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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (6643)	1/10/2005 12:49:19 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 22250

NYC bowling alley to return Arafat funds Documents showed late Palestinian had $1.3 million stake The Associated Press Dec. 23, 2004 NEW YORK - The owner of a popular bowling alley in Greenwich Village said Thursday his company is was severing ties with a group tied to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and is returning its $1.3 million investment. Arafat invested the money in New York-based Strike Holdings, owner of Bowlmor Lanes, through a holding company he created called Onyx Funds, according to Bloomberg Markets Magazine. “We are in the process of placing the funds in the amount they invested in escrow to be returned,” Strike Holdings founder Thomas Shannon told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Effectively as of today the PCSC will have no investments in Strike Holdings,” he added. The PSCS is a Ramallah-based holding company owned by the Palestinian Authority. Some customers upset Bowlmor is several blocks from the campus of New York University and is popular with Manhattan hipsters, who pay about $8 a game per person to bowl in the evenings and on weekends. News of the investment upset some customers at the alley, which advertises itself on its Web site as an ideal location for bar and bat mitzvahs for Jewish teens. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have come, but I promised the kids,” Steve Saslow, 55, told the Daily News in Thursday editions. Shannon said he was just as surprised by the news. “We had no idea whatsoever until yesterday,” he said. Zeid Masri, managing partner of SilverHaze Partners, a Virginia-based investment firm, told Bloomberg Markets Magazine he invested the money in Strike Holdings for Onyx because he had been a former classmate of Shannon. Strike Holdings, which also owns bowling alleys on Long Island and in Maryland and Florida, said it, too, was unaware the money had come from Arafat. “Had we known the source of these funds, which represents approximately 2 percent of our company’s equity, we never would have accepted them,” company spokeswoman Marcia Horowitz told the News. The Bowlmor money was among $799 million in international investments by Arafat detailed in newly released documents, Bloomberg Markets reported. Other holdings included $285 million in Orascom, an Egyptian cellphone company, and $3.2 million in the U.S. software firm Simplexity, it said. © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (6643)	1/10/2005 12:52:11 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 22250

