How legal is it? Israel Killing a nations leader (Page 2) slasian: I am saying that to infer about your logic! What threat?  for noticing most Palestinians don't ingest the dust.  Barbara the Jew: Slasian This is forum lacks intellectual perspective. Why would Israel want to kill Arafat He was retired. Plus Arafat was the biggest enemy the palestinians had ever had. He stole money from them, cheated them murdered them rob them twice from an independent state. ect.... This is forum is nothing but   XWhiteandBlue: Slassian: "XWhiteandblabla"?? Really? That is sooo very mature of you! You are a shining beacon of proper discourse and an very worthy ambassador to the point you are trying to make! Because it is universally accepted that name-calling is a superior substitute to actually using logic and reason to make an argument... not! I do agree with you in one respect though... CNN & BBC are biased as well... ALL cable news networks are... do your own research, (to include dissenting points of view) and then draw your own conclusions... because when you blindly follow ONE article published, be it by BBC, FOX, CNN, OR Al-Jazeera... you willingly become a sheep, blindly being led to whatever fate the commentators want to take you to. slasian: XWhiteandBlue (is it mature now ) I think you will also agree to comments like "Arafat was the biggest enemy the Palestinians had ever had. He stole money from them, cheated them murdered them rob them..." and that is not blindly following or it doesn't sound like a sheep eh. Is it the first time for Israel to kill with out a court procedure? That country is like a terrorist by itself, it kills people and all it takes for the justice system in Israel is a tag called "terrorist". The real shame this time is on the side of the UN. Israel kills a nation's leader this time, a recognized leader who seat in the UN and we are expected to believe he was poisoned by radioactive element by his own people. If you recall, the last suspect from Black September's attack was killed by Mossad after 20 years of the incident. It is just an example to show you how Israel deals with 'her enemy', kill them! Arafat is the enemy. Mossad has killed an innocent waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, because she was a suspect just a suspect in the Munich incident and Arafat is accused of many Jew's blood by Israel so don't bulshit as with your blablas. (not immature  ) The real stupid sheep is the one that fails to see Israel, once an oppressed nation, becoming a big oppressor. The blind is the one that accepts, the media bluff of the west claiming it self as protector of Democracy or human right. This is the story of the world and yes it is not matured! Edit: to love and support once country is not a crime but to blindly defend a filthy murder is. (Edited by slasian)  davidk14: . Slasian said: The real shame this time is on the side of the UN. Israel kills a nation's leader this time, a recognized leader who seat in the UN and we are expected to believe he was poisoned by radioactive element by his own people. David responds: You are assuming that Arafat was killed my Israel. There is no proof and for you to assume that Israel did is ignorant. Arafat had stolen millions from the PA, which is a fact, and he had many, many enemies, another fact. So, don’t assume, it just makes you look like an idiot. ________________________ Slasian said: If you recall, the last suspect from Black September's attack was killed by Mossad after 20 years of the incident. It is just an example to show you how Israel deals with 'her enemy', kill them! David responds: These Palestinian terrorists were responsible for the murder of Israel atheletes at the Olmpics in 1972. No one had a problem with them being hunted down like the dogs that they were. Why should you. _________________________________ Slasian said: Mossad has killed an innocent waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, because she was a suspect just a suspect in the Munich incident and Arafat is accused of many Jew's blood by Israel so don't bulshit as with your blablas. (not immature ) David responds: Get your facts right. The waiter was a male. Yes they did get the wrong person. Shit happens. Israel paid dearly for that mistake. If the Palestinians had not murdered those innocent Jews, other collateral damage would not have happened. Place the real blame on those who murdered innocent unarmed civilian athletes at the Olympics, the PLO directed by your savior, Arafat. ___________________________________ Slasian said: The real stupid sheep is the one that fails to see Israel, once an oppressed nation, becoming a big oppressor. The blind is the one that accepts, the media bluff of the west claiming it self as protector of Democracy or human right. This is the story of the world and yes it is not matured! Edit: to love and support once country is not a crime but to blindly defend a filthy murder is. ____________________________________ David responds: The problem you have is….Israel can defend herself. You have an issue with that. When Gaza was abandoned in 2005 by Israel in the name of peace, Israel removed 21 settlements that had been in Gaza for decades. Thousands of Jews were removed from Gaza. Within two years, Hamas overthrew the PA in a bloody civil war, Palestinians for peace against Palestinians who wanted to exterminate Israeli’s. Israel responds and defends herself. You hate that fact. Israel defending herself in your mind is “becoming the oppressor”. In reality, Israel became a defender of life and liberty, and is still