If he was poisoned I’d think the Israelis would be the last ones who’d have killed him.
He was an incompetent leader whom they regularly spanked whenever he acted up.
Why replace the guy you’re beating the crap out of with someone who might be competent.
Are you referring to the rumors of him and his bodyguard?
The stories are more than a little humorous but I’m not sure his reliable they are.
Don’t you go spoiling everything with common sense, now.
I think that he died of AIDS, and the Palestinians doped his stuff with polonium to incriminate the Israelis.
It’s no so far fetched. If you were interested in advancing the cause of the Palestinians would you rather that his legacy was “he died of cirrhosis” or “the Israeli-Zionists murdered him!”?
On a different note, I treat a lot of old guys with cirrhosis. I’m thinking maybe I should start checking their undies for traces of Polonium.
The idea that he died of AIDS has been promulgated for awhile.
I don’t think think the evidence supporting it can be surmised as anything beyond idle speculation.
I don’t see how respecting Yasser Arafat is coupled to gloating about his death. Unless Mr. Arafat is the modern version of Hitler, I just don’t see the foam-at-the-mouth disrespect they have for Mr. Arafat.
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“Moderately support the proposition” is, as I’ve pointed out, not enough to convict someone of murder (never mind that there is, in fact, no suspect named). There are many levels of assumption between this report and the conclusion “Israel had him wacked”.
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When a scientist says “moderately support” it’s not what you think.
You are making the mistake of looking at the politics of 2004 in light of todays. In 2004 Russia was still emerging from the 1990’s. It had not yet assumed the assertive stance that it displays these days, Israel was suffering fairly regular attacks and the Syrians were not only at peace, but had good relations with the west.
So your analysis is off. If somebody did kill him, the Israelis have to be the most plausible suspects.
In other breaking news (of the “no parrots died”) variety - it’s been announced that Pablo Neruda did not die of poisoning, at least according to the Chilean forensic service and foreign experts who tested the poet’s remains.
*Mr Bustos confirmed that Neruda’s remains seemed to support the official line that he had died of cancer.
However, Friday’s highly-anticipated results did not satisfy everyone.
“The Neruda case doesn’t close today,” said Chilean Communist Party lawyer Eduardo Contreras.
“Today we are going to request more samples. They referred to chemical agents but there are no studies about biological agents. A very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously but this is not over.”
Neruda’s driver and personal assistant, Manuel Araya, had maintained that the poet was poisoned.
Mr Araya said Neruda had called him from hospital, and told him he was feeling sick after having been given an injection in the stomach.
Chile began investigating Mr Araya’s allegations in 2011.
The suspicions were backed by the Chilean Communist Party, which said Neruda did not exhibit any of the symptoms associated with the advanced prostate cancer he was said to have died of.
They said that the military government feared Neruda would go into exile in Mexico and campaign against the Pinochet regime."*
Neruda’s nephew wants testing done for thallium and sarin gas. But curiously, no one seems to be demanding polonium testing. Could it be that the [del]Is[/del] someone poisoned Neruda with polonium to please Chilean fascist allies?
Moreover - has anyone tested Yasser Arafat for thallium and sarin gas exposure? Tellingly, a classic sign of acute thallium poisoning is nausea and vomiting - exactly what Arafat had!
There is more than meets the eye here. 
Hitler? No. But people here have a hard time respecting people like Margaret Thatcher or George W. Bush, and they’re not Hitler, either. Obviously, my own opinion of him is probably lower than the most, here, but I’d say the majority of posters think of him as not all that much more than just another dead terrorist.
Funny, that’s not how I remember the time. I remember Arafat as being a less bellicose element on the Palastinian side (to be sure still someone who few Isralis would mourn) and Russia being quite invested in the region, as this Congressional testimony of the time discussed.
Syria had a long time animosity with Arafat. While the Israelis would shed no tears that the old man died, they saw him as no current threat in any way. He was a stable predictable entity, Israel had every reason to prefer that to an unknown change in leadership. OTOH the Syrians could have thought that a leadership transition would give a chance for their proxies, and their role in the region, to become more ascendent.
