Audi et alteram partem- Hear the other side too
I feel it is my duty to refer you to Kenny Silverman's site and Backspin .Some of us tend to sit on the couch and sop in whatever junk the national media hands to us. Other more adventurous souls cross over to international grounds, checking what other reporters have to say on the same subjects. Others still are dedicated to analyzing the media and rectifying it's mistakes, for the sake of truth and justice.
I also highly recommend Oriana Fallaci's last two books, Rage & Pride and The Force of Reason. A Google search on her name will get you some good biographies of this author.
In light of Arafat's death, I bring you something that Oriana wrote a couple years ago, about the interview she handled (or tried to handle) in the 1970's. The article in it's entirety was a form of Je Accuse for the Italian government. It was originally published in the magazine 'Panorama'. I was in Rome at the time, and my large family fought over who would get to read it first- we had to go buy a second one :).
"I find it shameful that so many Italians and so many Europeans have chosen as a role model Mister-and I use the word advisedly-Arafat, this nonentity who, thanks to the money of the Saudi royal family, acts like Mussolini in perpetuity and in his megalomania believes he will go down in history as the George Washington of Palestine.
This uneducated man who, when I interviewed him, could not even put together a complete sentence, an articulate thought. Therefore, to put a piece together, to write it, to publish it, is such a hard ordeal that one concludes that, compared to Arafat, even (Libyan leader) Gadhafi becomes Leonardo da Vinci.
This fake warrior who always goes around in uniform like Pinochet, who never wears civilian clothes, and yet who has never participated in a single battle. He leaves war, and has always left war, to others, in other words, to those unfortunate ones who believe in him. This pompous incompetent who, playing the role of head of state, caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations and the mediation efforts of Clinton. "No, no, I want all of Jerusalem to myself." This eternal liar who has a flash of sincerity only when (in private) he denies Israel's right to exist, and who, as I wrote in my book, lies every five seconds.
He always plays a game of duplicity; he lies even if you ask him what time it is, and, therefore, you can never trust him. Never! One is systematically betrayed by him. This eternal terrorist who only knows how to be a terrorist (from a safe distance), and who in the 1970s-that is, when I interviewed him-also trained the Baader-Meinhof terrorists.
And now with them, he trains (Palestinian) children who were ten years old. Poor kids. (Now they are trained to become kamikazes. One hundred baby kamikazes are ready for action: 100!)
This opportunist who keeps his wife in Paris, cared for and revered as a queen, while he keeps his people in the shit. From the s--t he removes them only to send them to die, to kill and to die, like the 18-year-old girls who, to achieve equality with men, have to fill themselves with explosives and blow themselves up together with their victims. And yet so many Italians love him-yes, just as they loved Mussolini. And so many other Europeans do as well."
(From the unofficial translation by the AJC).
posted by RomanWanderer @ 2:58 PM
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