From the movie Cleopatra (1963) :
Messenger: Antony is dead.
Octavius: [Quietly, stunned] Is that how one says it? As simply as that? Antony is dead. Lord Antony is dead! The soup is hot, the soup is cold, Antony is living, Antony is dead.
[He suddenly turns and begins to shout.]
Shake with terror when such words pass your lips, for fear they be untrue! And Antony cut out your tongue for the lie, if not true! For your lifetime boast that you were honored to speak his name even in death! The dying of such a man must be shouted, screamed…it must echo back from the corners of the universe. Antony is dead! Marc Antony of Rome lives no more!
Yasser Arafat lives no more! An old era has passed, a new one has begun.
Proposition: Never before has a leader ruled for so long and accomplished so little for his people.
I think the modern competitors might be Fidel Castro, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Robert Mugabe. Arafat definitely has a shot at the title. At least Castro delivered his people from Fulgencio Batista, and then gave them some kind of stability for 40 years afterwards. Arafat presided over a slow erosion of Palestinian status, repeatedly rejecting deal after deal only to see the next offer be worse than the previous. I’ll bet he would have liked to return to the pre-1967 borders, the same borders he rejected before 1967 because he wanted more. Now he and his people have gotten far less. How could a leader consistently make the wrong choices and yet stay in power?
But Yasser Arafat stood at the center stage of Palestinian politics for decades. His passing marks the end of an era. Arafat’s death is momentous just as Marc Antony’s was.
