That's why he was elected.

Just to kick this around a bit: Aren't you fudging the essence of this particular accusation against Arafat by selectively quoting the original text?

Although it's clear Morris & Barak are mocking Arafat for using the term "peace of the braves" ("a Palestinian baseball team" [cue chortles of derision]), reading the nybooks link, what I see is them calling Arafat a liar for telling one audience "I want peace" and another "I'll never stop fighting." I don't really see, as you seem to, some type of claim that "peace of the braves" is, in itself, a lie or a phrase that only a serial liar would use.

It's a sideline, one they thought would strike their audience as mordantly humorous, but maybe the inherent "dickheadness" of the perpetrators would be better demonstrated by showing that this is exactly the same type of "lie" they've specialized in: saying one thing out of one side of the mouth and something else from the other. Examples must be prevalent, perhaps less so with Morris who seems to have made a career of telling ugly truths but calling them "necessary"...

Don, I think you're parsing things a little too closely here. Morris & Barak are just trying to slime Arafat and Palestinians generally, using whatever materials they feel they have at hand. For instance, earlier they'd explained that Muslims can't tell the difference between lying and telling the truth. It's their "culture," you see. Here they are explaining that Arafat is not just a liar, but a *preposterous* liar, who uses some weird made-up phrase that only preposterous liars use. Hence...it's amusing that Barak used the phrase himself.

And with that, this little joke has been officially over-explained.

I think I may be alone, but Israel reminds me a great deal of the old Aparthied Government in South Africa. Complete and utter hatred for anyone who is not of their kind, erstwhile going to unimagineable lenghts to portray their victims in the same light.
The blacks wanted the whites OUT not dead. The Arabs want the Russian Jew settlers OUT, not dead. It is a complete absurdity that there is any argument over this issue at all. Israel is a criminal nation state that only follows laws they deem applicable, just like South Africa under the Dutch. They are supported by a lone Empire, just like the "Afrikaners". How many more parallels are needed to state this case beyond any refute?

To clarify my position, I believe that the STATE of Israel is criminal in that they condone a colonial project so brutal that it almost humanizes the American westward expansion of the Nineteenth Century. I do not condemn the People of Israel for they are as powerless as the next bunch.

the STATE of Israel is criminal in that they condone a colonial project so brutal that it almost humanizes the American westward expansion of the Nineteenth Century

Wow, I thought people like this only existed in long, made-up diatribes by Alan Dershowitz.