Despite impartial investigations that show otherwise, the Palestinians are still claiming that Israel assassinated Palestinian leader and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, and that the US was an accomplice in the nefarious plot.
Multiple independent research bodies have debunked the Palestinian myth and have proven, time and again, that Israel did not cause Arafat’s death.
Unfortunately, such scientific findings have not stopped the Palestinian media from propagating the libelous claim that Israel poisoned him, thus acerbating anti-Israel animosity.
Maintaining the false narrative, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to spread the libel that Israel murdered Arafat, the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported.
On the occasion of the 13th anniversary of Arafat’s death marked earlier this month, a PA TV host stated that “all the signs show that Israel assassinated and murdered [PA] President Yasser Arafat in some way, when it reached him and poisoned him.”
In September, the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida repeated the libel when it wrote that “the most prominent [Israeli assassination] was the assassination of Yasser Arafat with poison after laying siege to his headquarters in Ramallah.”
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor on Foreign Affairs and International Relations Nabil Shaath told an Al-Arabiya TV host in August that he knows for a fact – without “a millionth of a doubt” – that the Israelis killed Arafat “with poison.”
“Why are you so certain? Do you have information?” the host asks him.
“…All food came through the Israelis. They besieged him from outside. Every cup of water came through the Israelis. Every pill of medicine… You can check the water before you give it to him… You can check the food, but the medicines?” Saath asserted.
On the anniversary of Arafat’s death, a columnist in the official PA daily added an extra twist to the libel, saying that the US had authorized Israel’s alleged assassination of Arafat. PA and Fatah leaders have voiced this allegation in the past.
“Thirteen years have passed since the death of leader [and] symbol [former PLO and PA Chairman] Yasser Arafat. They [Israel] forced him to vacate the scene and poisoned him. The ones who were responsible for his treatment in France did not find the necessary antidote for his recovery from the premeditated murder, which was committed by the leaders of the Israeli ethnic cleansing state…[Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and the heads of his colonialist leadership are the ones who poisoned the Palestinian national symbol and murdered him, with a green light from the US,” Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul wrote.
What are the facts?
The facts are far different from the Palestinians’ depiction.
Following Arafat’s death in November 2004, the PA created the libel that Israel murdered Arafat, and PA and Fatah leaders have been spreading it ever since. Swiss, Russian, and French medical teams have studied these claims.
In 2012, samples were taken from Arafat’s remains to be tested for poisoning, and Swiss and Russian teams afterwards published the results of their tests: The Swiss team concluded that the tests were “coherent with a hypothesis of poisoning” – but a member of the team also stated that “our study did not permit us to demonstrate categorically the hypothesis of poisoning by polonium.”
The Russian report concluded that “there was insufficient evidence to support the theory that Yasser Arafat died in 2004 by polonium poisoning.”
In March 2015, three French judges ruled that “it has not been demonstrated that Mr. Yasser Arafat was murdered by polonium-210 poisoning.” The French prosecutor stated that there was “not sufficient evidence of an intervention by a third party who could have attempted to take his life.”
The French prosecutor also explained that the polonium and lead found in Arafat’s grave were “of an environmental nature.”
However, facts be damned, the Palestinian libel lives on.
By: United with Israel Staff
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