the oppressed small country of 6 million Jews surrounded by 300 million Arabs. Get your facts right or do not post. . slasian: Arafat, I think is an obvious target considering the behavior of Israeli attitude which David clearly showed us and to which I completely concur. Kill any one who is an 'enemy' weather it is an innocent waiter or a Palestine leader and no need to waste time in court justice. And I think David is defending Israel and I am not allowed to post any more, dud I like your patriotism and sheepish understanding. It reflects how truth is perceived... Kill them all! I think you forget the torch, I can see that you had the mob though. Barbara the Jew: slassian the only thing is that Arrafat was more a danger to his oen people then he actually was to israel. I thought this thread was about the iranain president. By the way white and Blue is not Israeli or jewish and am not not Israeli. (Edited by Barbara the Jew) slasian: So what? The question is if Arafat was a great threat to his own people (as some brilliant analyst suggests ) why didn't they revolt on him why? These people are fighting with Israel is it difficult to revolt on Arafat huh. It is just blood-trusty government; a nation that was once oppressed and which turned to be oppressor. Barbara the Jew: whom is a blood thirty goverment Hamas yes i agree. There is some evidance that suggest Arrafat was stealing money from his own people. He dinied twice the opportunity of a free palestinian country. He wanted more land. Well his greed till today has left palestinians with no land. slasian: Who can argue with that? Yes Arafat's enemy are the Palestinians and they find it so hard to revolt on him because they fear him more than Israel, yeah it is easy to fight with Israel Barbara the Jew: The palestinian adored him like a gd look what he did to them, He was there first leader. Can you tell me of another palestinian leader before Arafat? (Edited by Barbara the Jew) slasian: I thought you where the one who is saying Arafat was killed by Palestinians Barbie to see who is the blood-trusty government just read David's post, he had explained it in an exquisite way. Barbara the Jew: .February 11, 2009 8:24 PM PrintText Arafat's Billions comments 0 inShare.0More+ EmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInDigg.PrintDeliciousRedditStumbleuponGoogle Bookmarks....ByTricia McDermott .Yasser Arafat diverted nearly $1 billion in public funds to insure his political survival, but a lot more is unaccounted for. Jim Prince and a team of American accountants - hired by Arafat's own finance ministry - are combing through Arafat's books. Given what they've already uncovered, Arafat may be rethinking the decision. Lesley Stahl reports. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What is Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority worth today?" asks accountant Jim Prince. "Who is controlling that money? Where is that money? How do we get it back?" So far, Prince's team has determined that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion -- with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands. Although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And, Prince says, none of these dealings were made public. "Our whole point is to bring it out of control of any one person," Prince says. That's what happened with the portfolio money, which is now under the control of Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank official who Arafat was forced to appoint finance minister last year after crowds began protesting his corrupt regime. According to Fayyad, "There is corruption out there. There is abuse. There is impropriety, and that's what had to be fixed." Statements like that have earned Fayyad, a bookish technocrat who spent 20 years in the U.S., a reputation for courage - which was enhanced when he immediately posted the details of Arafat's secret portfolio on the Internet. Fayyad's investigators are treading softly, well aware that their probe may become too embarrassing for Arafat. Has he tried to stop them? "We run into obstacles in a number of places, particularly among the old PLO types," Prince says, adding one might draw their own conclusions as to whether his statement includes Arafat himself. Martin Indyk, a top adviser on the Middle East in the Clinton administration and now head of the Saban Center, a Washington think-tank, says Arafat was always traveling the world, looking for handouts. Money, he says, is "essential" to Arafat's survival. "Arafat for years would cry poor, saying, 'I can't pay the salaries, we're gonna have a disaster here, the Palestinian economy is going to collapse,'" says Indyk. "And we would all mouth those words: 'The Palestinian economy is going to collapse if we don't do something about this.' But at the same time, he's accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars." The stockpile went well beyond the portfolio. Arafat accumulated another $1 billion with the help of -- of all people -- the Israelis. Under the Oslo Accords, it was agreed that Israel would collect sales taxes on goods purchased by Palestinians and transfer those funds to the Palestinian treasury. But instead, Indyk says, "that money is transferred to Yasser Arafat to, amongst other places, bank accounts which he maintains off-line in Israel." Until three years ago, Israel put the tax revenues into Arafat's account at Bank Leumi in downtown Tel Aviv, no questions asked. But why? According to Indyk, "The Israelis came to us and said, basically, 'Arafat's job is to clean up Gaza. It's going to