE in this world to co-exist with them DESERVES an asshole like Arafat for a leader.

I can't wait to see who they'll choose next. Bound to be a disappointment, I know. But still. Can't hurt to hope, right?