Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Arafat

Showing posts with label Arafat. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Suha Arafat's lawyer says they'll ignore French, Russian reports

French investigators have concluded in a report that Yasser Arafat died of natural causes and ruled out the possibility that he was poisoned, a source told Al Jazeera.

"The analysis cannot lead us to affirm that Arafat died of polonium 210 poisoning," reads the report, according to the source, who has seen it. The report comes to the same conclusion the French reached in 2004 - that Arafat died of a brain hemorrhage and an intestinal infection.

A similar forensic test conducted by Russian scientists, who were invited to participate by Palestinian Authority officials, was inconclusive.

I had never seen the Russian report, but Al Jazeera put its conclusions online last month:

Considering that within the framework of mathematical, cross-disciplinary inter-disciplinary modelling the results were re-verified and included into the artificial modules structure and the working hypothesis was not confirmed, the working hypothesis regarding the subject's death being caused by penetration of 210Po into his body was recognized as unsubstantiated.

Here's the best quote:

Suha Arafat’s lawyer, Djabbar, alleged that the French investigators followed “a very conservative, narrow approach” to their analysis of Arafat’s remains. He added: “I tell you one thing, for us, the only show in town is that of the Swiss.”

The Swiss methodology, of course, was very suspect, as this article in Wired mentions.

Suha's lawyer, however, simply says that the flawed study is the "only game in town." Because to him, truth is meaningless; you are free to pick and choose the data that helps you and ignore the rest.

Which is, in a nutshell, the entire historical Palestinian Arab experience.

PLO trying to keep the Arafat circus alive

Palestine Today reports:

The head the commission of inquiry into the death of the late President Yasser Arafat, Major General Tawfiq Tirawi, pledged to reveal the accomplices involved the assassination of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during an upcoming press conference, although he did not announce when this would occur.

Tirawi said on his Facebook page Tuesday: "I promise that the next press conference will be the last to shed light on the names of every accomplice or co-conspirator in the case of President Yasser Arafat....We are in the last quarter-hour of the investigation."

I love pre-announcing an unscheduled press conference that will never happen. The only people with Arafat were major officials in the PLO and people he trusted, the chances that a PLO-backed investigation will blame any PLO member for being an accomplice is zilch.

Then again, maybe Tirawi will resurrect the Joo-Rays theory, updating it as a long-distance polonium weapon! This way he can avoid blaming any Arabs altogether!

Four years ago, the head of another Arafat death investigation also announced that he was really, really close to figuring out what happened. We're still waiting.

Meanwhile, BBC reports that the French investigation finds that Arafat was not poisoned:

A team of French scientists probing the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004 do not believe he was poisoned, according to leaks from their report.

They have reportedly concluded he died after a "generalised infection".

...Tawfiq Tirawi, head of the Palestinian Authority's inquiry into the death, told AFP: "We need to study the report. We can't take a position on it until we've looked at it."

I wonder what his position would be?

Remember that the Russian report was also leaked to show no evidence of polonium poisoning.

The Swiss report that said that their results "moderately" supported the theory that he was poisoned relied more on the same lab's previous findings about Arafat's alleged underwear and toothbrush than on what was found on his remains directly. Apparently, the Russian and French reports concentrated only on the actual tests done on his tissues.

Researcher: Swiss Arafat report cannot support its conclusions

Joods Actuel reports that a researcher has asked for more details from the Swiss institute that tested Yasir Arafat's remains for signs of polonium poisoning, but the answers place the entire report into question.

Dr. Rudi Roth asked Professor François Bochud, director of the research center of the University Hospital in Lausanne (CHUV) that did the tests, why the report didn't publish the margins for error as is standard scientific practice. He also asked why reverse-calculating the original concentrations of polonium based on the Swiss numbers yield obviously incorrect results. Director Bochud replied via email, "Because of the large uncertainties in the models and the measured values, an inverse calculation would not be not meaningful" and the researcher confessed: "Our conclusions were not based on any specific evidence but the consistency of all of the observations."

"The polonium that we did measure is actually the supported kind of polonium, the same kind of polonium that you would find naturally," admitted Bochud.

Independent scientists who looked at the Swiss report concluded that its conclusions appeared to be subjective and not based on the data contained in the report. Dr. Roth quotes Professor Atie Verschoor, Expertise Centre Environmental Medicine (ECEMed) in the Netherlands, who says, "Indeed, Bochud confirms there are important uncertainties in the model used and for that reason, and several others, no conclusions at all can be taken. That had to be the conclusion of the report."

Verschoor further said, “The error-margins are very high and caused by the fact that the material has not been kept in a controlled environment (8 years in a tomb), the decontamination operation and the calculation trying to eliminate the Po-210 quantity caused by radon in the soil. There are a lot of assumptions and they creates important inaccuracies. The researchers must have noticed it but did not document it.”

