5 sept 2012
French judges investigating the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are seeking to travel to Ramallah to look into allegations that he was poisoned.
Arafat, who led the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) for 35 years and became the first president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1996, fell violently ill in October 2004 at his besieged West Bank compound. Two weeks later he was flown to a French military hospital in Paris, where he died on 11 November 2004 at the age of 75. The cause of death was described as a “stroke”.
Yasser Arafat’s family launched a case last month over claims that he was poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive element prior to his death. French prosecutors later opened a murder inquiry into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004. Swiss scientists hired by a documentary crew say they found traces of polonium on some of Arafat’s belongings. The medical records of Arafat, who died at a military hospital near Paris in 2004, said he had a stroke resulting from a blood disorder. However, many Palestinians continue to believe that Israel poisoned him. Israel has denied any involvement.
Arafat’s widow, Suha had brought a Civil suit before a court in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre. The case does not name an alleged killer, but is brought against an unnamed perpetrator X. French officials told the media that the prosecutors had agreed to begin a murder inquiry, by appointing an investigating judge.
The French legal system, unlike many other systems, requires the judge to take investigative role in legal proceedings.
Earlier it was also reported in various media that President Mahmoud Abbas had officially requested the help of French President Francois Hollande in the investigation.
The inquiry stems from an al-Jazeera TV documentary broadcast early in July, which commissioned Lausanne University’s Institute of Radiation Physics (IRA) to analyse Arafat’s belongings, which his widow had kept.
The scientists told the channel that they had found “significant” traces of polonium-210 present in items including Arafat’s trademark keffiyeh.
Arafat, who led the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) for 35 years and became the first president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1996, fell violently ill in October 2004 at his besieged West Bank compound. Two weeks later he was flown to a French military hospital in Paris, where he died on 11 November 2004 at the age of 75. The cause of death was described as a “stroke”.
Yasser Arafat’s family launched a case last month over claims that he was poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive element prior to his death. French prosecutors later opened a murder inquiry into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004. Swiss scientists hired by a documentary crew say they found traces of polonium on some of Arafat’s belongings. The medical records of Arafat, who died at a military hospital near Paris in 2004, said he had a stroke resulting from a blood disorder. However, many Palestinians continue to believe that Israel poisoned him. Israel has denied any involvement.
Arafat’s widow, Suha had brought a Civil suit before a court in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre. The case does not name an alleged killer, but is brought against an unnamed perpetrator X. French officials told the media that the prosecutors had agreed to begin a murder inquiry, by appointing an investigating judge.
The French legal system, unlike many other systems, requires the judge to take investigative role in legal proceedings.
Earlier it was also reported in various media that President Mahmoud Abbas had officially requested the help of French President Francois Hollande in the investigation.
The inquiry stems from an al-Jazeera TV documentary broadcast early in July, which commissioned Lausanne University’s Institute of Radiation Physics (IRA) to analyse Arafat’s belongings, which his widow had kept.
The scientists told the channel that they had found “significant” traces of polonium-210 present in items including Arafat’s trademark keffiyeh.
1 sept 2012
The Mossad Killed Yassir Arafat Part 1
In an extraordinary twist to the current controversy over the death of Yassir Arafat a former Mossad agent has stepped forward and revealed the truth about the operation that put Israel’s greatest foe in his grave and the Palestinian revenge that has placed Israel’s greatest warrior and former Prime Minister in a vegetative state.
The tale begins as far back as 1982 when Israeli army snipers were prevented from killing Yassir Arafat as he boarded the ship that would take him from Beirut to Tunis. Major Major was one of those snipers and was never able to forget or forgive the frustration that came from the high command refusing him authorization to pull the trigger. It wasn’t until over 20 years later that he finally got permission, as a member of the Mossad to “put things right”.
It was with the election of Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister that Major Major was able to finally take out Yasser Arafat. “Arik also suffered from regret at the fact that he could have put an end to Arafat in 1982 but held back on Begin’s instructions” he said. “But neither of us had a clue how Palestinian revenge would come back to haunt us.”
Major Major says that the only reason he has come forward now is because by mutual agreement both sides held back the truth about what had happened to their own leaders for fear of the scale of the public reaction on both sides. “If the public found out the extent to which our internal security had been breached by the Palestinians, especially considering the way Rabin was killed, we felt that there would be irresistible pressure from the public to launch an attack on the recently vacated Gaza as well as to totally retake the West Bank…and if I am being honest there was a massive reluctance on the part of the security services to admit to the scale of our own failure in protecting the Prime Minister.”
