monster ink
There's been lots of words written about Mr. Arafat since his long-overdue, Franco-like slip into the abyss, but I thought the New Republic had it just right about what kind of man he was.
Yasir Arafat could not even die straightforwardly. His final days were like all his days, cloaked in concealment and conspiracy, hostile to truth, pitting factions against one another for the sake of his own cult.
A natural death, unlike the first King Abdullah of Jordan, unlike Anwar Sadat, was what Arafat most ardently wanted, the objective to which he again and again subordinated the interests of his people. He lived in fear of the gangster culture that he created. He was the very model of unheroic leadership. His admirers praised him as a survivor, but it was his own survival for which he will finally be known. Rarely has a figure so much littler than history loomed so large in it.
What I always noticed about Arafat was the way he never blinked.
Like a snake in a kafiya.
Yasir Arafat could not even die straightforwardly. His final days were like all his days, cloaked in concealment and conspiracy, hostile to truth, pitting factions against one another for the sake of his own cult.
A natural death, unlike the first King Abdullah of Jordan, unlike Anwar Sadat, was what Arafat most ardently wanted, the objective to which he again and again subordinated the interests of his people. He lived in fear of the gangster culture that he created. He was the very model of unheroic leadership. His admirers praised him as a survivor, but it was his own survival for which he will finally be known. Rarely has a figure so much littler than history loomed so large in it.
What I always noticed about Arafat was the way he never blinked.
Like a snake in a kafiya.
posted by patrickhenry at 4:43 PM
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