In addition, Professor Nicholas Priest, who formerly headed the biomedical research unit of the Atomic Energy Authority in Britain and who is familiar with the Litvinenko case, said that there is no real confidence interval provided by the report. He told The Independent that it is “far too dangerous and scientifically unjustified” to calculate how much polonium was in Arafat’s body on the basis of such tiny concentrations of polonium." When asked specifically whether the list of arguments in the report that support poisoning lack scientific credibility, his answer was “yes."

Priest added, "I think the study is seriously done, but their conclusions were to my mind somewhat biased as to please the people who were paying for the report."

Here is Dr. Roth's report summarizing the opinions of several experts that he spoke to along with some who were quoted in the media.

Arafat circus continues as Abbas wants to go to the UN

Tawfiq Tirawi, head of the PA's "National Commission to Investigate the Assassination of President Yasser Arafat" said that there are 100 people working in the organization.

It is unclear what exactly this commission does, even though Tirawi says that it employs the hundred people distributed in committees including security and medical research, investigation, and other components.

The funding for this farce is seemingly coming from Western aid to the PA.

Meanwhile, PA president for life Mahmoud Abbas agreed with the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to "internationalize" the investigation into the "killing" of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, either to the Security Council or the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Abbas said during a TV interview that he formed three committees to follow up on the inconclusive forensics reports, in the areas of security, medical and legal, saying that he had asked the international investigators to examine the body, including Russia, Switzerland and France. (A recent report showed that the PA and Suha Arafat paid for the Swiss investigation, in another misuse of international funds.)

Abbas, known by his nom de guerre Abu Mazen, did point out "We can not charge Israel until the investigation is completed." How big of him.

In other Arafat circus news, David Barclay - the forensics expert who Al Jazeera hired to interpret the Swiss report in ways that the Swiss never intended - wrote an article for Al Jazeera about why he believes Arafat was poisoned. Al Jazeera doesn't mention that he is being paid by them. There's ethical journalism for you.

PLO admits Russian Arafat report doesn't indicate polonium poisoning

From AP:

Israel is the only suspect in the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, the chief Palestinian investigator in the case alleged Friday, a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by radioactive polonium.

The investigator, Tawfik Tirawi, said the probe would continue, but did not say what more the Palestinians could do to try to solve the mystery.

Just so you know how objective Tirawi is, he has been publicly charging Israel with the death of Arafat for years. Naturally,...

He did not present evidence of Israeli involvement, arguing only that Israel had the means and motive to do so. Israel has repeatedly denied it was behind Arafat's death, and did so again Friday, in light of the new allegations.

At Friday's news conference, Palestinian investigators summarized the findings of the Russian experts, whom Abbas had asked for a separate probe.

Dr. Abdullah Bashir, the medical expert on the Palestinian team, said the Russian scientists did not find sufficient evidence to determine that "polonium-210 caused the radiation that led to the death." He did not elaborate.

However, both teams determined that Arafat did not die of disease or old age, "but rather, by poisonous material," Bashir said, adding that "this supports our theory."

The Russians were also looking at the possibility of other poisons, Bashir said, adding that more study was required.

Tirawi, meanwhile, was evasive when asked repeatedly whether he believed Arafat was killed by polonium.

"It is not important that I say here that he was killed by polonium," he said. "But I say, with all the details available about Yasser Arafat's death, that he was killed, and that Israel killed him."

At another point, Tirawi described Israel as the "first, fundamental and only suspect in the assassination of Yasser Arafat."

In 2012, however, Tirawi stated that "We are certain that there are Palestinian hands that contributed to the elimination of Yasser Arafat," and that they "will be subject to severe penalties and doomed to death."

Arafat polonium report delivered to the PA

From Gulf News:

Palestinian authorities have received the reports of Swiss and Russian forensic investigations into the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, an official said Tuesday, without disclosing the findings.

“The report was delivered” by the Swiss laboratory, said Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads the Palestinian investigation into Arafat’s death.

Official Palestinian news agency WAFA said a Russian team appointed by the Palestinian Authority also handed in its report on November 2 and that its conclusions would be made public in due course.

Some 60 samples were taken from the remains of the late Palestinian leader in November last year for a probe into whether he was poisoned by polonium.

The French report is not ready yet.

A Russian official has already been quoted as saying that no polonium was found on their tissue samples.

So the PA, which has officially and repeatedly said Israel murdered Arafat from the beginning, is now the sole party that can decide what to do with the reports?

The PA has officially described Tirawi's group as the "Inquiry Commission of the late President Arafat's assassination." You just know that if any parts of the reports don't support the PA's predetermined conclusion, they will be buried.