be a difficult job. He needs walking-around money,' because the assumption was that he would use it to get control of all of these terrorists who'd been operating in these areas for decades." Obviously, that hasn't happened. No one knows this better than Dennis Ross, who was Middle East negotiator for the first President Bush and President Clinton, and now heads the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He says Arafat's "walking-around money" financed a vast patronage system. "I used to see that people came in, you know, with their requests," Ross says. "'I need a phone. I need an operation. I need a job.' Arafat had money to dispense." Like a Chicago ward boss, he still doles out oodles of money; Fayyad says he pays his security forces alone $20 million a month, all of it in cash. All told, U.S. officials estimate Arafat's personal nest egg at between $1 billion and $3 billion. Arafat may have $1 billion, but he sure isn't spending it to live well. He's holed up in his Ramallah compound, which the Israelis all but reduced to rubble a year-and-a-half ago. Arafat has always lived modestly, which you can't say about his wife, Suha. According to Israeli officials, she gets $100,000 a month from Arafat out of the Palestinian budget, and lives lavishly in Paris on this allowance. He also uses the money to bolster his own standing. Both Israeli and U.S. sources say those recent outpourings of support at Arafat's compound were "rent-a-rallies," and that Arafat has spent millions to support terrorists and purchase weapons. Did he steal from his own people? "He defines himself as being the embodiment of the Palestinian people," Ross answers. "So what's good for him is good for them. Did they benefit? The answer is no. Did they lose? The answer is yes." Palestinians certainly paid dearly for something else Fayyad uncovered: a system of monopolies in commodities -- like flour and cement -- that Arafat handed out to his cronies, who then turned around and fleeced the public. Fayyad says it could accurately be seen as gouging his own people. "And especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral, actually." Of all the monopolies, none was as lucrative or as corrupt as the General Petroleum Corporation, the one for gasoline. The corporation took the fuel it purchased from an Israeli company and watered it down with kerosene, not only defrauding the Palestinian drivers, but wrecking their car engines. Fayyad says the Petroleum Corporation charged exorbitant prices, and Arafat got a hefty kickback. "To the president, I can tell you, if there was not money in the treasury, he went to the Petroleum Corporation." When Fayyad dismantled the corporation, the man who had run it fled to California. Ever since, with the monopoly broken up, Palestinian drivers have paid 20 percent less for gas and 80 percent less for diesel fuel. Gas stations now advertise 100 percent pure products. Fayyad became a hero, like the Robin Hood of the Palestinians. Millions of people were affected by this one move. He says he was just doing his job. "A lot of this is about, you know, distinguishing between right and wrong. And that's a straightforward proposition." Mohammed Rachid, Arafat's economic adviser who set up his tangled web of investments and monopolies, says he's cooperating with Fayyad's investigators. Rachid left the Palestinian territories about a year ago under a cloud. He asked CBS News not to reveal where we met him for his first television interview. "I'm proud of what I did till now," Rachid says. "I think I showed a good performance." He's referring to the investment portfolio he managed for Arafat. He also opened that account at the Leumi Bank in Tel Aviv. According to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund, that secret account was: "Under the control of President Arafat and his financial adviser Mohammed Rachid" -- and no one else. "If we are having a secret account, we should have it in Israel? You think this is logical?" Rachid asks. But that's what the Israelis, and the people working for Fayyad, say it was. Rachid says that "transfers to Leumi Bank account never stayed. It was receiving the revenues and transferring the revenues to the Palestinian Authority's account in the Arab bank in Gaza." He's saying the Leumi money was sent to the Palestinian Authority. But, in fact, much of it was sent to Switzerland, to the prestigious Lombard Odier Bank, for yet another secret investment account that held over $300 million. In a letter obtained by CBS News, Rachid tells the bank that the funds will come from Palestinian "taxes" and "customs revenues." "It was all under the name of the Palestinian authorities," Rachid says. Doesn't he mean Arafat? "No, Palestinian Authorities, Palestinian Authorities." Actually, it was under a code name, "Ledbury" -- not the Palestinian Authority -- and Minister Fayyad says that this pot of money, too, was available only to Arafat. The Swiss account was closed out in 2001. No one really knows where that money is today. Does Rachid think that it should have gone, in some way, back to help the Palestinian people? "Of course," he says. But, "I don't, I don't decide what we do with the money." Those who want to know why Arafat didn't bring the money back, he says, should ask him. But Arafat didn't want to talk. There's yet another stash of money Arafat might be asked about: the funds he collected when he was chairman of the PLO in exile. The PLO's former treasurer told us he saw Saddam Hussein hand Arafat a $50 million check for supporting him during the first Gulf