The Syrians had the motive. IF Arafat was bumped off with polonium he was killed with waepon of choice of the Russians who trained and had close relations with Syria’s intelligence operatives. The Russians initially claimed that no, no polonium was in any tissue samples, while its presence is moderately probable to other researchers at a later date, when it should be harder to find.
I don’t know if he was killed off or died of his established poor health. I did not celebrate his death but I understand why some would. His death at that moment served no obvious Israeli interest of the time that was not better served by letting nature take its course and was not of the typical Israeli MO. The Syrians, backed by Russia, did have timely motives, the MO (if it was murder by polonium) is Russian, and the Russians in that scenario seemed to be involved in a cover-up.
But if they did, I don’t care.
I’m not impressed, since the normal level of polonium in a human body, pretty much none, doesn’t go up much in absolute terms if you have eighteen times pretty much none.
Run that by again.
Are you saying that it is so small an amount as to not be accurately measured, or not enough to kill him?
It doesn’t take much polonium to kill you, but as the human body typically contains virtually no plutonium, 18 times 0 still gives you pretty much no plutonium, and not enough to kill you. I blame the excitement on the spectacularly sensitive measuring instruments we have these days.
The stuff decays pretty quickly, 138 days. Finding anything significant above baseline this many years later is … interesting. From I can read it is actually quite surprising that there would be any amount above background at this point if it was used.
Anyone with any understanding of why his medical files have not been released by the French in the context of this investigation. His hair not falling out and not having severe diarrhea (both the typical signs of polonium poisoning) is one thing … but if he had a normal white count then he could not have been murdered by pololium. And a very low white count would raise the suspicion significantly higher. There is no doubt that he would have had multiple blood counts while there.
Also anyone with any guesses why neither the Russian or the French investigative teams have reported finding the polonium in the samples they analyzed?
I assume the ones who found it are looking for what it decays to. Polonium leaves a surprisingly clear trail of breadcrumbs, considering its short half life.
It still forces us to confront the “Why bother killing a sickly man of 75?” question, but if one accepts the cliche that people of the Mid East (all sides) are the Honey Badgers of the planet… 
http:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg (link broken. NSFW)
It’s odd that no autopsy was performed at the time of death, seeing that there allegedly had been multiple attempts on his life by various parties - and if the circumstances around his death truly had been suspicious, you’d think the family would have been eager for an autopsy to be done.
The lack of one has probably helped give rise to speculations and rumors such as Arafat’s having HIV/AIDS, a cirrhotic liver etc. which might have prompted embarassing revelations in the autopsy report. A more likely explanation is that there was perception at the time of an unambiguous and non-controversial cause of death, and no reason to have an autopsy done (in my experience families generally do not want one unless there are unanswered medical questions or leanings toward a malpractice suit).
You might want to read some of the many articles about this. No it does not. It leaves a very faint trail which is not very clear at all.
Interestingly looking for an article to link you to I found this.
His white blood cell count was elevated? (He did have diarrhea though.)
Okay, let’s look at the actual Swiss report. He had bone marrow biopsies done and they were normal. Normal.
Now I am convinced. This seems likely a spurious finding. I can’t say it’s impossible to be true but to claim that he had enough polonium in his bones to still show up NOW, enough to have killed him, and yet not enough to have had the marrow suppression and consequent low white cell count strains belief. Given that neither of the other labs with samples have reported replicated findings it seems unlikely to be true.
Russia wacked a guy living in the West, using polonium no less, two years after Arafat died. I’d say that was pretty “assertive”.
Unless you are arguing that the Russia of 2006 was somehow radically different from the Russia of 2004.
What does Syria’s relations with the West have to do with anything? Having Arafat killed in a way that, evidently, escaped detection doesn’t risk Syria’s relations with the West much.
More about Russian poisioning in that era.
Alleged to have been poisioned by Russia in 2004:
In 2003:
Looks like Russia was no stranger to poisioning people around the time of Arafat’s death - assuming of course these allegations are true.