I usually go out of my way to avoid reveling/relishing anyone’s suffering, particularly when it comes to death, although I made an exception for Uday and Qusay. I’m afraid that I have to invoke that exception again in the case of Yassir Arafat.
Bloggers and commentators of all stripes have made their opinions on Arafat’s death known and, while I found myself agreeing with many of them, two in particular caught my eye.
Thomas of RedState suggested an appropriate epitaph for Yassir:
Yasser “Push Them Into the Sea” Arafat, an Egyptian engineer who rode varying waves of Arab Nationalism, Islamist terror, and the latter-day development of Palestinian national identity to absurd heights of international acclaim, including numerous visits to the Clinton White House, finally went to Hell Thursday, forty-odd years too late.
Jeff Jacoby opined:
In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, “God bless his soul.”
God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil — as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize — but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.
I’ve been continually amazed by the cravenness of the mainstream media when dealing with a man that was a thug, gangster, murderer and worse. Most nauseating of all was the glowing “historical recap” that “The World” on NPR ran this evening. I sat with mouth agape as voices on the radio tried to make the case that this man, this fiend really, truly wanted peace with Israel. Have they never read his speeches in Arabic?
As I’ve written before, we are called upon to pray for those who persecute us. I don’t think I can manage that on my own. I pray that God gives me the strength and eternal perspective to be able to pray for Arafat.
