re: #10 Charles Johnson

Hussein Ibish
@Ibishblog

After AJE’s miserable, unprofessional Arafat poisoning speculation based on inconclusive data, conspiracy theories running wild as intended.

My question: “Why now?” I suspect something is afoot, and I doubt it has anything to do with concern over how Arafat died.

Al Jazeera says their investigation took 9 months. When did it begin? Just because they’re publishing now doesn’t mean that the 9 months were immediately prior to July 2012, likewise it doesn’t mean they were not. Did the investigation begin in November 2011, or earlier? If earlier, how much earlier? What was going on around that time? Whose idea was it? Who approved it?

The final report from the Institute of Radiophysics in Switzerland is dated May 5, 2012. How long did it take from start to finish? Who, specifically, ordered & paid for it and why? (I haven’t gone through all the stuff over at AL Jazeera yet, so perhaps some of these questions are answered there.)

Is this just a way for Al Jazeera to get attention? Maybe. It is just another way to smear Israel? Maybe, but what need for that? It’s not as if there aren’t 100 conspiracy theories involving Israel on any given day, and I’m sure more than one person has probably floated the idea that the Israelis assassinated Arafat since the moment he took ill.

This smells like a distraction tactic, a way to stir up emotions and, as Mr. Ibish pointed out, weave more/bigger conspiracy theories. If this is a distraction tactic, then what is the strategy behind it?

Maybe I’m being too suspicious and inventing as conspiracy of my own. Maybe not. I guess we’ll have to see where the fallout from this leads…