Monday, November 1, 2004
You know, the one I advised you have handy while reading this post? Get it out again while reading this BBC (news? opinion?) piece on the departure of Arafat from what should have been his tomb. (Hat tip: Mike) I guess this is a bit of foreshadowing of the type of dreck we can expect when the old bastard finally kicks off.
Find that too harsh? There are few people alive on this planet responsible for as much misery, death, destruction and hatred as that one man. When the world's oldest terrorist finally fails to come down for breakfast I certainly won't be putting up any pictures of fireworks - my mind just doesn't work that way, and in any case, that particular failure to inhale will be far too long overdue to celebrate - but if any positive feeling may be attached to human death...find it here.
Unlike the BBC, I won't be crying. And you don't need to, either.
BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Yasser Arafat's unrelenting journey
Foreign journalists seemed much more excited about Mr Arafat's fate than anyone in Ramallah.
We hovered around the gate to his compound, swarming around the Palestinian officials who drove by, poking our microphones through their dark, half-open windows.
But where were the people, I wondered, the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the frantic expressions of concern?
Was this another story we Western journalists were getting wrong, bombarding the world with news of what we think is an historic event, while the locals get on with their lives?
Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry... without warning.
In quieter moments since I have asked myself, why the sudden surge of emotion?
There is an entire post's worth of material behind speculating about the answers to that question, and what causes so many reporters' moral compass to start spinning like a top when in the presence of evil.
I got a particular chuckle out of this:
Oh boy. If there's one thing Arafat can't be accused of, it's ambivalence toward violence.
Side note: Sorry for the lack of posts over the weekend. I was very busy and will probably be so much of today as well. I'll be catching up on some stories I wanted to point to that might be old news for blog addicts, but may not be so old (only a day or three) for 'regular' folks. I've also got those Spencer notes to get down...
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Courage is morally neutral.It only becomes virtuous in the defence of good.Arafat is courageously evil.