Anne Bayefsky: Undiplomatic Imbalance, Antisemitism at the UN is a problem for more than just Israel NRO ^ \| December 13, 2004 \| Anne Bayefsky Do the Palestinian run the U.N.? There is a curious omission in the 129-page report on United Nations reform recently produced by a 16-person panel "of eminent and experienced people" at the request of Secretary General Kofi Annan. The U.N.'s own website, under "Main Bodies," lists the General Assembly, the Security Council, and directly below, the "Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People." But nowhere does the reform report mention this committee. The omission goes to the heart of what's really ailing the U.N. For the past four decades the United Nations has become the personal propaganda machine of the nom de guerre of Arab and Islamic states — the Palestinian Authority. Their aim is to demonize, debilitate, and destroy the state of Israel — the thriving democratic beachhead in their midst — for a start. The original U.N. mission, to protect the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, has been hijacked and corrupted by nations that neither share the universal values of the U.N.'s Declaration of Human Rights nor have democratic intentions. Is this a paranoid, introverted, hysterical exaggeration? Consider the evidence. Every schoolchild or member of the public who walks into U.N. Headquarters today (and the entire month of December) will be greeted by a large display in the front entrance put on by that main U.N. body, the Committee on Palestinian Rights. It includes a series of pictures "Fashion for Army Checkpoints," that conveys the alleged degradation of being searched for a suicide bomb strapped to one's body. Of course, nothing is said about the degradation of being blown up by a suicide bomb strapped to those bodies who manage to avoid such searches. Is this just a problem for Israelis? Not if one compares the extensive Palestinian exhibit gracing the U.N. lobby with the minimal display they managed to squeeze alongside on the subject of AIDS. But the public U.N. entrance is just the tip of the iceberg. There is only one entire U.N. Division devoted to a single group of people — the U.N. Division for Palestinian Rights (created in 1977). There is only one U.N. website dedicated to the claims of a single people — the enormous UNISPAL, the United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine. There is only one refugee agency dedicated to a single refugee situation — UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (in operation since 1950.) Is this just an Israeli problem? Not if you're a Dalit in India, a farm worker in Zimbabwe, or a Tibetan, and your rights are not on the U.N. agenda. The list of hijacked U.N. organs goes on. The General Assembly operates through six committees of the whole. One of them, the Fourth Committee, routinely devotes 30 percent of its time to the condemnation of Israel. Is this just an Israeli problem? Not if you're concerned about another agenda item of the Fourth Committee, the "comprehensive review of the whole question of peacekeeping operations in all their aspects" which gets less than half the attention paid to Israel. How about the takeover of the General Assembly emergency-session procedure? These sessions began in 1956, and since then six of the ten emergency sessions ever held have been about Israel. The 10th such session began in 1997 and has been "reconvened" 13 times, most recently this past summer. Is this just an Israeli problem? Not if you were one of those people who thought a million dead in Rwanda or two million dead in Sudan might have warranted one General Assembly emergency session. Then there is the U.N.'s primary human-rights body, the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Thirty percent of the resolutions condemning specific states ever adopted over 40 years are directed at Israel. The attention not paid to the rights of a billion people in Communist China — who have never been the subject of a single resolution — is not an Israeli problem. To appreciate fully the extent to which the U.N. has been taken over, observe November 29th, the annual U.N. Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which is the only U.N. day dedicated to a specific people. The occasion was held in the U.N.'s elaborate Trusteeship Council before hundreds of delegates. At the front of the room sat the secretary general, the president of the General Assembly, and the chair of that main U.N. body, the Committee on Palestinian Rights. In a repeat of previous years' performances, beside them stood a U.N. flag, a Palestinian flag, and in between, a map in Arabic pre-dating the existence of the U.N. member state of Israel. All participants were asked to rise for "a minute of silence...for all those who have given their lives for the cause of the Palestinian people..." — which would include suicide bombers. Given that the major client of U.N. largess is the Palestinian surrogate for Arab and Islamic warlords, it is a wonder that the experts on U.N. reform didn't see fit to mention the impact of the bull in their china shop. On the contrary, they recommended that more bulls be invited in. Reform of the human-rights commission, according to the secretary general's experts, requires not limiting the commission to states committed to democracy and human-rights protection, but expanding the membership from the current 53 to all 191 U.N. member states. Current members and human-rights enthusiasts like Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan will no doubt be delighted to be joined by friends in Iran and Burma. In an apparent nod to the ransacking of the U.N.'s peace and security foundation by Islamic states — that have blocked the adoption of a comprehensive convention against terrorism for years — the secretary general's panel recommended that the U.N. adopt a definition of terrorism. On the bright side, they finally admitted the U.N. doesn't have such a definition. Until it does, it can hardly be expected to play a serious role in the war against terrorism. But the panel was very careful to recommend that it be a "consensus definition" — U.N. code language for blessing continuing stonewalling by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. As for the panel recommendation to expand the membership of the Security Council, it may improve the egos of various states. But more warm bodies not subject to democratic membership qualifications won't transform a damage-control organ and its veto-protection scheme into an effective instrument for dealing with grave threats like a nuclear Iran. So let's cut through all of the talk and meetings and discussion groups on U.N. reform to the root cause of U.N. disease. Arab and Islamic states have the U.N. in a chokehold and, so far, no one is prepared to do anything about it. — Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting professor at Touro and Metropolitan Colleges in New York..

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (6643)	1/10/2005 12:54:40 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22250

