Bad medicine

Apologies. I wrongly reported in yesterday’s post that a local tabloid frontpaged Arafat’s death by poisoning when in fact it was referring to his burial. Well, I have made the necessary correction to my error (I know - tragically reinforcing popular notions that bloggers do not check their sources - sorry again). But I did hear the news over radio about this wild allegation (attributed to a PLO source) although it also reported French denials.

David Frum insinuates on National Review Online what the cause of Arafat’s death could be and the link is here. Independent Media Review analysis reproduces a WAFA (official Palestine news agency) statement calling for disclosure and you can read it here.

Meanwhile, ABC News Online has a story about conspiracy rumours following Arafat’s death:

Rumours have been rife that he had been suffering from anything from cancer of the stomach to a rare blood disorder.

Hamas militants say he was poisoned by Israel, a theory which Palestinians officials say doctors have ruled out.

The head of the Palestinian mission in Paris, Leila Shahid, says poisoning is a possibility, although there was no evidence.

"It's quite possible that they (Israelis) poisoned him, I cannot say that medically we have proof of that," she said.

Since the French are not legally bound to disclose cause of death, one can only expect these rumours to take on mythic proportion.