CNN. I was waiting to watch a very important Lou Dobbs on Illegal Immigration program that night when all of a sudden, Arafat was dead and the feed went right to Ramallah and stayed there, pre-empting Dobbs’ hour and all others after it for hours and hours. It made me sick. Not one word of course from the Arafat-loving Socialist/Communist Euro-reporters about how he stole gazillions from his own people and how he murdered or called for the murder of innocent Americans, not to mention innocent Israelis.

It will be a strange confluence of ironies indeed if the rumor mills are correct and Arafat died of AIDS. It would seem like a fringe neo-con fantasy but for the stony silence of the French on cause of death.

If arafat was so bad then why did the Palestinians love him so much? Why is the whole world (mostly) mourning his passing?

The French want to name a street after Arafat:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1100332499747&p=1078113566627

“If arafat was so bad then why did the Palestinians love him so much?”

The question is nonsensical. Lots of Germans loved Hitler too. The weimar republic democratically elected him, after all. Popularity is completely independent of objective moral merit. Indeed many men in history have become popular by committing horrific atrocities.

“The French want to name a street after Arafat”

That in itself about seals the case for his despicable character.

Matt’s second post is funny :)

But Matt firstly adopts the Reductio ad Hitlerium. This is an argument in formal logic where one compares something to hitler and immediately wins the debate. This is inherently fallacious.

Mr. Auster wrote:

“let us not forget who put Arafat in the position where he would enjoy such prominence: the Israelis, who brought him back from his ignominious exile in Tunis in 1993 and set him up as the “president” of the Palestinian Authority in the expectation that this would lead to a Palestinian state and “peace.” Without that supreme act of leftist delusion by Yitzak Rabin and Shimon Peres, facilitated by the United States and applauded by most of the American Jewish community”

I disagreed with the “peace process” at the time and I hate it now. But Rabin and Peres made a calculated guess, wildly wrong as it turned out. Largely it wasn’t a product of any philosophy, but rather a cynical decision to hire old murderer to police his young terrorists. It didn’t work out, but at least it is possible it would have worked with some other actor.

I don’t know if majority of US Jews applauded - I take it as were very enthusiastic - that move. Most people I know would give old slime no quarter, but deferred to Israelis judgement on the matter.

It is called Godwin’s Rule, stovepipe, named after Mike Godwin; and its relevance died a number of years ago with the relevance of Usenet. What is more, you misunderstand Godwin’s Rule (as do many post-Usenet newbies). Godwin’s Rule says that when you _equate your opponent’s position_ to Hitler’s you automatically lose the argument. I didn’t even compare your position to Hitler’s, let alone set up an equivalence or analogy.

Godwin’s Rule was a fun, quirky sociological comment on the dynamics of Usenet in its time, and it was clever of Mike to come up with it. At the time.

We’ve had plenty of perfectly rational discussions about Naziism here at VFR. And the actual logic employed against your argument ad populum was a simple counterexample.

no no, I’m talking about the “Reductio ad Hitlerium” this is where one compares something to hitler/naziism and supposedly trumps his opponent. Like saying that Palestininan love for Arafat is irrational or immoral or discardable because it is tantamount to a German love of Hitler. You still haven’t explained why the whole world is mourning Arafat’s passing.

Matt wrote:

“relevance died a number of years ago with the relevance of Usenet.”

I realize what VFR discussions remind me of.
The earlier days of Usenet when only a few people had access, discussion were reasoned and civilized.
How fast that culture has collapsed.

Matt was not employing the reductio ad hitlerum. He was using an easy-to-understand logical comparison, making the obvious point that popularity does not prove goodness.

The poster named “stovepipe” ought to be aware that a normal level of logical thinking ability is expected of people who post at this site. We don’t waste our time with idiots here.

Strong language from the host. Perhaps he can shed light on the planet earth’s apparent misapprehension of Arafat. The world loves him but VFR does not.

“You still haven’t explained why the whole world is mourning Arafat’s passing.”

You haven’t explained why an explanation of Arafat’s putative popularity is relevant - at all - to an objective evaluation of the man.

