Doesn’t sound like poisoning to us

Our pal Roger Simon has characterized the madcap scramble for Yasser Arafat’s medical records as a “black comedy” — not exactly the appropriate coda to the life of a man driven by insatiable bloodlust. But the premeditated lies imputing responsibility for his death to poisoning by Israelis — perfect!
Combine Jewish blood libel with the Arab will to believe hidden hand conspiracies and you have the makings of a worthy Arafat legacy. As Shakespeare’s Falstaff was not only witty in himself but the cause of wit in others, so with Arafat — if you change “witty” and “wit” to, well, “murderous” and “murder.”
Jillian Becker is the author and long-time expert on the PLO. Her 1984 book PLO: The rise and fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization was a pioneering investigation into Arafat’s institutional base. This morning she has kindly emailed us this memorandum:

As soon as Arafat was declared dead

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