$how me the money
Freedom fighters are not
supposed to be billionaires
December 30, 2004
iranian.com
Arafat, as the "sovereign" leader
of the Palestinian nation, went on to invest in a company which
provided leisure to
Jewish kids in New York. The irony that Palestinian funds were
funneled to provide entertainment to Jewish children instead of
Gaza kids brings a whole new connotation to the so called innocent
blood infested intifida, to seek recreation for Jewish kids and
martyrdom for his people what an inconsistent approach to the cause
of Palestinians. Why Bowling Alley for others and Suicide Alley
for his own?
When Arafat's funeral took place amid chaotic scenes of mourning,
Marwan Ahlan, a graphic designer from Jericho, was waving a banner
angrily. It said simply: "Bring the thieves to trial." The
thieves he was referring too embodied the political corrupt structure
that the chairman of the Palestinian authority created, the day
he was being interned this banner was a heartbreaking reminder
of the corruption that Arafat presided.
Freedom fighters are not
supposed to be billionaires, they should not make to list of the
billionaires, and the words of offshore corporate structures should
be alien to a freedom fighter dictionary. What has a freedom fighter
to do with labyrinthine network of accounts? One would expect the
annual list of billionaires, compiled by the razor-sharp Forbes
and Fortune financial journalists, to be peopled by the success
stories of entrepreneurial capitalism.
However in the 'rogue section‚ of the list are those
kept off the bona fide list not for lack of wealth but because, "they
don't exactly represent success stories of entrepreneurial capitalism."
Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and Fidel Castro were the notorious names
of the rogue list, whose financial juggernaut stems from their
political thugery instead of business wisdom.
However, the aforementioned
gentlemen were not the only member of the exclusive club of billionaire
dictators. There is no short supply of corrupt billionaire dictators
whose wealth has outlasted their comically corrupt regimes. Indonesia's
former-President Suharto was once widely said to have siphoned
off more than $10 billion during 33 years of his rule. Zaire's
Mobutu Sese Seko, overthrown in a 1997 revolt, was reputed to be
worth somewhere between $4 billion and $8 billion, much of it tied
up in European real estate. Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines
was said to have embezzled $5 billion in government funds during
his 20 years in power. Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and Robert
Mugabe of Zimbabwe are other 'luminaries‚ on this 'august‚ list
of corrupt leaders.
The last rogue Forbes list featured a section
titled "Auditing Arafat", which surmised that he "may be brought
to heel
by, of all things, honest financial accounting." Last year Forbes
wrote that Arafat has "feasted on all sorts of funds flowing into
the Palestinian Authority, including aid money, Israeli tax transfers,
and revenue from a casino and Coca-Cola bottler. The money is in
a convoluted set-up of accounts, held under different names in
different countries." From the intricate web of this tangled
net emerges a picture of two Arafat one the olive branch- gun slinging
Arafat fresh in the memories of millions of freedom fighters evoking
Che-guvera type cult following, other a monetarily crooked manager.
Arafat's
secret assets have been estimated at anywhere between $200 million
(Forbes magazine) and $6 billion (U.S. and Israeli
intelligence). Forbes listed him ninth in its ranking of the
world's wealthiest heads of state -- even though he was a ruler
without
a country and many of his people were refugees. His inability
to deliver Palestinian homeland rooted directly in his dilution
of
moral authority as a result of Onyx type of financial holding structures.
It
seems now that an unseemly battle is underway for access to those
accounts for the ill-gotten fortune. According to friends
of Arafat's combative wife, Suha, a will has indeed been left,
handing the control of assets to members of her family. Thirty
years younger than Arafat, the Christian, Sorbonne-educated Suha
Tawil married the Palestinian leader in a secret ceremony in 1992
in Tunisia, where she worked for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
After
Arafat's return to the Palestinian territories in 1994, she played
the part of Palestinian first lady, but spent most of her
time in Paris. She left the family's home in Gaza in January 2001
and took Zahwa to Paris, where they have lived ever since at the
five-star Bristol Hotel. Mrs Arafat and the Arafats' daughter,
Zahwa, allegedly spent an entire year living on a floor of the
Hotel Bristol in Paris, at a cost of £8,700 per night, before
buying an expensive flat in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe.
French authorities have discovered that Mrs Arafat, who moved to
Paris in 2000 to avoid the second intifada, received $11.4 million
in money transfers from Switzerland, between 2002 and 2003.
Arafat
opened his first secret bank account in 1965, after a $50,000 donation
from a Prince of a Gulf state. Over the next 40 years,
as the cause of Palestinian statehood received financial support
from the Middle East and Europe in particular, the profits to be
garnered from leading the resistance to Israeli occupation grew
exponentially. Following Arafat's support for the invasion of Kuwait
by Saddam Hussein in 1990, there was even a $150 million donation
from Baghdad.
Although his own living conditions were frugal, Arafat,
through the Palestinian Investment Fund, is believed to have bought
stakes
in a number of hotels in Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland and
Austria. He also became the main shareholder in two cellular telephone
companies in Tunisia and Algeria. In Paris, it was the struggle
over Arafat's hidden millions that threatened to overshadow his
final days. His wife, Suha Arafat, hoped to inherit at least part
of his fortune. But, Palestinian leaders demand that it be handed
over to the Palestinian people.
