I made the mistake of visiting that den of neo-con bile, The Belmont Club. Check out this totally-out-of-it passage on the sad news of Arafat's illness.

Twenty years of European and UN Middle Eastern policy may be lying on the deathbed with Arafat. That they had to fly in doctors to treat him in a makeshift clinic underscores how, after 50 years of UN relief and billions in European investment, there are no Palestinian institutions. Not even decent hospitals for its supreme leader. The downside of the Arab Way of War -- the Intifada in this case -- is that the concept of victory through denial is inherently pyrrhic. 'We burned our village in order to keep it from falling into enemy hands' is like lighting a match to examine the gas tank; it works but misses the point.

Sorry, boys, but did it ever cross your minds that maybe the reason why there's not a Palestinian infrastructure is because, oh, I don't know, the Israelis destroyed it? And not with simple bombs either, through that "Security Fence", through economic blockades, through a forced second-class servitude exerted for three generations by the only Democratically Elected Tyranny on the Planet. And what the Belmont Blokes call "pyrrhic" is largely the only way that an opressed people can make themselves heard. No right (well, left) thinking American supports the murder of innocents; but, unlike the Right, we condemn the murder of innocents on all sides. Whether it's Palestinian children gunned down by Israeli tanks, or Israeli children blown up by Palestinian freedom fighters. Yes, there is a certain nonsense to strategy of "lighting a match to examine the gas tank," but (and you'll excuse this analogy) the resultant explosion is the only way to alert the world community that there is indeed a problem that's threatening to destroy the entire gas yard and surrounding neighborhood.