In Damascus, the usually unoriginal and clumsy Bashar
al-Assad now announces a shrewd, dangerous new game when he charges
that Israel assassinated the dead Egyptian national Yasser
Arafat.
"Among the many assassinations that Israel has
carried out in a systemic and organized manner, the most dangerous
one was the assassination of Arafat." He adds, "This was done
secretly, under the watching eyes of the world. But no country
responded -- as if nothing happened at all."
This is not the idle blame-shifting of a rascal. I
read al-Assad's charge as a cunning invention of a useful casus
belli to attack Israel and its supervisors the U.S., the UN, and
anyone of the road map that want to get in the way. Since Damascus
and Tehran routinely pay for and order attacks on Israel already,
Bashar al-Assad is not searching for a reason to attack, he is
naming the reason to continue the attacks, to increase the pace
going into the March elections in Israel
Also, the identifying of the casus belli of
assassination is potent rhetoric to heave at your enemies. It works
well for the UN and the U.S. and Lebanon's democrats to hammer at
the al-Assads over the Hariri assassination -- so it will work
equally well for Damascus and Tehran to hammer at Olmert and Bush
and Rice over the Arafat death. Also, Arafat's death is not in the
distant past, as are the tedious grievances over the 1948, 1967,
1973 border lines, or the schoolyard whining about the security
fence coming on my side of the deed. Arafat's ugly, painful 2004
death was globally reported, mysterious, prolonged, ghoulish, and
is now completely covered up by a coalition of Arab and French
physicians and clinics.
Many of the terror bosses have told me over the last
year that Arafat was poisoned by the Jews. I recall Hamas, Popular
Resistance Committee, Al Aqsa and Islamic Jihad speakers each
signing on to the charge: and the PA's Saeeb Erekat didn't dismiss
the possibility that Arafat died as a result of criminal
conduct.
The Damascus Corgi Bashar al-Assad now picks up the
Palestinian charge and throws it into the Arab view. You accuse me
of Hariri? Why don't you accuse the Jews of Arafat? Where is the UN
investigation of Arafat's last days? Has Sharon been questioned, or
Olmert, or any member of the Mossad? Don't you go to the movies?
What does the American Jew Spielberg says of the Jews when they are
in trouble -- that they shoot and blow up noble Palestinian
scholars and diplomats as if they were wild boars in the streets of
Europe.
Will Bashar al-Assad's new tactic work? Does
Ahmadinejad's tactic of telling anti-Semitic Europe to take back
the Jews you slaughtered and ran off work? The answer is no to
both; however, these smears are both, in their Cossack
cliché fashion, most recognizable, most effective as talking
points. And oil at $70 a barrel most profoundly works to stay the
hand of reason.
topics:
Islam, Movies, Israel, Oil
