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Arafat: Why Did He Die?

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4 Responses to “Arafat: Why Did He Die?”

cs says:

November 18, 2004 at 1:37 PM

Richard — In light of all the mystery surrounding Arafat’s death, I don’t find your speculations particularly ghoulish. For me, though, the mystery lies just as much in the timing of his death as the nature of the illness that killed him. If he contracted AIDs from volitional sexual behavior, it seems to have brought him down at a propitious time. I’m leaning toward the poisoning theories myself, but there’s nothing to say he couldn’t have contracted AIDs through a deliberately contaminated blood transfusion or other method. It would be a particularly diabolical method of assassination that might insure the murder never would be publicly exposed or investigated.

Now that I’m sharing my own speculations I do feel a bit ghoulish. It’s just that the circumstances seem so odd . . .

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Katherine says:

November 19, 2004 at 10:34 AM

Actually, he may have died of cirrhosis of the liver.

Cirrhosis of the liver ‘killed Arafat’
November 19, 2004

PALESTINIAN leader Yasser Arafat died of cirrhosis of the liver, but French doctors were loath to say so because of a common public belief that the disease is the result of alcoholism, reports indicated yesterday.

Doctors described Mr Arafat as “a true water drinker” and not an alcoholic, according to the paper, Le Canard Enchaine. The weekly is well known for political satire and accurate investigations.

Allegations that Mr Arafat was a heavy drinker, which is forbidden in Islam, would have clouded the mourning that began on November 11, when he died.

The report that Mr Arafat, 75, was suffering from cirrhosis was bolstered by an article in Le Monde, which said he had suffered from “intravascular coagulation”, a blood clotting condition that can be a sign of late-stage liver failure and can be consistent with cirrhosis.

That would explain the secrecy too…

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cs says:

November 20, 2004 at 9:27 AM

Richard — And yet, with help from David Frum’s Diary at National Review, the AIDS theory wends its way through the press . . .

http://tinyurl.com/7xbpr

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Lisa Williams says:

December 2, 2004 at 8:22 PM

With all the liver stuff, it might have been hepatitis C, too. C can be spread via sexual contact and is very destructive to the liver.

Since he was seeing liver specialists, cirrhosis might have been a less explosive answer. And his terrible coloring and weight loss are consistent with some sort of liver thing.

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