War. And there were other large gifts from the KGB and the Saudis. Ross says, "Arafat used to say to me, 'Where's my money? You need to go to the Saudis and get my money.' It was never the Palestinians' money." Fayyad is trying to make sure it's the people's money, but many say his one-man reform effort is having only limited success. Arafat recently sent armed men to prevent Fayyad from replacing the head of the civil service, who runs Arafat's patronage apparatus. That has lead some to think Fayyad himself could be in danger. "He cannot know, and we cannot know at what point he crosses the red line," says Indyk. Other people who have dared to call for transparency of all these finances have been beaten up, shot, and silenced. Why is Fayyad surviving? Indyk says, "We should not take it for granted." He has upset so many powerful people, and his offices have already been ransacked more than once. But Fayyad says he does not feel threatened. "It's a dangerous neighborhood," he admits. "But you know this is about, you know, doing the right thing for the people." Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved Barbara the Jew: I never said the palestinians killed him I said Arafat was more a danger to the Palestinian then he was for the Israelis slasian: I don't know which one is more funny your claim or Tricia McDermott's report.Barbie, When Arafat was dead, he was poisoned. While Arafat was alive the majority of his people where loyal to him do the maths. Barbara the Jew: ..Palestinian court sentences missing Arafat moneyman to 15 years for corruption By Mohammed Daraghmeh, The Associated Press | Associated Press – Thu, Jun 7, 2012....Email Share0Print......The Palestinian anti-corruption court on Thursday convicted the fugitive moneyman of the late leader Yasser Arafat of siphoning off millions of dollars in public funds, sentencing him to 15 years in prison. The court, concluding its highest-profile probe, found Mohammed Rashid guilty of embezzlement and money laundering. In addition to the prison sentence, he was also fined $15 million and his properties were ordered confiscated. He and two associates were convicted of taking a total of $33.5 million from the foreign donor-financed Palestinian Investment Fund. Rashid, who in the past has denied wrongdoing, was sentenced in absentia by the court in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He left the Palestinian territories after Arafat's death in November 2004 and has rarely been seen since. He is said to hold business interests in four Middle Eastern countries and Montenegro. The Palestinian Authority has asked those countries to freeze his assets and extradite him. "Without doubt the money of the Palestinian people will return to the people, sooner or later," promised Rafik Natche, head of the Palestinian anti-corruption commission, after the conviction. Anti-corruption campaigners lauded the case as a sign of the maturing of the Palestinian political system, although the probe also appeared to be tinged with political intrigue. Rashid made veiled threats several months ago to disclose purported secrets about the rise to power of Arafat's successor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Palestinian watchdogs, while praising growing government vigilance about corruption, expressed concern that investigations are at times being used selectively to settle personal scores. It is not clear why Arafat put the shadowy Rashid, a former journalist with no business training, in charge of most of his finances. Although Arafat was known for a frugal lifestyle, he used large amounts of money to buy loyalty and did not crack down on the corrupt practices of his closest aides. The first decade of the Palestinian Authority, formed in 1994, was marked by rampant corruption and official mismanagement. In 2003, the international community, concerned about millions in foreign aid going to waste, asked Palestinian economist Salam Fayyad to supervise Palestinian Authority spending. Fayyad, now the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority prime minister, is credited with providing greater transparency. However, for years, little was done to go after those suspected of stealing public funds, until Abbas set up the anti-corruption commission and related court two years ago. slasian: Okey, so is it absolutely out of question that Israel didn't want him dead? David has told us that the government of Israel didn't need a court justice to kill even an innocent suspect. That government kills for revenge also and are you telling me that to just think Israel might done it is a very far fetched theory from yours that infer he was hated by his people? A moment ago (you failed for my sarcasm) and said the truth, you said "The palestinian adored him like a gd look what he did to them, He was there first leader. Can you tell me of another palestinian leader before Arafat?" After you say this you are posting these huh Am not blindly blaming some group but to see you just conclude that Israel shouldn't even be mentioned is something. slasian: The dead are speechless you can say anything about them. How funny it is to even think that Palestinians were afraid to revolt on Arafat while they were fighting the strong and the more helped government of Israel. Wow this is an insight! Barbara the Jew: Because if Israel was as you claimed there would be a new president in Iran. I dont think israel was going to go after a useles old man retired in France enjoying stolen money from his own people | Politics Chat Room 77 People Chatting Similar Conversations |
