Good riddance

The famous terrorist and politician Yasser Arafat finally stopped polluting the Earth with his foul existence. He was a fairly successful terrorist - so successful that he became a politician - and, like all the successful terrorists, got a Nobel Peace Prize for promising not to terrorize anyone quite as much as before. There are conflicting opinions as to whether he has fulfilled his promise.

A lot of foreign leaders are sending their condolences. Inquiring minds want to know whether the king of Jordan is among them. Tuomioja is going to his funeral, and I can only hope that we will take some laxative in order to put something on the dearly departed's grave, but I am afraid he won't do it.

The lifetime achievements of Mr. Arafat include, among many other things, the founding of the terrorist organization Al-Fatah and an attempt to overthrow Jordanian government in 1970. He has greatly contributed to the improvement of Israeli-Jordanian relations when he started a civil war in Jordan and called Syrian troops in for support. Jordan was forced to ask Israel for support, and got it. I am not entirely sure this was Arafat's aim, though.

After Arafat and his PLO lost the Jordanian civil war they were expelled from Jordan and went to Lebanon, where by a strange coincidence a civil war started soon after that. I think we should also count as Arafat's achievement the fact that in Tunisia, where he lived for many years after being kicked out of Lebanon, he did not manage to start any civil wars.

In 1991, when Iraq attacked Kuwait, Arafat demonstrated independent thinking by being the only Arab leader who chose to support Iraq and not Kuwait.

75-year-old Arafat leaves behind a 41-year-old widow, Suha Tawil, which goes to show that if you are a sufficiently famous terrorist you can get young women without actually going to paradise. According to Wikipedia, she has told a London-based Saudi newspaper there would have been "no greater honour" than sacrificing any son of hers to the struggle. We understand her completely. Her (and Arafat's) only child is a daughter.