Muhammad Al-Daya, longtime bodyguard of Yasser Arafat, said in a recent TV interview that Arafat used to lie when he denounced bombings in Israel. Arafat "would condemn the bombing in his own special way, saying: 'I am against the killing of civilians.' But that wasn’t true," said Al-Daya, in a BBC Arabic interview which aired on April 3, 2014.This is no surprise to those who followed Arafat's reflexive "condemnations" of bombings during the Oslo "peace" process.
Following are excerpts:
Interviewer: Ariel Sharon used to say that Arafat was a pathological liar. Many politicians who had dealings with Arafat said he was an excellent liar.
Muhammad Al-Daya: Islam allows you to lie in three cases: In order to reconcile two people...
Interviewer: For the sake of reconciliation.
Muhammad Al-Daya: If your wife is ugly, you are allowed to tell her she is the most beautiful woman alive. The third case is politics. You are allowed to lie in politics.
Interviewer: So you acknowledge this...
Muhammad Al-Daya: Yes.
Interviewer: So he used to lie in your presence?
Muhammad Al-Daya: Abu Ammar? Yes. When there was a bombing in Tel Aviv, for example, he would say... This would happen due to pressure, especially by President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak would call Arafat and say to him: “Denounce it, or they will screw you.” Arafat would say to Mubarak: “Mr. President, we have martyrs. The [Israelis] have destroyed us. They have massacred us.” But Mubarak would say to him: “Denounce it, or they will screw you.”
Then Arafat would condemn the bombing in his own special way, saying: “I am against the killing of civilians.” But that wasn’t true.
Even The New York Times almost, almost noticed the lie back in 2002:
Before Yasir Arafat condemned "terror against civilians" on Saturday, his wife, Suha al-Taweel Arafat, told an Arabic-language magazine that she endorsed suicide attacks as legitimate resistance against Israeli occupation.Other media would occasionally notice Arafat's doubletalk.
In an interview published Friday in Al Majalla, a London-based, Saudi-owned weekly, Mrs. Arafat said that if she had a son, there would be "no greater honor" than to sacrifice him for the Palestinian cause.
"Would you expect me and my children to be less patriotic and more eager to live than my countrymen and their father and leader who is seeking martyrdom?" she was quoted as saying.
It was described well in Barry Rubin's biography of Arafat about a 1997 incident:
Of course, there are whose who have a vested interest in pretending that Arafat was a saint. Daoud Kuttab, award winning journalist, claimed in 2002 that Arafat condemned terror attacks in Arabic without the slightest skepticism. Of course, that happened years after he was called on not condemning terror in Arabic.