The PA will have a press conference saying that Arafat was murdered, the media will trumpet the headlines, and when the actual report leaks out a few months that casts doubt on their announcement the lie will already have been entrenched.

Russian scientist says no trace of polonium on Arafat's remains

Russian news agency Interfax reports:

The head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency (FMBA) Vladimir Uiba believes that the cause of death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could not be polonium poisoning.

"He could not have been poisoned with polonium. Russian experts conducting a study said traces of this substance were not found," - said Uiba to "Interfax" on Tuesday.

He added that experts FMBA conducted a detailed examination of the remains of Arafat. However, they regularly inform the Russian Foreign Ministry on the progress of investigations.

However, the article continues:

On Monday, October 14, the newspaper "Kommersant" quoted sources reported that an official investigation into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has already completed and led to conclusions: Palestinian leader was poisoned with polonium.

It appears that the Lancet article I noted yesterday had been completely misrepresented by Al Jazeera as if it was a confirmation by independent scientists that Arafat had been poisoned, when it was in fact a paper written by the same people that Al Jazeera hired to begin with the test his clothing.

News outlets ran with the false Al Jazeera version of events as if there were new revelations, but there weren't.

Bolonium

Over the weekend, the Lancet published an article called "Improving forensic investigation for polonium poisoning" which is being misrepresented by the media, especially Arab media.

AFP reports:

Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which "support the possibility" the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned.

In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat's belongings.

This is not the results of the tests done on exhumed samples from Arafat. This is simply a regurgitation of what the Swiss researchers said last year, just published in a new place.

The very end of the AFP report confirms this:

Beatrice Schaad, head of communications at the Vaudois University Hospital Center which is in charge of the institute, said the case report was the "scientific version" of what was given to the media.

"There is nothing new compared with what was said" in 2012, she told AFP. "There is still no conclusion that he was poisoned."

For those who cared, the specific results were published last year as well. And the numbers still don't add up.

The current Lancet article says:

According to biokinetic modelling (see appendix), the measured activities of ²¹⁰Po of several mBq per sample are compatible with a lethal ingestion of several GBq in 2004.

As I noted last year, Arafat's underwear urine stains were measured to have an astounding 180 mBq, over one hundred times the expected amount one would have expected to see in 2012, based on radioactive decay, of a dosage of polonium that would kill a man in a month.

Again, not that I am a fan of conspiracy theories, but these results would make sense only if the polonium was planted afterwards.

And, as I have noted, there were major irregularities when Arafat's body was exhumed, in that the PLO insisted that Russians be involved in the exhumation, and that only a Palestinian Arab pathologist was allowed to physically take the samples, with no one else observing him. If someone wanted to get advice on how to plant polonium on the samples - as well as polonium itself - Russia would the first choice.

Maybe this is why the investigation has been taking so long. If the polonium was planted, the researchers would probably be seeing results that are inconsistent or that otherwise don't make sense.

Whatever happened to the Arafat polonium probe?

Remember last year when Yasir Arafat's bones were dug up to see if a Swiss laboratory could determine if
he died of polonium poisoning?

Remember how the amount of polonium found on his underwear would have indicated an amount that would have killed a normal person in less than a day, although he was sick for weeks?

Remember how the exhumation of Arafat's body was far from transparent, but only a PA pathologist was allowed to touch it and how the PA insisted that Russian experts be on the scene as well - even though Russia had nothing to do with it?

At the time, we were told that it would take about four months for the Swiss to come to a conclusion about the matter.

Then the Swiss said they'd be finished by late spring. The Spectator thought the report would be released by the first day of summer.

The latest word comes from Xinhua, on August 13:

Test results of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's corpse would be handed to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the middle of September, a PNA official said Tuesday.

A Swiss lab that examined samples from Arafat's remains would complete the results around the middle of September, said Tawfiq Al-Tirawi, head of the Palestinian committee that follows the investigation into Arafat's death in 2004.

"So far, the Swiss lab did not give us any initial indications or results on the deaths of Arafat's death," Al-Tirawi told Xinhua. However, he added that there were no obstacles preventing the results from being handed down and declared next month.

Well, its the middle of September, and we still haven't heard anything..

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but if the PLO asked the Russians for help in planting polonium on the samples while onsite, it might explain the delays. It would be very difficult to plant such tiny amounts in the tissue samples and keep them consistent with each other, as well as with making it look like a slow poisoning death. If the Swiss are seeing inconsistent results they might suspect something, but they are not criminal investigators and any theories about someone purposefully planting polonium would be outside their mandate.

Al Jazeera insults Arafat; PalArabs seethe

From YNet:

Palestinian riot police prevented dozens of angry protestors from breaking into a building where the offices of Al Jazeera TV channel are located in the center of Ramallah.