The assets are managed in a complex
network of bank accounts, holding companies and stocks whose details
are known only to his closest confidant, financial adviser Mohammed
Rashid. Suha Arafat has access to some of the money, but apparently
even she does not know all the ins and outs of the secret accounts.
Mahmoud Abbas, has stated angrily that Arafat's fortune is the
property of the Palestinian people. But, given the corrupt and
surreptitious manner in which the wealth was accumulated, the problem
will be finding it.
Among $799 million in international investments
by Arafat, one that did catch the eye was $1.3 million in a company
that owns
a popular bowling alley in Manhattan. His conduct as a leader of
Palestinians sending young kids to suicide missions and his investment
portfolio recently reported present mind boggling craftiness and
contradiction.
Arafat, the greatest freedom fighter and supporter
of suicide bombings against Israeli occupation of Palestinian oversaw
the machinery
that help made a normal
man want to die. Because Islamic law prohibits suicide, a suicidal person cannot
be recruited to go on a mission. Rather, it is (perversely) necessary to dispatch
only those who are not suicidal. Convincing healthy individuals to blow themselves
up is obviously not easy, but requires ideas and institutions.
The process begins
with the Palestinian Authority (PA) inculcating two things into its population,
starting with the children: Islamic Jihad, which along with Hamas trains the
suicide killers, explains: "We do not take depressed people. If there
were a one-in-a-thousand chance that a person was suicidal, we would not allow
him
to martyr himself. In order to be a martyr bomber, you have to want to live." The
same strange logic applies for Hamas, which rejects anyone "who commits
suicide because he hates the world." Militant Islamic suicide killers
are not born; they are manufactured.
 The condolence telegram sent by Yasser
Arafat to the al-Hadiri clan in Tulkarm
and found among the documents of Al-Ihsan Charitable Society. The al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked to Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat's Fatah
movement, claimed responsibility for the bombing: "In the name of Allah,
the all-Merciful. Do not in any way view those who died for the
sake
of Allah [as though they were] dead; verily, they are alive and
are in the presence
of their lord
[Allah], who
sees to their needs [Surah 3, (Aal Imran), Verse 169]."
Someone demanding such lofty sacrifice from his people was making
investments in New York City-based Strike Holdings; owner of Bowlmor
Lanes. Bowlmor is
located in Greenwich Village and is popular with Manhattan hipsters, who
pay about $8
a game per person to play on evenings and weekends. News of the investment
disturbed some customers at the alley, which advertises on its Web site
as an ideal location
for bar and bat mitzvahs for Jewish teens.
Arafat, as the "sovereign" leader
of the Palestinian nation, went on to invest in a company which provided
leisure to Jewish kids. The irony that Palestinian funds were funneled
to provide entertainment
to Jewish children instead of Gaza kids brings a whole new connotation
to the so called intifida. Recreation for Jewish kids and death
for his people,
what
an inconsistent approach to the freedom cause of Palestinians, furthermore
the silence of the Palestinian and Arab polity and their inability to
condemn this
massive abuse of integrity is equally disgusting and outrageous.
Modern
day warriors of Islam and their lust of global investments are
paradoxical jingle. If a consumer buys a Snapple, Volkswagen or
an Audi
in the Middle
East, they've bought it from the bin Ladens, who have the exclusive franchise
on
the brands. The bin Laden family business employs 32,000 people in 30
countries, has a revenue of $5 billion a year and is invested everywhere
from construction
to manufacturing to financial services to insurance to biological research.
The OBL
path differs from the family; the interesting thing to contemplate
is how did one child from a family of global entrepreneurs come
to be the
enemy
of the
capitalist West where as the whole family continues to flourish with
ties to west? It is
one thing to be scion of global billionaires and run a nice little
jihad of your own and completely other to put a whole nation of
Islam on a
war path
with west.
In course of last decade we have seen Saddam Hussein, Arafat
and Osama bin Laden promoted as modern day version of great Islamic
General Saladin,
the
face of
Islamic resistance to new imperialism led by US. It was first in 1990‚s
that we saw on Arab and Muslim streets Saddam appearing as contemporary
version of the great warrior, donned in flowing Arabian robes mounted
on a white Arabian
stallion with a green standard in his hand the killer of Saladin descendents
the 'Kurds of Halebja‚ was the face of Islamic resistance to
Imperial decadent forces of west. Little do the Islamic world realized
that how much these
contemporary warriors of Islam hold dear the luxuries of the west,
and how much of their monies are parked in these western corporation
against who they are
out to wage a jihad.
 Successful freedom fighters like Gandhi, Bolivar,
and Mandela had one thing in common they despised and abhorred corruption;
corruption eradicates
leader‚s
moral authority. Mandela commended the blind trust of millions of teeming
masses and delivered them to self determination through his visionary
honest leadership.
On the other hand billions stashed in coffers takes the moral force
out of the equation of a freedom fighter, politically the reason Arafat
was not able to
deliver was the stinking personal fortunes that diluted his otherwise
great political legacy.
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