Yasser Arafat's grave opened ahead of exhumation

Mike L. 

Work began on Tuesday to open former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's grave ahead of an exhumation of his body for a murder probe, AFP reported...

Allegations of foul play have long surrounded the demise of Arafat.

The case returned to the headlines in July when a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of the radioactive element polonium-210 on Arafat's clothing supplied by his widow Suha, who called for exhumation of her husband's body...

Arafat's direct kin have rejected an exhumation.

"We say openly that our leader, our founder was assassinated by Israel with poison. The overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people is convinced of this," Nasser al-Kidwa, Arafat's nephew and a senior official in Abbas's Fatah group, said on Saturday.

"Some have spread about the repugnant idea that Arafat's tomb should be opened up and desecrated. There is no justification for this: we know the real truth," he said.

This is one of those stories which I simply do not know what to make of.

It's certainly possible that Israel did assassinate Arafat, but given the numbers of innocent dead that Arafat is responsible for it's rather hard for me to mind.

Of course, on the other hand, it's also distinctly possible, and perhaps likely, that Israel was in no way responsible for the death of this particular terrorist leader.

Then there is the rumor that Arafat actually died of AIDS, but I know of no credible verification of that rumor.  Although it should also be noted that reports of Arafat's alleged homosexuality have been swirling for decades.

I suppose that there's a sort-of gruesome fascination with this story... a repugnant attraction.

Can you imagine if they conduct an autopsy and determine that, yes, in fact, he did die of the HIV virus?

I wonder how the Palestinians would react to that??