What’s funny is I don’t think I’ve remembered Godwin’s Rule right myself, it is such old news. I don’t think it was until later that comparing your adversary to Hitler was deemed to automatically end an argument in your adversary’s favor. I think Godwin’s Rule was to the effect that as a Usenet discussion goes on and on, the probability that someone will mention Hitler approaches 100%.

I get the same sense of deja vous from VFR Mik, although I am not certain that I wasn’t a net contributor to the increasing Usenet noise level back in the 80’s and 90’s.

I have heard that an (American) bank manager was once fired for saying that Hitler did good things for the German economy.

Is that the sound of Matt repenting of his former libertarian conservatism? :-)

Stovepipe, can you prove that the whole world loved and mourned Arafat? Sure, there was a lot of TV coverage, but that doesn’t mean he was loved by the world. Almost every despot is loved by some segment of society for varying reasons. That does not mean that that person is not a despot and despicable person as Arafat was.

no, I can’t prove anything. But I do listen to a lot of short wave radio and the worldmedia assessment of arafat is very different from what we hear in the U.S.

I guess I will attempt to answer my own question. There is a lot is anti-Israeli sentiment out there. Arafat opposed Israel. It never hurts to represent a downtrodden minority group either. Which Arafat did. Maybe that is why the world loves him.

I am not going to allow a discussion to proceed here based on the premise that the popularity of a terrorist mass murderer puts the burden of proof on his critics to prove that he’s not a good person.

Certain propositions are so stupid and vile that even to refute them gives them a currency they don’t deserve.

Stovepipe

Time to call the chimney sweeper to clean out your brain if you think any discussion focused on the likeability of Arafat is worthy of anyone’s time.

Why not discuss the far more rational subject of the multitude of reasons his life was an evil tragedy for the world instead?

Unless of course you subscribe to the philosophy of his evil movement, then you should just say so as to not appear simply to be a total idiot.

Then, we could cut to the chase and rightly loathe you.

stovepipe,

I doubt very much that the whole world loved Yasser Arafat, although perhaps Arabs do (I’m not so sure even about that). Arafat and the PLO became a fetish for the hard Left in the West at a time when, along with assorted Arab despots (the ones who wear berets instead of keffiyahs), they were useful regional surrogates for the Soviets. Even though the Soviet Union was consigned to the ashheap, Arafat somehow retained his sex appeal to the Vanessa Redgraves of the world. He had a certain radical chic, most amazingly among many Jewish Leftists, including even some Israelis. God knows why. Their Leftism must have overwhelmed their common sense. I have always thought that the expression “self-hating Jew” was a condescending canard. The sad spectacle of Jews making any concessions to such as Arafat made me wonder, though.

Who loved Arafat? The international Left, and some Palestinian Arabs penned up in refugee camps. It is a measure of the success of the Hegelian Mambo (well chronicled on VFR) that the radical chic terrorist of the 1960s through 80s could in 1993 be photographed on the White House lawn shaking hands (!) with an Israeli prime minister. Sadly, Yitzhak Rabin paid the ultimate price for that photograph. What price Israel and Palestinian Arabs will ultimately pay for Rabin’s, Shimon Peres’ and Bill Clinton’s ill-advised resuscitation of Arafat remains to be seen. The window of opportunity pundits profess to see opening because of his death is almost certainly illusory, and I think the pundits are clinging to the illusion because they want to believe that there can still be some return on a very bad investment.

Israel made a terrible mistake after the Six Day War. Having won control over all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, the Israeli government should have declared that Israel’s eastern border was the Jordan River, period. The Sinai and the Golan Heights were available for territorial concessions, but Judea, Samaria and Gaza should never have been on the table. That the Israeli government is willing to put them there makes one wonder if that government fully believes in the Zionist case for a Jewish state in the land of Israel.

It may not be possible to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, but if an equitable solution ever is reached it will owe absolutely nothing to Yasser Arafat. HRS

I think this site is like an ill-roasted egg. All on one side. But please be advised fellers. You are in the minority.

Every time someone says that I’m in the minority, for some reason I feel flattered.

Maybe it’s because the democratic people of Athens killed Socrates by popular vote. The public be damned.

STOVE PIPE

“Maybe that is why the world loves him.”