Major Major continues: “At the time we had just started to experiment with the use of radioactive isotopes as a form of assassination. We had already had some success with such materials (he refused to elaborate further) and had concluded that Polonium was the most effective way of killing someone without leaving behind a trace.”
As the condition of Arafat deteriorated it was only Major Major, the Prime Minister and 2 others who knew the real reason for his sudden illness.
“The idea was that as he grew weaker and weaker Arafat would come to realize that he might not live to see the State of Palestine come into existence and would therefore bring the 2nd Intifada to an end and come to terms with [Prime Minister] Sharon. Unfortunately he became delusional in his sickness and even more hardline, ultimately it was impossible to deal with him at all. The plan backfired and we were left with a weak and virtually leaderless PA which simply couldn’t deal with us at all.”
In an extraordinary twist to the current controversy over the death of Yassir Arafat a former Mossad agent has stepped forward and revealed the truth about the operation that put Israel’s greatest foe in his grave and the Palestinian revenge that has placed Israel’s greatest warrior and former Prime Minister in a vegetative state.
The tale begins as far back as 1982 when Israeli army snipers were prevented from killing Yassir Arafat as he boarded the ship that would take him from Beirut to Tunis. Major Major was one of those snipers and was never able to forget or forgive the frustration that came from the high command refusing him authorization to pull the trigger. It wasn’t until over 20 years later that he finally got permission, as a member of the Mossad to “put things right”.
It was with the election of Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister that Major Major was able to finally take out Yasser Arafat. “Arik also suffered from regret at the fact that he could have put an end to Arafat in 1982 but held back on Begin’s instructions” he said. “But neither of us had a clue how Palestinian revenge would come back to haunt us.”
Major Major says that the only reason he has come forward now is because by mutual agreement both sides held back the truth about what had happened to their own leaders for fear of the scale of the public reaction on both sides. “If the public found out the extent to which our internal security had been breached by the Palestinians, especially considering the way Rabin was killed, we felt that there would be irresistible pressure from the public to launch an attack on the recently vacated Gaza as well as to totally retake the West Bank…and if I am being honest there was a massive reluctance on the part of the security services to admit to the scale of our own failure in protecting the Prime Minister.”
Major Major continues: “At the time we had just started to experiment with the use of radioactive isotopes as a form of assassination. We had already had some success with such materials (he refused to elaborate further) and had concluded that Polonium was the most effective way of killing someone without leaving behind a trace.”
As the condition of Arafat deteriorated it was only Major Major, the Prime Minister and 2 others who knew the real reason for his sudden illness.
“The idea was that as he grew weaker and weaker Arafat would come to realize that he might not live to see the State of Palestine come into existence and would therefore bring the 2nd Intifada to an end and come to terms with [Prime Minister] Sharon. Unfortunately he became delusional in his sickness and even more hardline, ultimately it was impossible to deal with him at all. The plan backfired and we were left with a weak and virtually leaderless PA which simply couldn’t deal with us at all.”
The Mossad Killed Yassir Arafat Part 2
The first part of this post detailed a story about an anonymous intelligence officer describing to me how and why the Mossad had gone about assassinating Yasser Arafat. For those to whom it wasn’t clear, the story was made up. It was, however, believable enough that minutes after writing the post the editorial team at the Times of Israel needed to make changes to the post in order to make sure that it was understood to be a hoax story. In spite of these changes I still received phone calls from people asking me to reveal my source, if the story was real and for as much additional information as I would give them, one angry commenter went so far as to write the following:
“In the United States we have “supermarket checkout tabloids” like the National Enquirer that publish fictional news such as “Elvis returns to earth in a spaceship”. Times of Israel is apparently in this category, except worse. You like to publish inflammatory fantasies that will cause the peoples of a volatile region to hate each other even more than they already do. Shame on you.”
The reason for the indignation and for the changes made are clear and I need not go into them too much except to say that there was a point behind it. In my story I offered no proof, named no source, I offered no evidence of any kind to anyone that what I was saying was true and even the big fat disclaimer at the bottom of the page didn’t stop the above commenter’s anger at the Times of Israel. The point is clear, assertions can be dangerous, regardless of whether there is any proof behind them.
Though there’s nothing new about people loving conspiracy theories, to the best of my knowledge no government has ever desecrated the grave of their most revered leader on the basis of one. Until now.
Incredibly, 8 years after his death, Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha Arafat, the woman who refused permission for an autopsy of her husband’s body when he died, has changed her mind and opened an investigation now. A French court will be looking into the events surrounding the death of the man more connected to the Palestinian cause than any other.