The Fatah Youth movement called for a demonstration against Al Jazeera after a guest attacked the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Ibrahim Hammami, a pro-Islamist writer and head of the Palestinian Affair Center said that Abu Ammar, another name Arafat is known by, is a traitor. Arafat, who died in 2004, is still seen a symbol for the Palestinian people.

Two days before the show, on the 20th anniversary of signing the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Hamami wrote on his Facebook page that Arafat accomplished the Israeli dream 20 years ago.

A few days before that, Al Jazeera published a documentary called “The Price of Oslo,” unveiling what they called new historical information showing that the PLO recognized Israel and turned its back on the “revolution.”

At the demonstration, protestors held signs and pictures of the late Arafat, while chanting slogans.
“Yasser Arafat is a red line,” said employee Nibras Hussein, after she was not allowed to leave her job to partake in the demonstration. “Most people are working at this time. I am sure much more people wanted to protest Arafat’s insult but can’t leave their jobs.”

In front of the building, more protesters came to participate in the demonstration. Amna Mustafa was one of them: “I came to say I reject the Zionist-American conspiracy that is being waged through Al Jazeera channel by insulting and distorting the national figures and symbols,” Mustafa, a 33-year-old protester, said.

See how peaceful he is?

Notice the nature of the insult - not that Arafat was a terrorist, but that he was too peaceful! This is what gets the Palestinian Arabs upset. Similarly, Al Jazeera coverage of the Oslo anniversary concentrated on how the PA was too conciliatory towards Israel.

You will not have to look hard to find Israelis or Jews willing to call Sharon or Begin or Shamir "terrorists." But you will never find any Arab in an Arab country who would publicly say the same about Arafat. Both the insults and the defenses in the Arab world consistently come from the perspective that "my side is more anti-Israel, more intransigent, than your side is."

Arafat's family is threatening to sue Al Jazeera unless Hamami apologizes.

(h/t EBoZ)

J-Street student trip pays respects to Arafat

A student took a J-Street sponsored tour of Jerusalem and Ramallah - and there was nothing remotely even-handed about it.

While the point of the article is about how her fellow college students were so lacking in critical thinking skills that they swallowed the lies they were given whole, one could not tell that this trip was organized by a supposedly Jewish, "pro-Israel/pro-peace" organization as opposed to an Arab propaganda outfit. And this J-Street trip winds up in a most sickening way:

We hopped on our charter bus and went to meet with a member of the PLO negotiating team on the well known Emek Refaim street in the German Colony. Not surprisingly, the man was filled with anger. He started off by saying how difficult it is to be a Palestinian in the German Colony seeing Israeli flags waving from houses that were once homes of Palestinians.

He then continued on for the next 40 minutes playing the blame game: “Why can’t there be peace? Because of Bibi. There are two things in this world that will never change – and that is Netanyahu and Allah.”

As he went on and on, I became lost in his web of contradictions and realized that this man has been in the peacemaking game too long. I found it odd that the students I was traveling with did not seem bothered by the bitterness of the PLO negotiator, nor did they mention how they wished we could have heard from an Israeli negotiator as well, which I believed would be beneficial to compare and contrast the two sides.

...Finally, we were on our way to Ramallah. I was searching for the images the media so often likes to portray – of a city destroyed by war, stricken with poverty. However, I noticed how modern and beautiful the city was, as we drove past sushi restaurants and five-star hotels. We went to the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and met with a man who was not of Israeli or Palestinian descent, but Asian. This man had no relation to Israel or Palestine – just your typical civil servant.

He spoke about human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories. He lamented over Israeli settlers cutting down trees of Arab farmers, vandalizing mosques and other actions of the sort. He completely glossed over the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel (because that isn’t a big deal, right?) and barely touched on the stone throwing by Palestinians at Israelis driving through the West Bank (which has killed many).

The fact that he bypassed these subjects so smoothly was the first thing that was of concern to me. The second thing of concern was that this man did not know a word of Arabic or Hebrew. I wondered, how is he supposed to gain a first-hand experience of the trials and tribulations of the West Bank, Gaza and Israel when he files reports from within his airconditioned building without speaking to anyone on the ground?

Probably the strangest part of the entire trip was going to the PLO headquarters to visit Yasser Arafat’s memorial. I felt we stood there for an uncomfortably long time. I did not want to be disrespectful, but I in no way wanted to be mistaken as honoring him. I felt chills as I stood at the monument of a man who was thought of as a hero by the suicide bombers who killed so many Israelis over the years.

Yes - J-Street takes students on a trip to pay homage to a terrorist with the blood of hundreds of Jews on his hands!

(h/t Lauri)

Arafat's Corpse for PA President!

