Yasser Arafat, the corrupt murderer who helped invent modern terrorism, killed countless innocents, and hoodwinked most of the civilized world, is gone but not forgotten.

Today the General Assembly of Fatah, the terrorist group he founded and with which he created the bloody kleptocracy known as the Palestinian Authority, unanimously adopted a resolution calling for an investigation into his death in 2004 from a mysterious illness. The rules for this investigation are very much in the spirit of open inquiry. Those involved can apparently seek out all information, provided it proves that “Israel bears full responsibility for his death.”

Interestingly, the Jerusalem Post reports that other Palestinians think Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas was part of a cabal that did the old murderer in. Various rumors have long circulated about what killed him. His doctors reportedly believed that idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and cirrhosis were involved, though no autopsy was ever performed.

But as long as they’re in an investigative mood, I have some better questions for the Fatah delegates to ponder:

1. What happened to the billions in aid funds from European and other Western sources that Arafat and his pals stole?
2. Why did Arafat turn down Israel’s offers of Palestinian statehood in 2000 and answer the peace initiatives with a devastating terrorist war of attrition that killed more than a thousand Israelis and many more Palestinians and left his people isolated and destitute?
3. Why did Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas turn down an even more generous offer of statehood and territory made by Ehud Olmert last year?
4. Given that Fatah’s only way of countering the growing popularity of Hamas has been through competing with it by creating new terror groups such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, why is the standard measure of credibility in Palestinian politics still how much blood an individual or a group has shed?

When Fatah members are prepared to ask and then answer those questions honestly, then we’ll know that the group has truly transformed itself from a terrorist organization into an entity dedicated to the welfare of its constituents.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 10:27 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.