Yasser Arafat has said he doesn't want to die on a Jewish Holiday. Unfortunately for him, any day he dies will be a Jewish Holiday.

So in the spirit of bring peace to the middle east, please place your guesses on the day and time Arafat will die (or at least be publicly announced as dead).

Rules: Each member gets one entry. Guess the date and time (PST) of when Yasser Arafat's death will be. If he rises from the dead within a week, that entry will be ruled invalid as the *end of Yasser Arafat's life*.

And in the spirit of FP, I will offer my best wishes and FREE I-Ching reading to the winner.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: _,

He's already dead, they're just doing puppet stuff with him to keep his rivals on the hop. You know, Weekend at Yasser's stylee...

Nov. 12th 2004 2:38am PST

Could this possibly be any more tasteless?

"more tasteless"

Well callisto, I'm glad after more than 1 and 1/3 years of no posts...you've finnally found your voice

CyBella,
I have to support Callisto on this one.

Politics is a spectator sport, I know, but maybe we crossed a line here.

AishaOnHerHighHorse

How do you say "he's already dead" in French?

-I`m taking my chances with this, but...

-Is it not my usual way to bug into this kind of halfwit American "political" BS, but remember that ppl from Palestine are humans too... not ALL of them flew into TT... (if it`s supposed to be teasteless)
-Arafat is probably one of few reasons that some of the muslims are keeping a moderate tone...

-sorry, but I just HAD to...

yassin to arafat:


FLY YOU FOOL! FLY!

If Arafat passes away on foreign soil i'm not sure if it's better or worse than dying in palestine.

Either way he could never let go and groom a suitable successor, and so now there's something of a vacuum.

of course, saying there's a vacuum in the middle east is somewhat pointless. it's like someone constantly turns the hoover on and off in that part of the world.

quote:

---

-Arafat is probably one of few reasons that some of the Muslims are keeping a moderate tone...

---

Arafat was not a Reason. He was a Cause.

Reason is a thought that justifies or explains a consequence.

Cause is an action that does not have the obligation to justify or explain its consequence.

Arafat was the Cause (not the Reason) of many deaths among his own mostly Muslim population and among his Jewish neighbors.

He used to get Palestinian leaders whom he feared and wanted to get rid of (to stay in power) together for a meeting somewhere (the ones I am personally aware of where in Lebanon in the early 70's) then once he leaves the building Israeli jets would flatten it. He did that in the early 70's on many documented occasions.

He managed to maintain a general perception that he was fighting for his people. But in fact he was fighting for himself _and_ his survival more than he was fighting for his people.

Israel and the US kept Arafat in power for this long not because they were afraid his successor would be more violent but because he assured "us" that all those dangerous elements of the Palestinian opposition will be exposed and killed. The IMPLICIT deal we made with him was that he got to stay in power. He understood that. I'm not saying there was an explicit deal between us and Arafat. Implicit deals are far more powerful. You don't need to be explicit. Being explicit with it not only breaks the deal but creates havoc.

But making a deal with the devil always backfires. Arafat has always been playing with fire, knowing that he must remain useful to the powerful party (US, Israel) in order to remain in power. It doesn't mean that he did not fight in the court of public opinion for his people in between trying to stay in power. He did. But those actions pale in comparison to the violence that he helped to perpetuate to remain in power, to remain useful so he can stay in power.

When Bush took over with his Messianic approach, it was clear to him (not to me or others but to him and his Christian base) that it is time to break this implicit "deal with the devil" as peace can only be achieved when Palestinians have a true leader. Someone that will not be perpetuating violence, like Arafat was doing indirectly, to keep himself useful. If violence was over Arafat was over, too. He was not a leader but a survivalist like Saddam and many others. His survival was assured by his then-useful function: expose and setup dangerous leaders of the Palestinian opposition. Bush decided it wasn't gong to work out. The Palestinian people needed a real leader. "We" (i.e. the US, and Israel, too) tried to marginalize him but he kept fearing that he was losing power, which he was, and as a result he kept incentiving people indirectly to continue the violence so that he can set them up to be exterminated so that he can continue to have a useful function.

That's the story of Yassir Arafat.

What you've stated about Arafat started with "Arafat is the reason" That is when I got a terrible feeling about what was going to follow. He was not a Reason. He was a Cause. An ultimately bad cause that collapsed unto itself, as evil always does.

Arafat was the cause of bad things to his people and to the region.

Disclaimer:

1- This reply is not an endorsement of Bush's policies either. Playing "God" is not my favorite game. It always backfires. Bush is doing it big time. Not sure what the outcome will be.

2- Even though this is a reality-based opinion, it's still an extrapolated "opinion," using several actual events as the data points. Meaning, I don't expect anyone to take it as the whole truth. No one knows the whole truth, not Sharon, not Arafat and not Bush. We can only have extrapolated truths, so there is plenty of room for disagreement. However, you need to start with a more fundamental set of actual events from which to extrapolate a competing opinion.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Look_Ma_No_Ellipses!!!,

quote:

---

Originally posted by Look_Ma_No_Ellipses!!!:
Arafat was the cause of bad things to his people and to the region.