You are sorry to say either very naive or an imbicile.

Definition of Imbecile in case you really are a moron, below.

Mirriam-Webster Online- 1.usually offensive : a person affected with moderate mental retardation.

Yes, insult was intended.

I will not answer Andrew directly as the host has clearly stated he will not entertain open debate. Of course the host does not appear to be above name-calling.

DAN

Yes, but Socrates had the final veto. He opted not to recant and drank the hemlock.

He was certainly a man of convictions.

STOVEPIPE

The host is above name calling I am not the host.

The Palestinians liked Arafat because he was the one guy who was willing to stick with them to the end. Yeah, he had all sorts of failings, including the desire to use violence and mayhem (something a couple of Israeli prime ministers were wont to do in their younger days, too). But then again, whenever the chips were down, he was there with his folks, be it in Beirut, Tunisia or Ramallah. This despite the fact that he could have made off with tens of millions of dollars and ended his days in comfort in some Swiss villa or mansion in the south of France.

Mr. Copelan,

Yea, nice guy, stayed with his peeps. Jew hatred trumps material wealth 100 percent of the time. To add perspective, the war against Israel is an Arab/Muslim war of jihad, not a typical internationl disagreement that can be solved by the normal diplomatic means or territorial concessions.

For the Arabs the hatred of the Jews is second only to their obligation to (re)claim the land for Allah. That means no Jewish Democratic State period.

Mr. Auster:
“Is that the sound of Matt repenting of his former libertarian conservatism? :-)”

Perhaps an echo of it, or even a renewal, as it is ancient history by now :-D

Did you see anything in my post that said he was a nice guy? No. That was not my point. The fact is the Palestinians have been sh*t on by both Israelis and Arabs. Arafat, for all his flaws, was one guy who didn’t bolt or sell them out.

As for [i]jihad[/i], Arafat was a secularist. He spent a lot of time battling with Islamists like Hamas (who incidentally got their start thanks to Ariel Sharon in the early 80s setting them up as a counterweight to the PLO).

Mr. Copeland,

“Did you see anything in my post that said he was a nice guy?”

Yes, this:

“But then again, whenever the chips were down, he was there with his folks, be it in Beirut, Tunisia or Ramallah. This despite the fact that he could have made off with tens of millions of dollars and ended his days in comfort in some Swiss villa or mansion in the south of France.”

And this in your follow up:

“Arafat, for all his flaws, was one guy who didn’t bolt or sell them out.”

I would say he sounds like a nice guy if we replaced the name from Arafat to lets say Johnny.

Also Arafat did betray his people. Do I have to elaborate further? He was no Anwar Sadat.

I think the world loved Arafat for the same reason so much of the world loves Che.
And as someone else said once, some Europeans have an interest in protraying Israel as racist and even Nazi-like. It would do a lot to assuage the guilt of the Holocaust if they could “show” that the primary victims of the Holocaust would do the same thing ifthe situations were reversed.
Therefore, there is a motive to portray Arafat as the nice freedom-fighter who fought for his people.
Another thought just occurred: at least in Britain, thei may be some resentment of Israel for forcing the British out of Palestine. Britain, as I recall, wasn’t very friendly toward the US for quite a while after we broke free of colonial control.

As for the Oslo accords and the “peace process,” I believe that what started that was the end of the Cold War. With the Soviet Union no longer funding the PLO, it was assumed that Arafat could be forced into concessions that he would not have otherwise made, and it was presumably also assumed that the Palestinians lacked the resources to put up much resistance.

Mr. Sutherland makes an interesting point about Israel and the Six-Day War. However, there were probably valid reasons for Israel not to at the time. Unless they transferred the Palestinians immediately, they would be stuck with either presiding over an Apartheid state, or adding a whole bunch of Arabs who would soon enough begin to demographically swamp them.

In order to avoid more useless aggravation, I’m going to shut this thread down. First we had “stovepipe” with his moral idiocies, and now we have Mr. Copold describing Arafat as a man who had “failings.” Mr. Copold should know that whatever agreements he and I may have on some specific issues, I do not entertain discussions with people who relativize monsters like Arafat.

Enough.