2004-12-02 - 1:57 p.m.
from empirenotes.org
Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian journalist for al-Jazeera, has written a powerful piece on Life Without Arafat. Here's an excerpt:
As a child I often witnessed Israeli soldiers forcing young Palestinians to their knees in my refugee camp in Gaza, threatening to beat them if they did not spit upon a photo of Yasser Arafat. "Say Arafat is a jackass," the soldiers would scream. No one would exchange his safety for insulting an image of Arafat. They would endure pain and injury, but would say nothing.
It was not the character of Arafat that induced such resilience but what the man represented.