---

Reason... cause... why obfuscate, you just get caught up in irrelevant semantics...

Apples and oranges. Anyway.

quote:

---

He managed to maintain a general perception that he was fighting for his people.

---

He managed to maintain that perception because for so many years he was it... he was 'the man'. I think it is fair to say that without Arafat there would be no Palestine. Arafat is to Palestine what Moses is to Israel.

However, I think it is also fair to say that he should have stood aside [for 'reals' (sic)] a while ago.

quote:

---

He managed to maintain that perception because for so many years he was it... he was 'the man'. I think it is fair to say that without Arafat there would be no Palestine.

---

You're being too generous. He was at the right place and right time (or wrong place wrong time more like it). He is no longer. He has been irrelevant to the general state of mind about the mideast for a while now.

quote:

---

Reason... cause... why obfuscate, you just get caught up in irrelevant semantics...

Apples and oranges. Anyway.

---

Sometimes, splitting hairs "is not only possible but it is essential"

quote:

---

Originally posted by CyBella:
Rules: Each member gets one entry. Guess the date and time (PST) of when Yasser Arafat's death will be. If he rises from the dead within a week, that entry will be ruled invalid as the *end of Yasser Arafat's life*.

---

Great, so any member from somehwere other than North America has to convert it to yankee time?

Screw that, why not GMT?

I would never say that I know stuff about the middle east that I dont...

Look_Ma_No_Ellipses!!! wrote

He used to get Palestinian leaders whom he feared and wanted to get rid of (to stay in power) together for a meeting somewhere (the ones I am personally aware of where in Lebanon in the early 70's) then once he leaves the building Israeli jets would flatten it. He did that in the early 70's on many documented occasions.
--------------
(and this is a fact?)

-My thoughts about this is : what will happen now?
-Will there be peace now?
......

Yes, my dad (who is Turkish) used to represent Abbot Pharmaceuticals for the middle east. His company was in the same neighborhood as the buidling that was bombed by Israeli planes in 73/74. I was 2 years old. He has repeated this story over the years: he was sitting at his work one day with his partners when they were hurled forward off the chairs by the power of the explosion. He later found out that Arafat had just left the building.

Later on in 74, which is the year we had to leave Beruit back to Turkey and then to UAE (eventually we ended up in western Europe before moving to the US), anyways, he was told of another similar raid in Southern part of Lebanon where Israeli commandos stormed the building from the sea and killed everyone minutes after Arafat left the building.

quote:

---

I would never say that I know stuff about the middle east that I dont...

---

I wouldn't say anything about SVEDEN either, except maybe SKOL!? Is that how you spell it?

Hey how about that Hoegarden! (excuse my spelling.. it's phonetic when it comes to foreign languages)

Well, war and peace.. they are like the two poles of a magnet.. they can't exist independently of each other.. People like to think of reality in terms of two mutually exclusive states.. like good and bad.. war and peace.. etc.. But it isn't like this.. Reality is always the near-equilibroum state between the two opposites.. the opposites cannot exist physically or conceptually independent of each other.. reality is always bound to be in a near-equilibrium state and never fully falling in one of the opposites be it total war or complete peace. There will always be both in varrying degrees, but always in a state of near-equilibrium. If we don't have war in the mideast it will erupt somewhere else instead! so be careful what you wish... or maybe the poor people of the mideast have had it bad long enough and it's someone else's turn now?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Look_Ma_No_Ellipses!!!,

Hoegarden?

Skål ... but something I never use -I just say:
" se upp där nere! "

Hoegraden is a White beer (unless I'm recaling the name wrongly) I think it might be from Belgium! sorry!

I used to have it at a Swedish restaurant in LES, NYC. Used to be a massage parlor or something.. Good World.. I think that's the name...

quote:

---

Originally posted by madvikins:
-My thoughts about this is : what will happen now?
-Will there be peace now?
......

---

Doubt it. Somehow I don't think the sole goal of the Israelis was just to get rid of Arafat.

There'll still be plenty of fighting over Jeruselam (or however the hell you spell it).

The Israelis might even get so cocky as to believe that since the Palestinian leader is dead that they've won or something, and might start getting more agressive.

Well, apologies to anyone who was offended by my playing of this game in a humorous tone. I think it's drawing a long bow to suggest that doing so makes any statement about the personhood of Palestinians, though. I have a huge amount of sympathy for the Palestinian cause. I also enjoy black humor - why is this less funny than suggesting some of the Russian leaders were dead for a month or more before their deaths were officially announced? I think maybe people need to LIGHTEN THE HELL UP AND LAUGH AT THEMSELVES.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bravus,

I know Bravus.

I'm kinda hoping they sorta preserve him a la Lenin, in a big glass case in the middle of Gaza.