Israel Matzav

'Palestinians' continue to deny Arafat died of AIDS

Last Wednesday, I ran an al-Jazeera television interview, which was shown here last Sunday night, with Yasser Arafat's personal physician, Ashraf al-Kurdi, who said that the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat was infected with AIDS. It goes without saying that video has become one of the most hit on posts in the history of this blog :-)

Over the weekend, it came out that Jordanian television shut down the interview immediately when al-Kurdi mentioned the AIDS virus, because the Arab world cannot admit that Arafat had the virus - and by implication must have engaged in gay sex. But it's been known for years that Arafat was gay due a book called "Red Horizons" by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former head of Romanian intelligence under Nicolai Ceausescu.

He relates a conversation with Constantin Munteaunu, a general assigned to teach Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization operations in deception and influence designed to fool the West into granting the organization recognition.

"I just called the microphone monitoring center to ask about the 'Fedayee,'" Arafat's code name, explained Munteaunu. "After the meeting with the Comrade, he went directly to the guest house and had dinner. At this very moment, the 'Fedayee' is in his bedroom making love to his bodyguard. The one I knew was his latest lover. He's playing tiger again. The officer monitoring his microphones connected me live with the bedroom, and the squawling almost broke my eardrums. Arafat was roaring like a tiger, and his lover yelping like a hyena."

Munteaunu continued: "I've never before seen so much cleverness, blood and filth all together in one man."

Munteaunu, wrote Pacepa, spent months pulling together secret reports from Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian intelligence agencies as well as Romanian files.

"I used to think I knew just about everything there was to know about Rahman al-Qudwa," Arafat's real name, "about the construction engineer who made a fortune in Kuwait, about the passionate collector of racing cars, about Abu Amman," Arafat's nom de guerre, "and about my friend Yasser, with all his hysterics," explained Munteaunu, handing Pacepa his final report on the PLO leader. "But I've got to admit that I didn't really know anything about him."

Wrote Pacepa: "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."

Afterwards, al-Kurdi told a different story:

Jordanian news site Amman quoted al-Kurdi - a former Jordanian health ministry official - as saying that the virus had been injected into Arafat's bloodstream close to his death, and that the real cause of the chairman's death was poison.

...

To Amman, al-Kurdi said that Arafat's death was suspicious in several other respects. "I would usually be summoned to attend to Arafat immediately, even when all he had was a simple cold," said al-Kurdi, who served as Arafat's personal physician for 18 years. "But when his medical situation was really deteriorating, they chose not to call me at all."

According to al-Kurdi, Arafat's wife, Suha, refused to allow the doctor to visit Arafat in the private Paris hospital where he was being treated. Al-Kurdi added that he was denied access to Arafat's body after his death. In the Amman interview, he demanded the French government set up a commission of inquiry.

However, al-Kurdi did not explain why he did not come forth sooner and reveal the information. On September 9, 2005, al-Kurdi told Haaretz that "any doctor would tell you that [Arafat's symptoms] are the symptoms of a poisoning."

Writing in this morning's Haaretz, Daniel Rubinstein believes that the Jordanians actually set up the al-Kurdi interview to damage 'moderate' 'Palestinian President' Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen:

The most shocking revelation, however, came last weekend in the wake of a live television interview with Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, Arafat's Jordanian physician. Kurdi, speaking to Al Jazeera in an Amman studio, said HIV antibodies were detected in Arafat's blood. The station immediately halted the broadcast.

Afterward, Kurdi clarified the matter, saying he believed that Arafat was deliberately infected with the HIV virus in order to obscure the real cause of death and in order to blacken his name. (Rumors about Arafat being homosexual were once rife, and homosexuality is condemned in traditional Arab society.) Kurdi, who was Arafat's personal physician for 18 years, added that everything regarding Arafat's death was very odd: "I would usually be summoned to attend to Arafat immediately, even when all he had was a simple cold. But when his medical situation was really deteriorating, they chose not to call me at all. His wife, Suha, would not allow me to travel with him to the hospital in Paris; no doctor at the French military hospital contacted me for details about his health; and after he died, the current PA chairman [Kurdi did not mention Mahmoud Abbas by name - D.R.] did not allow his grave to be reopened in order to determine the cause of death."

It is hard to say whether the affair has any political significance today. The rumor mill is active in both Arab and Palestinian politics. Most of what goes around is nonsense. Kurdi is a respected man and a former Jordanian health minister. His statements are very damaging to Abbas and his associates, who he presents as hiding something about Arafat's death. Reporters in Ramallah told me that Kurdi could not have said these things without consulting with the very highest levels in the Hashemite kingdom. Does someone in Jordan want to damage Abbas? Hard to tell. In any event, in Ramallah this weekend the talk was that Jordanian officials, like their Egyptian counterparts, are angry with Abbas for acceding to the American and Israeli demands for a full boycott of Hamas at a time when the neighboring states want the PA to reach a compromise with the Islamic group. The reason: Leaders in Amman and Cairo have concluded it is unwise to provoke the Islamic opposition in Jordan and Egypt or their supporters. Abbas categorically refuses to talk with Hamas. The Arafat affair that fell into the Jordanians' lap was an excellent opportunity to get back at him, and they took advantage of it.

I guess we can expect the 'Palestinians' to continue accusing Israel of poisoning Arafat for years to come. They can't handle the truth: Arafat was gay.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:30 AM