Yasser, that's my baby!

Rumors that PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat was gay have been circulating for years. The former head of Romanian intelligence Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa in his book Red Horizons, published in 1987, related a conversation he had with Romanian General Constantin Munteaunu, who was “assigned to teach Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization operations in deception and influence designed to fool the West into granting the organization recognition.” Munteaunu related overhearing Arafat having loud sex with one of his bodyguards. He also provided Pacepa with a report on the subject:

The report was indeed an incredible account of fanaticism, of devotion to his cause, of tangled oriental political maneuvers, of lies, of embezzled PLO funds deposited in Swiss banks, and of homosexual relationships, beginning with his teacher when he was a teen-ager and ending with his current bodyguards. After reading the report, I felt a compulsion to take a shower whenever I had been kissed by Arafat, or even just shaken his hand.

Well, I hope he did a lot more than take a shower. Arafat, given his long list of enemies, was always paranoid about security. While his bodyguards went to great extremes to protect (and uh… entertain) their boss, often moving him from one secret location to another on an almost daily basis, they neglected one simple thing – to put a little 79 cent rubber thingie on his dick.

ramallah gay pride t-shirt?And what happened as a result of that? Well, according to Ahmad Jibril, founder and leader of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Arafat, who survived numerous assassination attempts, was ultimately felled by AIDS. This revelation was made during a recent interview with Hizballah’s Al-Manar TV:

Said Jibril [to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his staff]: “When [Abbas] came to Damascus with his team, I asked them: ‘What happened to the investigation into the death of [Arafat]? … The response from Abbas’ aides changed in an instant Jibril’s view of his deceased mentor … “They were silent, and then one of them said to me: ‘To be honest, the French gave us the medical report, that stated that the cause of [Arafat’s] death was AIDS.’”

As my buddy James Kirchick of the New Republic notes, this is hardly surprising news. He stated that

…no amount of evidence will convince the Palestinians that Arafat was a homosexual, or that his death was caused by anything other than Israel’s machinations. I found this out a few weeks ago in the West Bank, where everyone I spoke to told me that Israel killed Arafat. The denials that will inevitably spill forth about the causes of Arafat’s death will mirror the rejection of a two state solution: both are part and parcel of the Palestinians’ self-delusion.

So… no Ramallah Gay Pride parade next summer? Dang. What the hell am I supposed to do with all these Pride Edition Palestine is For Lovers t-shirts???

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About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

18 Comments

  • i guess this adds new meaning to this experssion

    Nidfok otchah inshallah

  • >Ahmad Jibril, founder and leader of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Arafat, who survived numerous assassination attempts, was ultimately felled by AIDS.

    This is a credible source for an assertion with no evidence?

    It could be true, mind you. But Ahmad Jibril neither adds nor subtracts anything from what is simply speculation and rumor.

  • duhville? Did you read the first line of this post? Not so underground knowledge. What makes this newsworthy is the fact that a PLO insider has repeated the rumors. That never happened before. Soon Arafat will become a gay icon and Palestinians will be forced to either reject their big gay national hero or embrace a more tolerant attitude towards homos.

  • Here’s another question…if this is true, then why haven’t the French hospitals/authorities made any announcement about it? Gee, I wonder why…

  • I feel like this news/rumor doesn’t do much to help gays or Palestinians. Maybe terrorists who happen to be gay. I guess.

  • Alan,

    Well, but there is perhaps this…that if Arafat is going to be a national icon of the Palestinians, then perhaps they have to come to grips with the rampant and violent homophobia that exists within that society.

  • Arafat dies from AIDS? Great. I hope it hurt like hell. At least some good has come out of this epidemic.

  • They won’t “come to grips with” anything they don’t want to. People have seemingly unlimited ability to deny anything that is right in front of them if they are motivated and desperate enough to believe the exact opposite.

    And until we actually see the French coroner’s report, this is STILL nothing more than hearsay no matter who is quoted, so it’s not only a Jewish blog repeating gossip, but a stupid move with respect to PR.

  • I still hope that for Jewish pride, we eventually discover that Israel is really responsible for killing Arafat. The man responsible for killing, maiming, and wounding thousands of us deserved to be killed, not die ‘naturally’.

  • What makes this newsworthy is the fact that a PLO insider has repeated the rumors. That never happened before

    well OK but keep in mind that Fatah and PFLP-GC, uh, hate each other.

    it’s not like this is a Fatah loyalist coming out and saying this. there are political considerations at play when the factions within PLO talk shit about each other.

    still I have no trouble believing this.

  • I’m just glad this news “came out” (hyuk, huk, get it?) now so I can, once again, revel in the fact that Arafuck is, indeed, dead. It makes me very happy to contemplate this.

    Reminds me of the joke about the Russian who, after the collapse of the Soviet union, continues to go to his favorite cafe every morning and order a coffee and a copy of Pravda. Every day the waiter tells him that the USSR is no more and Pravda is no longer bing published. Finally the waiter is fed up and tells the guy “Don’t you get it? The USSR and Pravda no longer exist.” And the guy says “I know. But I just like to hear you say it.”

    Arafat is dead. He died of AIDS.

    It’s just got a nice ring to it, you know?

  • Just a medical note from a rabbi…

    (AIDS or Aids) is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in humans[1], and similar viruses in other species (SIV, FIV, etc.). The late stage of the condition leaves individuals prone to opportunistic infections and tumors.

    BTW

    Expert cited in the NY Times concluded it was not AIDS.

    JERUSALEM, Sept. 7 – The medical records of Yasir Arafat, which have been kept secret since his unexplained death last year at a French military hospital, show that he died from a stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unidentified infection.

    The first independent review of the records, obtained by The New York Times, suggests that poisoning was highly unlikely and dispels a rumor that he may have died of AIDS. Nonetheless, the records show that despite extensive testing, his doctors could not determine the underlying infection.

    Arafat seemed frail in his final months but not, by anyone’s account, at death’s door when he suddenly fell ill last October. After more than two weeks without improvement, he was airlifted to a French hospital, where he died on Nov. 11. The cause of death was never announced and speculation has remained rife.

    The records indicate that Arafat did not receive antibiotics until Oct. 27, 15 days after the onset of his illness, which was originally diagnosed as “a flu.” That was only two days before he was transferred to the Percy Army Teaching Hospital in Clamart, outside Paris, and it was probably too late to save him, according to Israeli and American experts consulted by The Times, who agreed to review the records on condition they not be named.

    His doctors in Ramallah also did not seem to recognize that he suffered from a serious blood disorder, disseminated intravascular coagulation, or D.I.C., which was never controlled and led to his death.

    But even the French doctors never discovered the specific cause of the infection that led to the bleeding disorder, the records show. “It’s a big puzzle,” said a specialist in infectious diseases.

  • Who cares?

    He’s dead.

    That’s all that matters.

    Drinks are on me.

  • I remember at that time I was a volunteer on a Kibbutz, and when Arafat got sick we made a huge bet about who could guess the exact day of his death.

    A mexican Jew won, and with all the money he bought drinks for everyone!

    I know it’s not good to celebrate another human being’s death, ’cause we’re all part of G’d creation. But we were SO happy!!

    I hoped we’d kill him. So as to let everyone know (to paraphrase ‘Munich’): DON’T FUCK WITH THE JEWS!!!

  • Yes, it is not nice to celebrate the death of a human being.

    What has that to do with Arafat?