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May 18, 2012
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May 15, 2012
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May 10, 2012
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May 9, 2012
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Jewish World Review
Nov. 11, 2004
/ 27 Mar-Cheshvan, 5765
Chicken soup with Arafat
By
Richard Z. Chesnoff
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http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
I never could bring myself to tell my Aunt Sadie, but I once shared chicken soup with Yasser Arafat. It was at the end of a long interview, one of several with him over the years. "Come have lunch," he said in a tone decidedly more congenial than our conversation had been.
On the table was a tureen of broth with chunks of boiled chicken floating in it. "My favorite," he said. "I have it every day." I made a joke, of course, about chicken soup being Jewish penicillin. He didn't get it.
And that was the problem: Arafat never got it. He had little patience for remarks or questions he disliked. Any challenge to his authority brought an especially harsh rebuke if you were a foreigner — and a long knife if you were a fellow Palestinian.
He knew enough to be amiable, with visitors. But I saw the other side. Once, during an interview in Tunis before the first U.S.-brokered accord with Israel, he became furious when I suggested the world might prefer dealing with Palestinians it considered more moderate. His eyes grew wide with anger. "You think so!" he shouted. "You think so? Well, I don't think so!"
Truth to tell, at that point he was right. If anyone had the ability to forge a Palestinian state then, it was Arafat. He had the political power, the money and the military force.
Tragically, like other Palestinian leaders before him, he wasted his chance. He used his political power to gain more power and the money to corrupt and control. Worst of all, instead of using his military force to squelch terrorism, he financed it, bringing more destruction to his people as well as to Israelis.
What was Arafat's fatal flaw? Why did a man who had both the opportunity and the intellect to deliver his people a state of their own fail to do so?
He lacked the realism, the vision and, most important, the courage to make the shift from terrorist to statesman. He spoke (in Arabic) not of peace with Israel but of a truce, something he could always break. And he refused to tell his people that Israel never would commit demographic suicide by letting millions of Palestinians return.
He also feared that if he ever told his people to accept a state that was less than what he had promised, he would lose stature, popularity and the place he believed he deserved in Arab history.
False pride is often a fatal error in the Arab world — a character flaw born not of heroism but of cowardice.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor and veteran journalist
Richard Z. Chesnoff is a senior correspondent at US News
And World Report, a columnist at the NY Daily News and a senior fellow at
the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of
Demoracies. A two-time
winner of the Overseas Press Club Award and a recipient of the National Press
Club Award, he was formerly executive editor of Newsweek International. His latest book, recently updated, is Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe
Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History. (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR. ) Comment by clicking here.
© 2004, NY Daily News
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