Yasser Arafat died last week, and I couldn’t be happier. I had been watching him slip deeper and deeper into a coma for nearly a week. And then he died. My initial feeling was sadness. This may come as a shock to many, but it shouldn’t. Yasser’s death was pitifully anti-climactic. The Palestinian leader didn’t die in battle, defending his people, or meet his end in a glorious uprising against Israel, known as the Zionist entity to many Palestinians and nearly all fanatical Muslims. No, although when his Ramallah compound was surrounded by Israeli tanks in 2002, Arafat cried out “Please God, give me a martyr’s death,” in the end he sank slowly into a peaceful sleep like an old man slipping into a warm bath.  

And that’s fitting isn’t it? Arafat was the Davy Crockett of international terrorism and suicide bombing. Yet he made the journey into the next world riding a comfortable hospital bed in Paris while sitting on billions of dollars meant for the people of Palestine. Meanwhile, the people of Palestine ride trains in Haifa strapped with explosives with the hope that some insane despot will compensate their family with a token amount for the sacrifice. If Arafat and his ilk had been swallowed up into Egypt at the end of World War II, Yasser’s end would seem more like a pharaoh’s. It looks as if he’s trying to bring all his earthly treasures with him to the afterlife.

I was also sad because now there’s nothing to look forward to. Oops. There’s still the deaths of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawarhi, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il and Saddam Hussein, so I guess it’s not all bad. But waiting for those too will be like waiting for the next Star Wars movie to come out … long and tiring and, in the end, very forgettable.

And that is what the death of Arafat will be in the long run, forgettable. The man was everything to his people, but worth nothing to humanity. He held the hopes and the dreams of his people in his hands and he stuffed them into his back pocket along with all their cash.  

Arafat will probably go down in history as the one person who could’ve changed the world for the better, but couldn’t. The man was an illusionist and a survivor, but was politically impotent. He was a thief and a coward and turned down Israel’s offer of peace and land, brokered by President Clinton, because he was too weak to placate terrorist factions like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

But it’s hard to grasp what scum Arafat was when reading his obituaries and listening to the leaders of the world. What is it about death that makes horrible people seem decent? French President Jacques Chirac called Arafat “a man of courage and conviction who has incarnated, for 40 years, the fight of Palestinians for the recognition of their national rights.”  

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: “It is with great sorrow and profound sadness that we learned the news about the untimely demise of President Yasser Arafat, a leader of the Palestinian people and a hero to us all. He was the ultimate embodiment of decades of the just struggle of a nation for its undeniable rights to self-determination. A figure much loved and respected not only by Palestinians but also many in the world over, including Indonesia.”

Someone should explain to these two that calling on thousands of people to blow themselves up and to hijack planes is not the “ultimate embodiment” of heroism and that at 75, death isn’t all that “untimely.” The average age of death for a male is 73. However, these two clearly believe Arafat to be some sort of superhero. Arafat
could’ve died at 105, after seven heart-attacks, a stroke, and kidney failure, and they would still register shock. It seems like the only international figure to comment on Arafat’s death with any coherence is Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said, “This is the man who also pioneered international terrorism, the art of hijacking planes, ships, kidnapping, and seizing of hostages, and you name it, which gave birth, of course, to other terrorist groups who emulated him, including al Qaeda.”  

The international community aren’t the only ones hopping on the Yasser love parade. The New York Times ran an obituary for Arafat, which began:

“Yasser Arafat, who died this morning in Paris, was the wily and enigmatic father of Palestinian nationalism who for almost 40 years symbolized his people’s longing for a distinct political identity and independent state. He was 75.

No other individual so embodied the Palestinians’ plight: their dispersal, their statelessness, their hunger for a return to a homeland lost to Israel. Mr. Arafat was once seen as a romantic hero and praised as a statesman, but his luster and reputation faded over time. A brilliant navigator of political currents in opposition, once in power he proved more tactician than strategist, and a leader who rejected crucial opportunities to achieve his declared goal.”

The piece mentioned his ties to terrorism, but seemed to excuse it as a function of Arafat’s resolve and unrelenting commitment to the interests of a future peace and return to Jerusalem for the Palestinian people. The headline should have run: “Arafat: The Loveable Terrorist,” or “Huggable Despot Loved Despite Murders,” or even “Ah, It Was Only a Few Planes and Some Cafés.”

Saddam Hussein must be relieved at the prospect of death. Even though he’s gassed the Iranians and the Kurds, murdered thousands of his own people and sired two brutal raping-torturers, at least he, and probably Osama bin Laden, can count on The New York Times to soften their images when they pass.