On November 26, the bones of Palestinian Arab terrorist leader Yasir Arafat are being dug up.

Given the withering disapproval that Mahmoud Abbas has been getting for declaring that he would no longer want to live in Safed, this is an opportunity for another set of elections in the territories - and Arafat's bones should run.

Why not elect the skeleton of the only leader they ever had and who they romantically pine for? The bag of bones would win in a landslide!

There are other advantages to keeping Arafat's bones above ground.

He can be counted on not to make the same mistakes on TV that Abbas made. And his speeches will be less boring than Abbas'.

He is not in danger of being assassinated by Israel.

His political positions will never change, showing the strength of conviction that Arabs admire so much.

World leaders can invite Dead Arafat to their state dinners and UN events, just like the old days. He'll be praised as a moderate by New York Times columnists and "Middle East experts," just like the old days.

And Suha will get just as much love and affection as she did from him when he was alive.

No one will dare protest against such a revered figure, and Hamas would be rendered ineffective against the charisma of Arafat's corpse.

The new dead Arafat can no longer steal hundreds of millions of dollars from his beloved people.

There is a decent chance that he would win another Nobel Peace Prize.

From Israel's perspective, Arafat's corpse won't negotiate - but then again, neither did Abbas, so there is no change there. And new dead Arafat will not lie as much as either Abbas or the old Arafat. He also can't secretly mastermind terror sprees.

I think this is an idea whose time has come.

Fatah members proud that Arafat intended to fool the world with Oslo

I was going through a Fatah Facebook page and saw someone posted a video that they said was "very important."

It was a slightly edited version of a video that Palestinian Media Watch had posted long ago from a 1995 PA TV broadcast.

Arafat: "When the Prophet made the peace of Hudaybiya, [Muhammad's followers] Omar Ibn al Khattab and Ali Ibn Abi Talib said: "How can we accept an agreement like that?" "How can we accept such humiliation of our religion, Oh, Messenger of Allah?" And when we signed the agreement in Oslo if anyone has an objection to that agreement, I have a hundred."

Note: Arafat compares the Oslo Accords with the Hudaybiya Pact, which the Prophet Muhammad signed with the Quraish tribe with the intention of breaking it later.

So not only do many Arabs know that Arafat was lying at Oslo and that the Palestinian Arab leadership had no intention of making real peace with Israel - they are proud of it!

PA, Suha using Arafat story to distract world from their own crimes

From Der Spiegel:

During a recent studio interview with al-Jazeera, a choked-up Suha Arafat demanded an investigation. Now, sitting in her living room, where a portrait of Arafat hangs on the wall, she feels she is finally approaching her goal. "I am very confident," she says, "that the entire case will reach a positive end in very little time and that we will finally learn the truth." This is not wishful thinking, she adds, noting that there are reasons for being so optimistic.

Since polonium-210 has a half-life of 138 days, things need to proceed quickly. Therefore, Arafat's body will be examined in the coming weeks, believes Saad Djebbar, one of Suha Arafat's lawyers in Paris. In a television interview, he said that the French legal system has jurisdiction because the murder began in the Palestinian territories and ended in France. He then added the curious sentence that Suha Arafat wants to prevent the Palestinian Authority from obstructing the investigation.

This is a charge that enrages Tawfik Tirawi, Arafat's former intelligence chief, because it is also directed against him. For the last two years, Tirawi has headed the official Palestinian commission charged with investigating the cause of Arafat's death. Since the scandal involving possible polonium poisoning erupted, he has been repeatedly forced to explain why it was al-Jazeera, rather than him, that came up with the idea of taking a closer look at Arafat's underwear.

As Tirawi sees it, it was just an accident that al-Jazeera discovered the last missing piece of the puzzle. He claims that his commission has tirelessly investigated the case, but that its activities have been secret because such things are obviously kept out of the public gaze. Although he is either unwilling or unable to discuss the commission's findings, he will say that it has been quite successful.

A previous PA investigation headed by a former aide to Arafat concluded that it was thallium poisoning, although it is unclear how official that was..

Not only Suha Arafat, but also many Palestinians in Ramallah see things differently. They believe that Palestinian Authority officials never made any real effort to solve the mystery surrounding his death. The first investigative commission was dissolved six months after Arafat's death and only reappointed in 2010.

In all of this, the Palestinians had good cause for looking into things more closely. After all, the French clinic's 558-page report on the death of their national hero raises more questions than it provides answers. For example, why did Suha Arafat refuse to allow a liver biopsy to be taken? Why didn't anyone demand that an autopsy be conducted? How can it be that even the best doctors in France didn't find the cause of this strange infection, which caused blood to coagulate and led to a stroke? Could it be that the French government wants to keep the cause of death secret?

