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EDITORIAL:
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The money trail

So now CBS and the BBC have reported the fact that (1) Arafat has embezzled close to $1 billion of Palestinian public funds; and (2) that at least some of that money has gone, with his knowledge and consent, to terrorist groups. Apparently, in the world these broadcasters inhabit, this is considered “news.”

In the world Israelis inhabit, this is not news. In August 2002, the Knesset heard testimony from an Israeli general estimating Arafat’s worth at $1.3 billion. And if we hadn’t known that Arafat gave aid and comfort to terrorist groups during the Oslo years, last year’s Karine A episode put paid to any illusions we might have had.

In fact, far more newsworthy than the revelations contained in Lesley Stahl’s 60 Minutes segment and in the BBC’s Correspondent program is that these news organizations are showing an interest in just how Arafat gets and spends his money. Why now? Why not before?

The “now” of it might have something to do with the September release of a damning IMF report on Palestinian public finances. It might have something to do with the willingness of senior PA officials to go public with information long known to Israeli intelligence sources and Israeli media. It might also have something to do with the decision of the Israeli government to boycott the BBC, as well as by the recent appointment of Malcolm Balen as a BBC “Middle East policeman” tasked with enforcing balanced coverage.

Whatever the case, plainly the message has penetrated to senior BBC and CBS officials that something is amiss with their coverage of this region. This is good news, in the sense that it shows that big media outlets are ultimately not immune to letter-writing campaigns and the scrutiny of watchdog groups. But it is bad news in the sense that it is too little, too late.

Thus, following the capture of the Karine A, Chris Patten, the European Union’s External Relations Commissioner, refused to make a link between the ship’s contents and Arafat’s connections to terrorism. Patten also angrily resisted calls from EU parliamentarians headed by the indefatigable Francois Zimeray to look into allegations of PA misuse of EU funds. As recently as September, The Economist sniffed that while Arafat “is a pesky devious autocrat… no evidence has been produced to connect him with the terrorist bombs that have killed so many Israeli civilians.”

What would have happened if someone of Patten’s rank had been a bit more willing to connect the dots? Or if the editors at The Economist had not viewed IDF reports of Arafat’s participation in terror operations as so much right-wing Israeli propaganda? One possibility is that the process of Palestinian reform — which only budged after President Bush’s decision to cut ties with Arafat — would now be somewhat further along. Another possibility is that EU money might have reached the people who need it, not the decorators of Suha Arafat’s Paris apartment.

Indeed, had harder questions been asked of Arafat and the PA in the mid-1990s — when, for instance, Palestinian writer Fawaz Turki described the regime as “the dissolution of civilized society, of all civil norms, and all hope” — then perhaps we wouldn’t now find ourselves in our current predicament.

What makes the media’s nonfeasance really puzzling is that, if nothing else, Arafat’s theft of Palestinian money is a great story, and telling it would have been a wonderful way to speak truth to power. That so many Western journalists have hitherto failed to do so is as much a testament to their laziness as it is to their bias. Something to ponder over drinks at Jerusalem’s American Colony Hotel.