IT'S ABOUT TIME
Finally, I hear some wise words in the news coverage concerning the antics of Yasher Arafat- head of the P.L O.
News reports this past week finally got around to mentioning the fact that Yasher has, during his tenure of the rather unsteady seat as head, Or chief mouthpiece, for the Palestinian Liberation movements, managed to pull together a personal fortune estimated to be worth several million dollars.
That's far too much to carry around in ones pockets, so he has it spread out in various Swiss and other banks in readily available locations. His wife and daughter manage to scrape through in Paris on an allowance said to be a bare thousand dollars a week. Yasher himself, has always lived in comfortable circumstances too, in spite of the for-show skimpiness of his work areas and transportation.
Some have called him the “Clown Prince of the Arabic world”. There is some truth to such a charge,too, and he has skillfully used this charm he has in a social sense to advantage in his relationships with other national leaders. He and President Bill Clinton appeared to be back-slapping buddies for a time. Other leaders,too, accepted his burnoosed presence among them with just a tinge of something akin to comic relief from the usual run of diplomatic personalities.
Some of Arafat's fine collection of coins of various realms actually are said to have come to him from Israel. When agreements were set up in the past to allow Palestinian workers to be employed in Israeli factories and offices, a tax was charged for that privilege. Said tax receipts money, records now clearly show, were paid - always - into Arafat's personal bank accounts.
All of this has been known for years, but someone somewhere has always held the belief that Arafat-head of the P.L.O. was “our only hope” to bring about a time of peace in the mid-east. Some still hold that he will, in some fantastic manner, pull it all off after all. For a time, we questioned his real power to control the violent fringe groups, but he gained new friends and support by a finely tuned pretense of showing that he was trying to bring the zealots to their senses. As usual, he was good at it and gained new ground with many at home and in the Arabic world.
Io me, it appears that the west has never quite realized that Yasher Arafat speaks with what has been called a deceitful, “forked tongue”. One half of the labial protrusion sends forth a subtle message of Hope, while the other half is spewing hate, suspicion and distrust of us among his own people throughout the Arabic world.
Double-talk time is at an end, perhaps.
A.L.M. November 12, 2003 [c472wds]