It’s happening now on the basis of an Al Jazeera documentary that claims to have found traces of Polonium 210 (a radioactive isotope used to assassinate former KGB operative Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006) on Arafat’s clothing. Steps are now being taken to exhume Arafat’s body to test for this radioactive substance.
According to an article in Time Magazine ”The Swiss lab said the traces of Polonium-210 it discovered were not conclusive proof that Arafat was poisoned.” So the very evidence upon which the investigation is being opened is not actual proof according to the same lab that found it in the first place. This admission from the lab has fallen on deaf ears. Already the conspiracy theory has evolved into conspiracy fact in the minds of all those who want to believe that there is something more to Arafat’s death. Apparently Palestinians will gladly suffer the indignity to Arafat of his body being exhumed in order to satisfy their curiosity.
Suspicion as to who killed Arafat hasn’t just fallen on Israelis. Palestinians now have no option but to participate in this farce or risk their silence being viewed as ‘proof’ of involvement. Qaddoura Fares the senior Fatah official now responsible for the welfare of the 4,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons told the British newspaper The Independent ”If I am asked to go to Paris and be questioned, and I refuse, then I might as well kill myself.”
This is the curse of the conspiracy theory, the only proof anyone needs of validity is for people to refuse to participate in the witch hunt. Anyone can create a conspiracy theory, even a blogger on a website without any sources. But what happens when a conspiracy theory is turned into a real life cause?
I guess we’re about to find out.
The first part of this post detailed a story about an anonymous intelligence officer describing to me how and why the Mossad had gone about assassinating Yasser Arafat. For those to whom it wasn’t clear, the story was made up. It was, however, believable enough that minutes after writing the post the editorial team at the Times of Israel needed to make changes to the post in order to make sure that it was understood to be a hoax story. In spite of these changes I still received phone calls from people asking me to reveal my source, if the story was real and for as much additional information as I would give them, one angry commenter went so far as to write the following:
“In the United States we have “supermarket checkout tabloids” like the National Enquirer that publish fictional news such as “Elvis returns to earth in a spaceship”. Times of Israel is apparently in this category, except worse. You like to publish inflammatory fantasies that will cause the peoples of a volatile region to hate each other even more than they already do. Shame on you.”
The reason for the indignation and for the changes made are clear and I need not go into them too much except to say that there was a point behind it. In my story I offered no proof, named no source, I offered no evidence of any kind to anyone that what I was saying was true and even the big fat disclaimer at the bottom of the page didn’t stop the above commenter’s anger at the Times of Israel. The point is clear, assertions can be dangerous, regardless of whether there is any proof behind them.
Though there’s nothing new about people loving conspiracy theories, to the best of my knowledge no government has ever desecrated the grave of their most revered leader on the basis of one. Until now.
Incredibly, 8 years after his death, Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha Arafat, the woman who refused permission for an autopsy of her husband’s body when he died, has changed her mind and opened an investigation now. A French court will be looking into the events surrounding the death of the man more connected to the Palestinian cause than any other.
It’s happening now on the basis of an Al Jazeera documentary that claims to have found traces of Polonium 210 (a radioactive isotope used to assassinate former KGB operative Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006) on Arafat’s clothing. Steps are now being taken to exhume Arafat’s body to test for this radioactive substance.
According to an article in Time Magazine ”The Swiss lab said the traces of Polonium-210 it discovered were not conclusive proof that Arafat was poisoned.” So the very evidence upon which the investigation is being opened is not actual proof according to the same lab that found it in the first place. This admission from the lab has fallen on deaf ears. Already the conspiracy theory has evolved into conspiracy fact in the minds of all those who want to believe that there is something more to Arafat’s death. Apparently Palestinians will gladly suffer the indignity to Arafat of his body being exhumed in order to satisfy their curiosity.
Suspicion as to who killed Arafat hasn’t just fallen on Israelis. Palestinians now have no option but to participate in this farce or risk their silence being viewed as ‘proof’ of involvement. Qaddoura Fares the senior Fatah official now responsible for the welfare of the 4,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons told the British newspaper The Independent ”If I am asked to go to Paris and be questioned, and I refuse, then I might as well kill myself.”
This is the curse of the conspiracy theory, the only proof anyone needs of validity is for people to refuse to participate in the witch hunt. Anyone can create a conspiracy theory, even a blogger on a website without any sources. But what happens when a conspiracy theory is turned into a real life cause?
I guess we’re about to find out.
