Bradford, United Kingdom - I was 23 years old when I first met Yasser Arafat and I was at the Percy military hospital when he died. I had been with him in the ruins of his various headquarters in Beirut, Tunis and Ramallah. I loved him as if he were my father, and have remained his loyal supporter all my life.
So the news, broken by Al Jazeera, that he may have been murdered using Polonium-210 - the weapon of choice used to kill Alexander Litvinenko after tea in a central London hotel with, we were told, a former colleague of his from the KGB, is of personal as well as political importance to me.
In the case of Litvinenko, we were assured by all news media that only a state actor with access to nuclear weapons could possibly have the means of carrying out this crime. The same media outlets are currently ignoring the inconvenient truth that one such state actor with both a long track record of murdering its opponents and access to the requisite nuclear material is Israel, which, shortly before the death of Arafat - from the mouths of both Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert - told the world that their earlier undertakings to the United States not to harm Arafat were null and void, with Shaton saying that the Palestinian leader had "no insurance policy" against Israeli action.
The Al Jazeera report drew heavily on the hitherto silent widow of the late Palestinian leader, Suha Arafat. She provided the program investigators with his underwear, socks, toothbrush, even his ubiquitous kaffeyah which were then tested by a leading Swiss laboratory.
All showed that the Palestinian icon was positively glowing with radioactive material. Those of us who were at the hospital when Arafat died were in no doubt whatsoever that he had been poisoned. The only conversation between us - his veteran comrades - was on the subject of by whom?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/201277132124401527.html
So the news, broken by Al Jazeera, that he may have been murdered using Polonium-210 - the weapon of choice used to kill Alexander Litvinenko after tea in a central London hotel with, we were told, a former colleague of his from the KGB, is of personal as well as political importance to me.
In the case of Litvinenko, we were assured by all news media that only a state actor with access to nuclear weapons could possibly have the means of carrying out this crime. The same media outlets are currently ignoring the inconvenient truth that one such state actor with both a long track record of murdering its opponents and access to the requisite nuclear material is Israel, which, shortly before the death of Arafat - from the mouths of both Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert - told the world that their earlier undertakings to the United States not to harm Arafat were null and void, with Shaton saying that the Palestinian leader had "no insurance policy" against Israeli action.
The Al Jazeera report drew heavily on the hitherto silent widow of the late Palestinian leader, Suha Arafat. She provided the program investigators with his underwear, socks, toothbrush, even his ubiquitous kaffeyah which were then tested by a leading Swiss laboratory.
All showed that the Palestinian icon was positively glowing with radioactive material. Those of us who were at the hospital when Arafat died were in no doubt whatsoever that he had been poisoned. The only conversation between us - his veteran comrades - was on the subject of by whom?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/201277132124401527.html