Orthodox Jew from U.K. shot to death in Antwerp (November) Haaretz ^ \| 11/18/2004 \| News Agencies BRUSSELS - An Orthodox Jew from Britain was shot in the head in Antwerp early Thursday and died about 14 hours later in a hospital, the local public prosecutor's office said amid concern in Belgium about a rise in anti-Semitism following the stabbing of a Jewish youth in June. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said the motive was unclear. "We do not exclude any motive, but so far there are no indications that the motive was racist or extremist," said Dominique Reniers. Police were looking for witnesses to the shooting of Moshe Naeh, a 24-year-old Orthodox Jew and a father of five. Naeh, who is British but has been living in the Belgian port city, was shot once in front of his home in Antwerp's Jewish neighborhood, Reniers said. He was a secretary to a rabbi in Antwerp. Yehuda Ceitlin, a local aide of Israel's Zaka rescue services, said that, though racial harassment had increased in recent years in Antwerp, it was the first shooting of a Jewish victim in a long time. "It caught everyone by surprise," he said. Antwerp, some 50 kilometers north of the capital, has one of the biggest Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in western Europe. Reniers called the victim a "devout young man" who was shot once from close range. He slumped onto the road, where he was discovered by passers-by who initially thought he was a traffic victim. There have been a series of incidents involving physical attacks and intimidation of Jews in the city this year, often blamed on youths from the large Arab immigrant community. In June, a 16-year-old Jewish student nearly died after being stabbed, apparently by Arab youths, outside his Jewish school in an Antwerp suburb. Days later, a 43-year-old Jewish man was beaten unconscious. The stabbing prompted a national outcry and highlighted the anxieties of the city's 15,000-20,000 Jews, half of them Orthodox. Antwerp has been home to a large community of Orthodox Jews for more than 700 years. Belgium's second city also boasts a large immigrant population, with some 10 percent of its 500,000 inhabitants of North African descent. The leader of Belgium's Jewish community, Dr. Joseph Wybran, was shot to death in Brussels in 1989, and four young people were injured in 1982 when gunmen opened fire on a Brussels synagogue. Both attacks were blamed on Palestinian groups. In 2002, 18 shots were fired into the facade of a synagogue in the southern city of Charleroi without causing injury. The federal government has vowed to crack down on anti-Semitism. Belgium's official anti-racism center said in July it had registered as many anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2004 as in the whole of 2003.

