Here are two Arab merchants in Ramallah unloading posters of the late Chairman Yasser Arafat, with the caption in Arabic “Don’t let the olive branch fall from my hand,” November 7, 2013.
In 1973, exactly 40 years ago, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Zionism as a form of racism and supporting the right of the Palestinian people to self- determination. Chairman Arafat appeared before the UN Assembly wearing a gun holster and bearing an olive branch, and threatened: “Don’t let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
Much blood has spilled since then, most of it Arab, thank God, but a lot of it our own, too. Yasser Arafat has gone in and out of fashion, he was dying there for a while, then died, and now has been resurrected as the presumed victim of polonium poisoning (as discovered by a Swiss team that was told to discover traces of polonium poisoning). And so, once again, the merchants of Ramallah can dust off their local equivalent of the Elvis velvet paintings (which they also have in stock, of course).
Get your Arafat poster here while supply—and the current Arafat story—last.
