As Plain As the. . .Oh, Never Mind

Thomas Lipscomb looks at Yasser Arafat’s increasing impotence:

And why ever would the Israelis want to kill him now? Arafat now is a figure of total ridicule to both his enemies and his allies. What better evidence than the casual ease with which both President Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah had Sharon agree to release Arafat during a meeting in Crawford, Texas, devoted to weightier matters?

And now, with the cage door of his Ramallah prison wide open, with Arafat “freed” at last, and his “martyrdom” a hollow joke, Arafat still sits inside, a stunned old man. No one knows more than he how irrelevant he has become.

This lesson might be one the same one Greeks learned from the Persians millenia ago. By the time of the Byzantine Empire, there was a formal ban on anyone with visible deformities ascending to the throne.

So would-be usurpers had their noses sliced off.

Arafat’s face is no uglier than it ever was, so you can bet the IDF aimed its knife a wee bit lower.