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (6643)	1/10/2005 12:56:22 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Leftists, Neo-Nazis Unite In Mourning Arafat thejewishpress.com ^ \| 12/7/2004 \| EDWARD OLSHAKER No one can deny that Yasir Arafat had a dynamic talent for inspiring admiration and emulation. His gang`s massacres of children on a schoolbus from Moshav Avivim and at a school in Ma`alot — achievements the killer of JonBenet Ramsey could never hope to match — paved the way for similar atrocities committed at a school in Beslan, Russia. Arafat`s attention-grabbing series of airplane hijackings set the standard for the new generation of terrorists who took his invention and improved upon it on September 11, 2001. In death, he continues to inspire, and is already sorely missed by "progressives" and neo-Nazis who share one thing in common — enthusiastic support for the slaughter of unarmed Jewish men, women, and children — and who sound eerily alike in their online remarks praising the PLO chief and cursing the Jews. After years of monitoring the hate speech disseminated by conservative radio and Internet (one of my reports is cited in David Brock`s recently released The Republican Noise Machine), I am forced to conclude that the "politically correct" vitriol of the Israel-hating activist Left makes the venomous rhetoric of right-wing ideologues seem mild by comparison. Am I exaggerating? Let`s look at the comments on Arafat`s death and the Mideast crisis on two neo-Nazi websites — WhiteCivilRights.com, run by Nazi/Klansman David Duke, and Stormfront.org, a disturbingly successful hate site currently under investigation in connection with the desecration of a Jewish museum, cemetery, and synagogue — and two of the most heavily trafficked left-wing websites — DemocraticUnderground.com, dedicated to "the exchange and dissemination of liberal and progressive ideas," and SmirkingChimp.com, described in a laudatory Nation magazine article as "a website with 25,000-plus registered members, founded after the 2000 election as a gathering place for liberals, progressives and leftists who felt the newly elected president reminded them most of, well, a smirking chimp." (At Democratic Underground, members appear to be evenly split for and against Jew-killing; at Smirking Chimp — where criticism of recent kidnappings and beheadings will get you banned, but writing that the victims "got what they deserved" will keep you a member in good standing — the support for Arafat`s terrorism was overwhelming.) The following are typical comments posted on these prominent websites (grammar and punctuation, other than four-letter words, are unedited). Can you tell the leftists from the Hitler-worshipers? (The answers appear at the end.) 1) [Arafat] was a great man. I miss him already. 2) ....fought for his people and was not concerned with money and self serving interests. His Dream was a State for his people... No politician here would ever stand up for his people or their rights. 3) A hero is fallen. 4) Sharon isn`t worthy to shines Arafat`s shoes. 5) I`ve never understood why he was considered an obstruction to peace and uncompromising. RIP. 6) Arafat and Putin are about the only two politicians in the world who have any of my respect. 7) He`s a saint compared to the murderous IDF [expletives]. 8) Rest in Peace, Dr. Arafat. The man with the hardest row to hoe on the planet. Surely he`s in a better place now. Oh, and [expletive] Sharon. 9) Arafat is a HERO! Praise Arafat, may your struggle for liberation and self-determination against the most powerful, genocidal, ethnocentric, terrorist people in the world not be forgotten and may your dream of a sovereign palestinian state someday be realized. 10) Howard Dean`s wife, Wesley Clark, are all dual loyalties, with primary loyalty to, you guessed it, Israel. Zionists warmongers view the rest of humanity as SUB-HUMAN. 11) I`ll give Arafat respect for helping fight the Zionist pigs of Israel. 12) The Wall [is] now synonymous with The Warsaw Ghetto. 13) The creation of the Apartheid Wall by the war criminal Ariel Sharon was an outrage even worse than the Berlin Wall. 14) Basically, [the Israelis are] self-centered idiots, and they have no problem destabilizing the entire world in pursuit of their biblical struggle...They seem to feel that everybody owes them big time, and their concerns comes before those of the rest of the world. 15) I have a certain admiration for Arafat. He played the role of David to Israel`s Goliath. Poking the eye of the beast when the beast smacked then around. Calling the beast on their hypocrisy... 16) [Prime Minister] Mahathir spoke the truth [that Jews rule the world]. 17) Mahatir was only speaking the truth. The fact is that the world is onto the Zionists gameplan and they`re scared [wit]less so they attack anyone who speaks the truth. 18) Sharon probably has a trillion somewhere — he is after all a much bigger pig than Arafat — so to keep that rotund pig shape it would take at least a trillion. 19) The Israelis are creating the world`s largest concentration camp for people, who simply got in the Jew`s way. 20) [Israel] is also creating massive Concentration camps that contain the Palestinians. (Answers: DemocraticUnderground.com — 1, 4, 7, 18; Stormfront.org — 2, 6, 9, 11, 16; SmirkingChimp.com — 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 20; David Duke`s WhiteCivilRights.com [article by Charles Coughlin] — 13, 19) Were you generally able to tell the difference? Or is it time for Stormfront.org and SmirkingChimp.com to consider a merger? Edward Olshaker is a longtime journalist whose work has appeared in History News Network, TomPaine.com, The New York Times and other publications.

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (6643)	1/10/2005 12:58:07 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 22250

