The Arafat Death Obsession

We know there are some media outlets that are willing accomplices when it comes to spreading anti-Israel propaganda and the ridiculous claims arising this week out of the six year old Arafat was killed by Plutonium story is a case in point. The Melbourne Age was at the forefront with two stories on the subject late in the week while it continues to ignore any contemporary stuff that shows Palestinian terrorism in a bad light.

Barry Rubin of the Gloria Centre has it right in this insightful article.

Yasir Arafat Is Still Dead and We Know Who Really Did Him In

The effort now by various Palestinian factions to imply Israel killed him is the funniest thing in the Middle East since the U.S. director of national intelligence’s congressional briefing when he said the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular democratic organization. What’s dismaying is how much play Western media are giving this charge as if it should be taken seriously. When the West behaves in this way it signals at the least a dangerously naive credulousness and at worst a profound anti-Jewish and anti-Israel complex. The New York Times and Washington Post take this nonsense seriously.

But there’s something else in this story, something very chilling indeed. Revolutionary Islamists especially, but many Muslims otherwise, believe that Jews tried to murder Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and even if they failed that the poison shortened his life. The accusation that Jews are the murderer of prophets — with Muslims throwing in the founder of Christianity also — is a phrase that derives from this story. It is frequently heard from Hamas and others. This is a blood libel, an alleged crime that then leads to the view that Jews are absolutely evil and should be wiped out. In short, it is a rationale for genocide. When Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhood say that Israel should be wiped off the map and Jews generally should be murdered that incitement is the inevitable consequence of this line of thinking.