Moreover, why is there so much missing in the report, and why does it seem like "someone has played around with it," as Avi Issacharoff, a reporter with the Israeli daily Haaretz, says? Likewise, he also finds it somewhat odd that he, an Israeli journalist, was the only one to publish the secret French medical report, rather than Suha Arafat or the Palestinian Authority.

Suha Arafat says she is driven by the search for the truth. But it might also have something to do with the fact that, in addition to being widely despised in Ramallah, she has also fallen into disfavor in France and Tunisia, where she is under investigation for suspicious cash flows and corruption. There is also the persistent rumor that she had a hand in the disappearance of $300 million (€240 million) after Arafat's death. In any case, it would certainly seem opportune for her to now assume the role of the widow avenging her husband's death in the name of the Palestinian people.

Enthusiasm for the investigation is more tempered in Ramallah, partly because some people there suspect al-Jazeera of wanting to help topple Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But, of course, Palestinian officials also realize that they can take advantage of the search for Arafat's alleged murderer. At the moment, there are no peace talks with Israel, the economy is in a slump and there continue to be deep divisions between Hamas and Fatah, the rival Palestinian groupings ruling the Gaza Strip and West Bank, respectively. Under these circumstances, it would be a perfect time to have news of a poisoned martyr to deflect from the political deadlock and disorientation.

For these reasons, the debate might say more about the Palestinians' situation today than about Arafat's death. "To this day, we have avoided accusing Israel of being responsible for Arafat's death," says Nimr Hamad, Abbas' political adviser. "But if we find polonium in his body, it is 99.9 percent certain that it was Israel. That would help us because it proves that Israel doesn't want peace."

That highlighted phrase is an out-and-out lie. In 2005, a PLO ambassador accused Israel of killing Arafat with secret laser device.

In 2006, the PA accused Israel of murdering Arafat, without any disclaimers. (Hamas was the head of the PA at the time but Fatah welcomed the announcement.)

Children are taught (and music videos sung on official PA TV insist) that Jews killed Jesus - and Arafat.

And, of course, the commissions that have been set up by Palestinian Arab officials to determine the cause of Arafat's death have all assumed from the outset that he was murdered.

(h/t Ricardo)

PLO: Lying as easy as breathing

From Courthouse News Service:

A U.S. magistrate judge sent an official letter to the State of Israel seeking judicial assistance in a terrorism lawsuit involving the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.

The family of Esther Klieman sued the PLO and Palestinian Authority in District of Columbia Federal Court. They claim Klieman was machine-gunned to death by a group affiliated with the defendants on March 24, 2002 near Neve Tzuf, Israel.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola sent the letter to the Directorate of Courts in Jerusalem, asking Israel to help counsel for Klieman's family, and for her alleged killers, by deposing the Israeli police officers who investigated the case.

The letter also asked that Israel release all documents relating to the shooting of Klieman, and any police interrogations of Tamer Rimawi, who admitted being involved in the murder.

But look at the end:

Facciola's letter to Israel comes after he denied the PLO's argument that Al-Aqsa is not a real entity.

The PLO actually tried to argue that there is no such thing as their terror wing???

Here's the webpage of the Nedal Brigades of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Today.

One article today praises the Munich Olympics massacre.

Here's their Facebook page, which includes photos like these (apparently taken in June):

(The page also praises Saddam Hussein.)

In fact, an earlier court document quoted the killer from his sworn statement given in Israel:

In 2002, I joined the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is the armed wing of the Fattah movement in the West Bank. As all of the Palestinian military and security services work together, and really operate as one, I was told to go back to my old unit at the Palestinian Army and get a Kalashnikov rifle to use in my operations . . . While I was in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, my pay came directly from Fatah . . .

In 2003, I received a telephone call from my officer in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade instructing me to carry out an operation. I listened carefully and followed instructions. I was taken by car to a site overlooking the road going into Attar . . . I shot my rifle at the front window and all over the bus . . . my bullets went through one of the side upper windows and killed Esther Klieman, a civilian passenger on the bus.

I am very sorry for what I did. I didn’t want to kill Esther Klieman . . . but I did what I was instructed to do by the officers of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade . . .

Afterward, I went back to Ram Allah . . . I went to the Mukata, where I hid and stayed for many months. I saw Yasser Arafat and other leaders of the Palestinian Authority . . . From the Mukata I went out with my weapon, and with bullets I got at the Mukata, and did other operations . . .

So, yes, I think the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades really has existed for over a decade, even if the PLO pledged back in 2007 that it was dismantled

(h/t Ron)

George Clooney to play Arafat in 3D biopic? Arabic media fall for satire

Arabic language media have fallen for a satirical article that claims that Steven Spielberg will produce a 3D Yasser Arafat biopic starring George Clooney.

