Former
Longtime Confidant
Accuses Ariel Sharon Of
Assassinating Yasser Arafat
By Stephen Lendman
31 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Longtime
and now recently deceased confidant to former Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, Uri Dan, published a book in France that may have been
his 2006 one titled Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait in which he accused
the former prime minister of assassinating Palestinian Authority (PA)
President Yasser Arafat by poisoning him. Dan claimed Sharon got approval
from George Bush by phone early in 2004 to proceed with his plan after
he told the US president he was no longer committed to "not"
liquidating the Palestinian leader who then was under siege and practically
incarcerated in what remained of his Ramallah compound, most of which
had already been destroyed by the Israelis in a lawless act of retribution
against him.
Based on his record during
his tenure as Texas governor, when he authorized more death row inmate
executions than any US governor in history (and was called by some the
Texecutioner), this revelation should come as no surprise. It's even
clearer based on Ariel Sharon's boast once about his relationship with
George Bush saying: "We have the US president under our control."
Arafat died in Paris on November
11, 2004 at age 75. He was taken there on October 29 that year and hospitalized
for treatment for an undiagnosed illness that began developing in April
and became serious enough for him to need special care. It may have
already been too late when he arrived as he slipped into a coma on November
3 and remained in that state till his death eight days later from what
was explained at the time as complications from a blood disorder. Indeed
it may have been true if his blood was poisoned by a substance able
to work slowly and from which no cure was possible at least once the
former Palestinian leader arrived in Paris.
To those knowledgeable about
Israel's history since it became a state in 1948 and earlier, this revelation,
if true, should come as no surprise. All Israeli governments have a
long and disturbing record of conducting targeted assassinations in
Israel and abroad as it suited them against all persons thought to be
a threat to the Jewish state. From his earliest days in 1969 as Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman and President, Arafat went from
enemy to ally and back to enemy again under various Israeli governments
depending on his willingness to deny his people their rights in service
and pledging fealty to Israeli authority as he did in agreeing to the
Oslo Accords, or Declaration of Principles (DOP), signed at a White
House ceremony in September, 1993.
This was an agreement from
hell, a disgraceful act of surrender, giving Israel what it wanted and
Arafat and his cronies a "get-out-of-Tunis-free pass" (where
they took refuge when forced out of Lebanon after the 1982 Israeli invasion)
to return to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) where he agreed
to serve as Israel's enforcer against his own people. As it always was
earlier and since that time, the Palestinians got nothing but the right
to have their lands stolen and lives immiserated with the help and duplicity
of their own leader and those complicit in his Fatah-led government.
They endured this fate until
the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Mosque (or Second) Intifada on September
28, 2000 following Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to what Muslims
call the Noble Sanctuary in occupied East Jerusalem. It's gone on since
unabated up to and following Arafat's death and led to the democratic
election of a Hamas government in January, 2006.
Fed up with the corrupted
Fatah party under Arafat (now under Palestinian President and loyal
Israeli servant Mahmoud Abbas), the long-suffering Palestinian people
voted them out in an election the Israelis and Bush administration thought
they had "arranged" properly enough to assure their preferred
quisling party would remain in power but learned to their dismay it
didn't turn out that way. It also didn't turn out as Palestinians hoped
either as Israel and the US, with complicity or silence from the West,
conducted a scorched earth campaign against a defenseless people through
invasions, daily attacks with sophisticated and powerful weapons (supplied
by Washington at US taxpayer expense), targeted assassinations and other
daily killings, mass arrests and incarcerations, a systemic policy of
torture, destruction of property, and denial of the most basic rights
and services essential to life and survival. And that leaves out all
the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did to the Lebanese people over the
summer tha will take a least many years to recover from if Israel will
even allow it to happen.
Throughout it all, the courageous
Palestinian people continue struggling daily for their freedom and the
right to be treated as human beings to live in peace in their own land
- against the greatest odds with virtually no outside support or any
show of caring about their desperate state even from within the Arab
world.
If Ariel Sharon murdered
Yasser Arafat, it should surprise no one, and further, if proved beyond
dispute, it would never be reported in the US corporate-controlled media
even if it made headlines in Israel which might be possible in a country
allowing far more press freedom than the total lockdown of it in "the
land of the free and home of the brave" where no press freedom
is allowed through dominant news and information sources and only is
through alternative sources like the one through which readers are now
receiving this report. As we begin the new year with the 110th Congress
about to convene on January 4, it's one of many issues to reflect on
and consider what we ought to be doing about it in our own behalf.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
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