Arafat was born in August 1929, in Cairo - and not in Jerusalem or Gaza, as Arab sources often claim. Over the course of his career, which began well before 1964 when he took over the PLO, he has been directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis, untold numbers of Arabs and more than 100 U.S. citizens including two diplomats in Sudan whose brutal murders Arafat ordered by radio from his Beirut headquarters.
In 1995, Ariel Sharon said, "I don't know anyone other than Arafat who has as much civilian Jewish blood on his hands since the time of the Nazis."
Arafat is also "credited" with turning airplane hijacking into an international terrorist scourge. Over two years ago, after an Israeli plane was almost shot down in Kenya, then-Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned, "Sky-jacking terrorism first began against Israeli targets abroad by Arafat and Fatah in the late 1960's, and it very quickly became an international plague..."
As father of the Palestinian nationalist/terrorist movement, Arafat saw nothing wrong with "uniting" the PLO's money and his own personal accounts. He reserved for himself sole signatory rights on the PLO's accounts, and never hid the fact that he often used the money for his own personal use. A special annual issue of Forbes Magazine reported that Arafat controlled $300 million, placing him among the richest in the "Kings, Queens and Despots" category. Some reports are that he controls five times that amount.
He also used the money for terrorism. Documents found by the IDF during its Operation Defensive Shield campaign in April 2002 showed that part of the huge budget of the Palestinian Authority - funded to a great extent by countries of the European Union - was diverted by Arafat for terrorism purposes. In one example among many, a letter was found signed by Arafat authorizing the transfer of thousands of dinars to Ahmed Mahmad Iz-A-Din Al-Kassam, a Hamas member who also represented Hizbullah in the PA and was responsible for transferring money for terror attacks and supporting terrorists' families.
Arafat turned down this week a request by his wife Suha, who lives in Paris, to write a will granting her his money. Experts say that the fact that he refuses to share his signatory privileges, even now, with anyone else, means that the tremendous amounts of money that were designated for the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza will either support bankers around the world in the best case, or will go to his relatives, or, in the worst-case scenario, will find their way into the Fatah coffers to continue to fund terrorism
Published: 09:29 November 04, 2004
Last Update: 17:11 November 04, 2004 |