Here's where they got it from, a spoof website called the Pan-Arabia Enquirer:

He already has the beard!

George Clooney has been signed up to play the lead in an upcoming biopic of Yasser Arafat, according to an article in The Hollywood Reporter.

Quoting insiders close to the project in Los Angeles, the publication claims that actor has agreed a deal that will see him play the title role in ‘Yasser’, a new multi-million dollar 3D feature being developed as a collaboration between Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios and the Doha Film Institute.

Anne Hathaway is widely expected to join the project as Arafat’s wife, Suha
Anne Hathaway is tipped to play Arafat’s wife Suha, while Chris Hemsworth is already on board as a younger Yasser Arafat. On the other side, Kevin Spacey is the bookie’s favourite to take the role of Yitzhak Rabin while Alan Rickman is reportedly in final contract negotiations stages that should see him become Arafat’s devious latter-day nemesis Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sources closes to Clooney say the A-lister is “over the moon” to be playing Arafat, and has “long dreamed of donning the iconic headdress and army fatigues”. No director has yet been lined up, but many in the industry expect the task to be handed to Peter Jackson, who has previously suggested any film about Arafat should be spread over three separate films.

“Biopics are huge business these days, with movies about the lives of Margaret Thatcher, Marilyn Monroe and Danny Devito having earned millions at the box office,” claimed film expert Jethro Goldstein, speaking to The Pan-Arabia Enquirer. “Yasser Arafat is a character with all the action, drama and emotion to take biopics into the lucrative 3D market, and Clooney – who looks the part as well as being politically minded – is the perfect choice as the lead.”

The numbers in the Arafat polonium report don't add up (UPDATED)

I just looked at the methodology of the Swiss institute that initially determined that there was far more polonium-210 in Yasser Arafat's urine than normal.

Essentially the only personal items that had huge amounts of polonium were Arafat's underwear and toothbrush, with a bloodstain on his hospital cap having a significant amount as well. But the report found that the toothbrush bristles had similar levels of polonium as that of a control toothbrush (from an IRA collaborator). So most of the "smoking gun" comes from the urine sample in the underwear.

Here is what the report says:

The cumulative urinary excretion and the daily urinary excretion after acute intake by ingestion of 210- Po are shown in Figure 7 and 8. A good agreement was found between the values of cumulative urinary excretion reported by Harrison et al.[2] and those calculated in our study (see Figure 6).

Regarding the poisoning of Mr. Litvinenko by 210-Po in November 2006 in London, Harrison et al. [2] concluded that 0.1–0.3 GBq or more absorbed to blood of an adult male is likely to be fatal within 1 month. This range would correspond to an intake of 1–3 GBq or more, assuming f1=01. Based on their study, Li et al. [3] found that the estimated amount of 210-Po ranged from 27 MBq assuming f1=0.5 to 1.4 GBq assuming f1=0.1.

Considering a poisoning by ingestion of 1 GBq of 210-Po (f1=0.1), it is expected to find about 500 kBq/day in urinary excretion the first 10 days after intake, about 250 kBq/day between 10 and 20 days and about 150 kBq/day between 20 and 30 days, according to Figure 8. Note that for a daily urinary excretion of about 1000 ml/day, such a concentration of 210-Po might have been observed in the gamma spectrometry analysis of 2004 (we estimated the detection limit at 25 kBq/l). Then, assuming that about 2 ml of urine might be found in the underwear with urine stains, we expect that 1 kBq can be found in the underwear if it is worn during the first 10 days after intake. This activity of 1 kBq in October 2004 corrected for radioactive decay of 10 Po (T1/2 = 138.4 d) gives about 1.4 mBq in February 2012. For comparison, an activity of 180 mBq was found for the urine stain of underwear (A) (see Table 2).

The authors note that 1 GBq will kill a man in a month. They then note that this amount would yield about 1.4 mBq in the urine after some 20 half-lives of decay, in February 2012.

And then they say that they measured 180 mBq in February, over a hundred times more!

But doesn't that mean that Arafat ("Mr. Louvet" in the report) would have ingested over 100 Gbq of polonium in 2004 - 100 times the dosage that kills within a month? If so, how did he survive as long as he did after he took ill?

Moreover, if he would have taken a lethal amount, they note that the French doctors would have observed that in their gamma spectography analysis in 2004. Yet they didn't.

Finally, and in addition to our alpha-spectrometric analysis, we re-analyzed the raw data of the
gamma spectrometry performed on urine samples by the French government before Mr Louvet's death. We did not detect any abnormal gamma activities. In particular, we checked the area around the energy 803 keV that is (weakly) emitted by 210-Po. We did not find any evidence of this nuclide in the spectra.

Could it be that the samples were contaminated with trace amounts of polonium in the intervening years?