8 july 2012
Palestinians light candles at the gravesite of their late leader Yasser Arafat on the seventh anniversary of his death
A senior Palestinian official says acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas will ask the scientists of a Swiss lab, who probed Yasser Arafat’s death, to take samples from the late leader’s body for additional tests.
Saeb Erakat told AFP on Sunday that “Abbas ordered one of his medical advisors to communicate immediately with the experts at the Swiss institute who tested Arafat’s clothes and request they come immediately to Ramallah to take samples from Arafat’s body.”
Erakat added that Abbas asked for further tests, hoping that they “will reveal the real cause for Arafat’s death.”
On July 3, the Al-Jazeera news channel reported that the findings of nine-month laboratory research conducted at the Institute of Radiation Physics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, suggested the former Palestinian leader may have been poisoned by polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element.
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004, following several weeks of medical treatment.
At the time, French officials refused to reveal the exact cause of his death on grounds of privacy laws, fueling rumors that the Mossad had poisoned him with thallium, another radioactive element.
Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was also poisoned with polonium. At a London hotel in 2006, he was given a cup of tea laced with the substance.
AOHR criticize PA handling of investigation into Arafat's death
The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Britain (AOHR) considered the decision of PA President Mahmoud Abbas to keep the same committee led by Tawfiq Tirawi in charge of investigating Arafat’s death as a "disregard for the Palestinian people after eight years of its formation without achieving a noteworthy breakthrough."
The organization called, in a statement on Sunday, for forming an independent commission which has no relation with the Israeli or western security institutions. "The time has come for the Palestinian people to say loudly to the PA it is enough that eight lean years have passed without any achievement under the pretext of the inability to end or replace the committee's members who should be investigated," the statement said.
The organization added that the PA's insistence to keep the same committee for eight years despite its failure raises many questions about the PA intentions, pointing out that the Palestinian people want a committee of trustworthy experts who have no relation with the Israeli or western security institutions.
The statement urged the Palestinian Legislative Council, elected by the Palestinian people, to take over the task of forming a committee of Inquiry into the assassination of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in cooperation with the international experts who have discovered the toxic substance to oversee the exhumation of Arafat’s body and take the necessary samples to be tested as soon as possible.
The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Britain considered the keeping of the same committee since eight years led by Tawfiq Tirawi as a deliberate futility that aims to hide all evidence that may lead to uncover the death circumstances and the real culprits, the statement continued.
A senior Palestinian official says acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas will ask the scientists of a Swiss lab, who probed Yasser Arafat’s death, to take samples from the late leader’s body for additional tests.
Saeb Erakat told AFP on Sunday that “Abbas ordered one of his medical advisors to communicate immediately with the experts at the Swiss institute who tested Arafat’s clothes and request they come immediately to Ramallah to take samples from Arafat’s body.”
Erakat added that Abbas asked for further tests, hoping that they “will reveal the real cause for Arafat’s death.”
On July 3, the Al-Jazeera news channel reported that the findings of nine-month laboratory research conducted at the Institute of Radiation Physics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, suggested the former Palestinian leader may have been poisoned by polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element.
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004, following several weeks of medical treatment.
At the time, French officials refused to reveal the exact cause of his death on grounds of privacy laws, fueling rumors that the Mossad had poisoned him with thallium, another radioactive element.
Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was also poisoned with polonium. At a London hotel in 2006, he was given a cup of tea laced with the substance.
AOHR criticize PA handling of investigation into Arafat's death
The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Britain (AOHR) considered the decision of PA President Mahmoud Abbas to keep the same committee led by Tawfiq Tirawi in charge of investigating Arafat’s death as a "disregard for the Palestinian people after eight years of its formation without achieving a noteworthy breakthrough."
The organization called, in a statement on Sunday, for forming an independent commission which has no relation with the Israeli or western security institutions. "The time has come for the Palestinian people to say loudly to the PA it is enough that eight lean years have passed without any achievement under the pretext of the inability to end or replace the committee's members who should be investigated," the statement said.
The organization added that the PA's insistence to keep the same committee for eight years despite its failure raises many questions about the PA intentions, pointing out that the Palestinian people want a committee of trustworthy experts who have no relation with the Israeli or western security institutions.
The statement urged the Palestinian Legislative Council, elected by the Palestinian people, to take over the task of forming a committee of Inquiry into the assassination of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in cooperation with the international experts who have discovered the toxic substance to oversee the exhumation of Arafat’s body and take the necessary samples to be tested as soon as possible.
The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Britain considered the keeping of the same committee since eight years led by Tawfiq Tirawi as a deliberate futility that aims to hide all evidence that may lead to uncover the death circumstances and the real culprits, the statement continued.