Forget the prevaricative niceties; the "walking on egg shells" that we often tend to do when talking about controversial issues at Brandeis University. I'm going to cut straight to the chase:Yassir Arafat was a terrorist and a failed leader of the Palestinian people.

Not only is he responsible for the deaths of about 1,000 Jews in this current "intifada" that he started (not to mention the countless terrorist strategies that he oversaw after forming the "Fatah" movement in 1959), but he is also responsible for the Palestinian blood that has been shed. He knew that waging terror against Israel would only provoke defensive actions by the Israeli Defense Forces (indeed, if the U.S. experienced the equivalent of the Oklahoma City Bombing on a weekly - and sometimes daily - basis, one would not at all be surprised at the efforts of the U.S. Government to defend U.S. citizens). And yet he still chose the path of "martyrdom" even at the cost of the "struggle" of the Palestinians that he supposedly embodied.

So, save your whining about how then Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak wasn't nice enough to him at Camp David, which is to say that Arafat would have been a viable partner if Barak had said just the right things. Barak offered Arafat a chance to see the creation of a viable Palestinian state (with additional "goodies" thrown in!) and Arafat snubbed him - and in doing so, also snubbed his own people. The only reason they didn't realise it en masse, though, was that he WAS the "father" of Palestinian nationalism (an icon rather than a human being, if you catch my drift) and because it is always easier to blame Israel for the problems that Arab leaders and the "Arafat bunch" created rather than to be accountable, demand change, and move on.

So, this is the main reason why I question (to make a gross understatement) the morality of any person that would be sad or show pity at Arafat's passing. Maybe the Sociology professors can explain it, but I am baffled by the tendency of so many well-intentioned people to buy into the distortion of reality that would show Arafat any amount of respect for his "leadership."

Indeed, every leader has their shortcomings, even Dr. Martin Luther King, JR had his own (after all, they are human beings!). But Yassir Arafat ain't got nothing on King, Gandhi, Rabin, etc. The only thing he succeeded in doing in his lifetime was showing that terrorism is powerful enough to shock the world into giving it attention. That was his mission, and it is the reason that he was an awful human being. But here comes the problem that you and I have to deal with: many people who have been shocked by Palestinian teenagers strapping bombs to their chests, etc., come out with the conclusion that the Palestinians must not have any other option of expressing their grievances, and hence they are romanticized by many as "freedom fighters," acting on behalf of their people against the big, bad oppressor (you guessed it...the Jews!).

Yassir Arafat is the quintessential example of the ability to turn the murder of innocent civilians into a "noble, romantic struggle" in the eyes of so many people in the world. There is nothing that makes me sicker to my stomach than that.

But hopefully, history will show (most likely after a democratic Palestinian state is created) that Arafat was not at all sincerely interested in helping the Palestinian people. For if he was, actions would have followed his lip service. But they did not. The fact that he stored millions of dollars in private bank accounts in France (and even one in Israel, I have read), along with his determination to "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity [for peace]," shows that he consistently did everything in his power to ensure that the hope of the Palestinians for a state of their own would remain just that - a hope rather than a reality. Don't pity the "poor man" just because he looks poor...that ain't what the Brandeis "Judges" are about, right?