Marines Find Alleged Iraqi Torture Chamber Yahoo!News ^ \| December 2, 2004 \| KATARINA KRATOVAC FALLUJAH, Iraq -Down a steep staircase littered with glass shards and rubble, U.S. Marines descended Thursday to a dark basement believed to have been one of Fallujah's torture chambers. They found bloodstains and a single bloody hand print on the wall — evidence of the horrors once carried out in this former insurgent stronghold. "We had sensed that there was a pure streak of evil in this town, ever since the first days of engagement here," said Maj. Wade Weems. The basement, discovered while Marines fought fierce battles with Fallujah insurgents last month, is part of the Islamic Resistance Center, a three-story building in the heart of this city 40 miles west of Baghdad. Maj. Alex Ray, an operations officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said all evidence indicates the 15-foot-by-20-foot space was used by insurgents to imprison and torture their captives. "Based on the evidence we have found here, we believe people were held here and possibly tortured — we have found enough blood to surmise that," Ray told reporters shown the basement Thursday. On the wall adjacent to the hand print, human fingernails were found dug deep into the porous gravel around a hole in the wall — evidence, the Marines say, of a tunnel-digging attempt. Although most of the evidence had been taken away, there was enough to suggest "they tried to dig their way out," Ray said. No bodies or human remains — except for the fingernails — were found when the Marines discovered the underground chamber on Nov. 11, but they found "plenty of blood," he said. Marine experts have collected samples for forensic and DNA testing. "This is tangible proof how horrific they were," Weems, of Washington, D.C., said of the insurgents, shuddering as he gazed at the bloody hand print. Although unmarked, the center was a known base of operations for the insurgents who ruled Fallujah with terror and fear until U.S. forces and Iraqi troops captured it last month. The assault was launched Nov. 8 to wrest Fallujah from the control of radical clerics and fighters who seized it after the Marines lifted a three-week siege of the city in April. The city fell after a week of fierce battles and overpowering airstrikes which reduced many of the buildings to rubble. Two weeks later, Marines continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with holdouts as they clear streets, homes and buildings of weapons caches and rubble. More than 350 weapons caches have been found so far. As Weems' troops inspected the Islamic Resistance Center on Thursday, gunshots and small arms fire reverberated from Fallujah's northeastern Askari neighborhood. The Marines said it was a sign the insurgents are still active. On the Islamic center's first floor, the Marines discovered a weapons-making factory at the back of what appeared to be a legitimate computer store. It contained boxloads of empty shotgun shells and a primitive-looking reloading machine on one of the tables. On the second floor, they found a sack of gunpowder and numerous mortar launcher cases. Elsewhere in Fallujah, the Marines have discovered DVD recordings of beheadings, as well as a cage and chains bearing traces of human blood. They say it was "apparent the cage was not holding animals." "It's the combination of the chains, the cage, the blood — there were not nice people here, that's for sure," Ray said. "They certainly didn't have the morals I would expect in a human society." Reporters were not taken Thursday to the other sites, many of which have been cleared of evidence and the buildings destroyed by the Marines. Maj. Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer, has said Fallujah's "atrocity sites" were used by the insurgents to imprison, torture and kill hostages. In some, knives and black hoods, many of them blood-covered, have been found. More than 30 foreign hostages have been killed by their captors in Iraq (news - web sites) this year, including three Americans. Many of the victims have been beheaded and their deaths shown on grisly videos posted on the Internet. Iraqi police and other security forces have also been killed after their capture by insurgents. "We believe the majority of the hostages were held in Fallujah because it was such an insurgent haven," said Ray. The military says an estimated 1,200 insurgents and more than 50 Marines have been killed in the assault on Fallujah.

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (6643)	1/10/2005 10:48:28 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 22250

IMF official: Arafat diverted $900 million in public money to special account Associated Press \| September 20, 2003 \| SAM F. GHATTAS DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- An audit of the Palestinian Authority revealed that President Yasser Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account he controlled, an International Monetary Fund official said Saturday. Most of the cash, which came from revenues in the budget, went into some 69 commercial activities located in Palestinian areas and abroad, said Karim Nashashibi, IMF resident representative in the West Bank and Gaza. Hanan Ashwari, a Palestinian lawmaker and onetime Arafat spokeswoman, acknowledged there had been incidents of misuse of funds in the past but that the release of the information was an attempt to discredit the Palestinian leader. "There is nothing innocent about the timing," she said. "This is a campaign against the president and the (Palestinian) Authority." Nashashibi did not elaborate on the types of businesses the Palestinian Authority was involved in, but Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad has said its interests range from cement to telecommunications holdings in Algeria and Jordan. Nashashibi disclosed the Arafat account and figures to reporters at a news conference on the economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza. He said the information provided by the Palestinians were an example of the openness and transparency in Palestinian finances under Fayad. However, Nashashibi did not rule out the possibility that a portion of the funds were misused. He said he believes an accounting of the rest of the money will be conducted "at some point, but we're taking it all a step at a time." "What we're trying to do is have a level of disclosure and transparency so that future or present misuse does not happen ... At least there is a followup, there is disclosure," Nashashibi said Nashashibi did not say which public monies were involved. There have been charges of corruption and mismanagement and money-skimming in the Palestinian Authority, including some complaints from ordinary Palestinians, which officials have denied. In a special annual issue of Forbes Magazine earlier this year, Arafat was reported to control $300 million. U.S. and European governments have complained for years that the Palestinian financial structure is not transparent and does not allow donors to follow their money to projects for the benefit of the people. Official Palestinian figures show that investment in the Palestinian private sector amounts to about $300 million. The money was funneled in the past through a fund operated by Arafat's financial adviser, Khaled Salam. Nashashibi said that authority was involved in commercial activities, both at home and abroad, worth an estimated $700 million in today's market prices, "which probably in '99 were $900 million." Nashashibi said Fayad, the Palestinian finance minister who was the resident representative of the IMF in the Palestinian territories in 2000, told Arafat at that time that the account must be disclosed. Finance ministers from the wealthy industrialized nations who met here Saturday and spoke with Fayad also praised his efforts "to improve transparency in the budget and the operations of the Palestinian Authority," according to a statement issued afterwards. As part of restructuring the way the Palestinian Authority deals with money, Fayad last year announced the creation of the Palestinian Investment Fund and said that all Palestinian Authority funds would pass through the new holding company. Nashashibi said he thinks the authority wants to "get out of all these commercial activities." The Palestinian economy has contracted by 30 percent because of the Palestinian-Israeli violence over the last three years and IMF officials said it needs an injection of about $1.2 billion in assistance. Meanwhile, the Palestinian finance minister won a promise of additional assistance Saturday with the finance ministers of major industrialized nations as a World Bank official urged donors to help the troubled Palestinian economy, according to a statement issued by the group. No figure of assistance was given, but an IMF official said Saturday the Palestinians would need "in the neighborhood" of $1.2 billion.