This gets into the realm of conspiracy theories, which I am no fan of, but one other fact needs to be mentioned: You can buy tiny, but safe, amounts of polonium over the Internet.

UPDATE: My theory isn't so far-fetched . An expert in Israel talked to the Jerusalem Post and came up with the same conclusion:

The high levels of the radioactive poison polonium reportedly found on the belongings of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat indicate that the toxin was planted on them long after Arafat's death, a senior counter-terrorism analyst told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

Dr. Ely Karmon, of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center's Institute for Counter-Terrorism, is a specialist in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism.

Responding to an Al Jazeera report published Wednesday, which said that specialists at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, discovered abnormally high levels of polonium on Arafat's belongings, Karmon said that the half life of the substance would make it impossible for polonium to have been discovered at such high levels if it had been used to kill Arafat eight years ago.

According to the Al-Jazeera report, polonium has a half-life of 138 days, "meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months."

And yet, eight years after Arafat's death, the Swiss scientists reported finding polonium levels of 54mBq and 180mBq on his belonging, considered to be high levels.

"If it had been used to for poisoning, minimal levels should be seen now. Yet much higher levels were found. Someone planted the polonium much later," Karmon said.

"Because of the half life of the substance, the conclusion is that the polonium is much more fresh," he added.

....After Arafat's death, "why did neither Suha nor the PA agree to release the French hospital's medical file?" he added.

(h/t CHA and Sasha)

PLOnium

Yesterday there was a kerfuffle as Al Jazeera released a report suggesting that Yasir Arafat was killed by Polonium-210, a highly radioactive substance:

Eight years after his death, it remains a mystery exactly what killed the longtime Palestinian leader. Tests conducted in Paris found no obvious traces of poison in Arafat’s system. Rumors abound about what might have killed him – cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, even allegations that he was infected with HIV.

A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed that none of those rumors were true: Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004.

More importantly, tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.

“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.

The anti-Israel crowd is loving this, saying it "proves" that Israel assassinated Arafat.

Reuters throws some cold water on the claim:

Darcy Christen, spokesman for the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, told Reuters on Tuesday it had found "surprisingly" high levels of polonium-210 in Arafat's belongings.

But he stressed that clinical symptoms described in Arafat's medical reports were not consistent with polonium-210 and that conclusions could not be drawn as to whether the Palestinian leader was poisoned or not.

Also not mentioned is that Al Jazeera itself once aired accusations that Mahmoud Abbas was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Arafat - and Abbas responded by shutting down the Al Jazeera offices in the West Bank!

Anyway, I had some fun on Twitter about this, because of all the hue and cry over polonium, people seem to have forgotten about a much deadlier element. My tweets:

A rare and dangerous element, that has killed thousands of people, mostly in the Middle East #PLOnium

Outbreaks of #PLOnium almost destroyed both Jordan and Lebanon a while back, but no one seems to remember that

A very unstable element, #PLOnium has been known to blow up airplanes and buses

#PLOnium has been known to even attack athletes, but only those from a single country exactly 40 years ago. Not worth remembering, though.

Despite similarities, #PLOnium does not mix well with its sister element, #Hamasium.

Even with its known dangers, some people like to be close with #PLOnium, thinking that it won't hurt them.

PLOnium is much, much deadlier than polonium, but for some reason people think that it is inert - or even beneficial. And those who note how dangerous it is are outshouted by PLOnium's many supporters, who know it is deadly but think that it only has one target that they want to see killed as well.

PLOnium is especially popular at the UN.

See also Challah Hu Akbar.

Fatah insulted by Khamenei's saying Arafat abandoned resistance

During Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh's visit to Iran, he met with the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television quoted Khamenei as saying to Haniyeh that Hamas must continue its resistance against Israel, pointing out that the late Palestinian leader "Yasser Arafat lost his popularity because he distanced himself from the resistance."

The Iranian leader added that Iran "always stands to the side of the Palestinian resistance."

Fatah is not happy with this characterization of their founder.

Ahmed Assaf, Fatah spokesman, lashed out at Khamenei. He said, The status of the martyr leader Yasser Arafat is immortalized in the consciences of the Palestinian people and Arab and Islamic nations and the free world, and does not require the false testimony of Khamenei of Iran."

Assaf added, "The Israeli occupation assassinated the commander of the Palestinian people because of his steadfastness on the rights of our people and adherence to legitimate resistance to occupation and settlement, so he became a martyr after a siege in his headquarters in the home for three years. "

Assaf continued, "We deplore the Haniyeh's consistent abuse of the history of the Palestinian people in exchange for for a bunch of money," calling on Iran to stop interfering in Palestinian and Arabic affairs.

(h/t Eliyahud)