Pure Gold
The lead paragraph the BBC:
The world watches the unfolding drama as the man who has become the symbol for Palestinian nationalism seems to hover between life and death. Though full of uncertainties, Mr Arafat's life has been one of sheer dedication and resilience.
Can this get any better? Yes, it certainly can:
But where were the people, I wondered, the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the frantic expressions of concern?
Was this another story we Western journalists were getting wrong, bombarding the world with news of what we think is an historic event, while the locals get on with their lives?
Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry... without warning.
Yet another tragic example of "the people" not recognizing what their well-meaning and courageous (sooo courageous - do you know how hard it must be to stand up to Zionism in the pages of Europe's newspapers?) European friends just know to be true.
Why was she crying? Because her and her friends' dream of a glorious Palestinian revolution - a revolution that many Palestinians did not want 10 years ago and even more are fed up with today - is melting away like so much of Arafat's brain. "Dedication and resilience" indeed. The European Left is still enamored with the terrorist resistance that was supposed to bring down international capitalism in the 60s - resistance always done by someone else while they patronizingly explained all the "root causes" to a starry-eyed public. They still want every revolutionary to be Che. For a while, they had Arafat - blowing up planes, swaggering into the UN with a pistol, and promising to be a martyr. Now, all they've got left is a doddering old imbecile - defeated by the very Israeli that Europe loathes - driven to idiocy by frustration, resentment, and failure. That’s what the European Left is in mourning, why BBC reporters are collapsing into tears while Palestinians try to rebuild their lives from the smoldering heaps that Arafat turned them into.
The BBC is publicly funded by the taxpayers of Great Britain.
The world watches the unfolding drama as the man who has become the symbol for Palestinian nationalism seems to hover between life and death. Though full of uncertainties, Mr Arafat's life has been one of sheer dedication and resilience.
Can this get any better? Yes, it certainly can:
But where were the people, I wondered, the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the frantic expressions of concern?
Was this another story we Western journalists were getting wrong, bombarding the world with news of what we think is an historic event, while the locals get on with their lives?
Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry... without warning.
Yet another tragic example of "the people" not recognizing what their well-meaning and courageous (sooo courageous - do you know how hard it must be to stand up to Zionism in the pages of Europe's newspapers?) European friends just know to be true.
Why was she crying? Because her and her friends' dream of a glorious Palestinian revolution - a revolution that many Palestinians did not want 10 years ago and even more are fed up with today - is melting away like so much of Arafat's brain. "Dedication and resilience" indeed. The European Left is still enamored with the terrorist resistance that was supposed to bring down international capitalism in the 60s - resistance always done by someone else while they patronizingly explained all the "root causes" to a starry-eyed public. They still want every revolutionary to be Che. For a while, they had Arafat - blowing up planes, swaggering into the UN with a pistol, and promising to be a martyr. Now, all they've got left is a doddering old imbecile - defeated by the very Israeli that Europe loathes - driven to idiocy by frustration, resentment, and failure. That’s what the European Left is in mourning, why BBC reporters are collapsing into tears while Palestinians try to rebuild their lives from the smoldering heaps that Arafat turned them into.
The BBC is publicly funded by the taxpayers of Great Britain.