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (6643)	1/10/2005 10:49:54 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 22250

ARAFAT'S 'INVESTMENTS'(Report-Arafat's assets at $1.3 billion spread across the world) The New York Post ^ \| 10/2/03 \| Post Opinion Editorial (No Author Listed) October 2, 2003 -- The next time you hear the Palestinians and their supporters bemoaning how Israel's determination to defend itself against terror has "crippled" the Palestinian economy, consider a new report from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF recently disclosed that its own audit uncovered the fact that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat between 1995 and 2000 diverted fully $591 million from the PA budget into a special bank account under his personal control. That's nearly $100 million a year! Talking about hitting the lottery. According to the IMF's Karim Nashashibi, the money - which came from tax revenues collected by Israel and turned over to Arafat - was used to invest in 69 domestic and foreign commercial companies, whose actual owners were not disclosed. (Arafat's investments, by the way, returned a profit of $300 million. Not bad for a Marxist revolutionary.) This at a time when, as one member of the Palestinian Legislative Council complains, "the Palestinian people are starving and the universities are bankrupt." But while Arafat has never used such funds for a personally luxurious lifestyle, neither has he allowed them to be used as originally intended - to create a viable Palestinian social-welfare infrastructure. Indeed, Arafat has long allowed Hamas to build and maintain such institutions - which are then used as recruiting stations for suicide bombers and other terrorist murderers. Actually, the IMF report is hardly surprising - it merely confirms what has long been known about the corrupt nature of Arafat's would-be state. Back in 1998, a European Union audit disclosed that $20 million in Egyptian funds meant to build low-income housing was instead turned into a luxury apartment complex that was given over to top PA officials and Arafat acolytes. Last year, a former Arafat treasurer charged that Arafat had taken more than a half-billion dollars in international aid and transferred it to his personal accounts; an Israeli intelligence report estimated Arafat's assets at $1.3 billion spread across the world. Forbes magazine, in a more conservative estimate, placed Arafat's net worth at $300 million, making him one of the richest world leaders. In fact, Arafat is little more than a greedy vulture preying on his own people. Every industry in the PA is a monopoly controlled by Arafat henchman; these concerns, 27 in all, set inflated prices for the average Palestinian and require kickbacks from anyone looking to do business in the West Bank and Gaza. Little wonder, then, that prices for basic consumer goods in Arafat-controlled territories have quickly tripled and small-business owners have found it impossible to operate. The IMF pronounced itself "concerned" by its auditors' report and has asked the Palestinian Authority for an explanation. But the G7, meeting last week in Dubai, called on world nations to "increase and accelerate their assistance provided to the Palestinian Authority." Yet with the PA totally under Arafat's thumb - following his successful ouster of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas - that would do little more than pump billions more into a cesspool of corruption. Enough, already.