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November 12, 2004
The Arafat funeral circus
Lots of links from Tim Blair on Arafat's chaotic funeral, note especially the peculiar reminiscence by John Le Carre. (He used to be one of my favorite writers; I need to re-read some of his novels and see if I can discern any of the spluttering looniness to come.)Israel didn't send any official representatives, but the usual fifth column showed up:
Walking through the sprawling compound of the Mukata, the Palestinian Authority headquarters where Arafat spent the last years of his life under virtual house arrest by Israel, the Arab Israeli group passed by a group of far-left Israeli activists. Among them was Uri Avnery, believed to be the first Israeli to meet and interview Arafat, in Beirut during the Lebanon war.Hey, where's Adam Shapiro?The Israeli activists, some of them members of the group Gush Shalom, said they wanted to stand and be counted among the mourners. �It�s a historical event and I did not want to sit home,� said Anat, a young Israeli woman who did not give her last name. �I wanted to showed my solidarity with our Palestinian partners. To be here is a sign of respect. Arafat is a symbol.�
UPDATE: Lynn notices that the UN is honoring Arafat as a head of state, as if "Palestine" was an actual member.
UPDATE: Dhimmis to the back of the bus, including German foreign affairs minister Joschka Fischer.
UPDATE: George Neumayr points out a double standard here in the US that also applies to the many world leaders who rushed to Arafat's grave.
One would think a party that can canonize a de facto terrorist and jihadist like Arafat could tolerate a Southern preacher or two. Jerry Falwell has never blown up an airplane like Arafat, but Democrats wouldn't be caught dead in his company. They approach traditional Christians and Jews with grave, grave reserve, usually putting a sinister construction on their motives (equating, for example, their opposition to same-sex marriage with hatred), but they have no problem embracing the Arafats openly, romanticizing their violence as the revolutionary struggles of a victimized religious minority.I have even seen Jews do this, the earnest "progressive" ones. Hell, I have even seen rabbinical students do this. But to be fair, what they do is a little different. They don't pretend that Arafat and bin Laden aren't horrible. But they act - in their sneering and repulsed exclamations - as though Christian fundamentalists are way more horrible. It's another version of Holocaust denial. Which makes it especially despicable when performed by the people who are in training to be our teachers and role models, but nobody in the institutions of the liberal Upper West Side seems to see that.
UPDATE: Be careful what you wish for. I wondered when Adam Shapiro would pop up, and here he is. The Nation sinks to new depths.
Judith | 11/12/04 at 03:21 PM | Categories: - Israel vs. the world
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Comments
I used to be a Le Carre fan too. Then I started reading a novel of his (forget the title) where the heroine is a very romanticised but completely stupid, reckless and immoral environmentalist in Africa, and I thought uh-oh. Seems like his thinking went astray after the end of the cold war.
Alice | November 15, 2004 03:51 PM
