Biography of Yasser Arafat
(1929-2004)
Mohammed Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa Al-Husseini, more commonly known as Yasser Arafat was the fifth of seven children born to a Palestinian textile merchant on August 24, 1929. According to Arafat and other sources, he was born in Jerusalem, however, French biographers, Christophe Boltanski and Jihan El-Tahri revealed in their 1997 book, Les sept vies de Yasser Arafat, that he was actually born in Cairo, Egypt, and that is where his birth certificate was registered. The Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs also lists Arafat’s birthplace as Cairo. Ian Pacepa, a former Romanian intelligence official, disclosed that the KGB had invented a background for Arafat with a birthplace in Jerusalem.
Claims that Arafat was related to the Jerusalem Husseini clan through his mother have been disputed by the Palestinian historian Said Aburish. In an unauthorized biography, Aburish claims that “The young Arafat sought to establish his Palestinian credentials and promote his eventual claim to leadership... [and] could not afford to admit any facts which might reduce his Palestinian identity. ...Arafat insistently perpetuated the legend that he had been born in Jerusalem and was related to the important Husseini clan of that city.”
Arafat’s childhood was divided between Cairo and Jerusalem, where he lived for four years with an uncle following the death of his mother when he was five. Arafat entered the University of King Faud I (later renamed Cairo University) in 1947 and studied engineering. It was during his college years that Arafat adopted the name Yasser, which means “easygoing” in Arabic.
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Arafat left the university and, along...
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... capital in some part of the holy city.
For nearly half a century Arafat was the symbol of Palestinian nationalism. Though he was not a military man, he was rarely seen out of his uniform in an effort to project strength and his commitment to armed struggle. He wore his kaffiyeh in a unique fashion, draped over his shoulder in the shape of Palestine, that is, all of historic Palestine, including Israel. The high-profile terrorist attacks he directed helped gain international attention and sympathy for the Palestinian cause, but, ultimately, his unwillingness to make the psychological leap from terrorist mastermind to statesman prevented him from achieving independence for the Palestinian people, and brought them decades of suffering that could have been avoided had he abandoned his revolutionary zeal for liberating Palestine and agreed to live in peace with Israel.
Elias Chocour’s novel, Blood Brothers, represents his point of view on the contemporary Palestinian position regarding the holy land of Israel. The book traces the transformation of Chocour’s life, from a Melkite Christian Palestinian boy into a powerful spiritual leader and innovative agent in facilitating better race relations in the region. He shows how Palestinian’ needs were left out during the formation of the State of Israel, and how their plight is highly misunderstood, and often grossly distorted because of ignorance. Chocour’s depiction of the problem facing non-Jews is highly illuminating, and Blood Brothers will dispel many illusions and fallacies that cloud the facts surrounding the status of Israel’s inhabitants.
Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah Robert Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, on October 7, 1897 to William and Mariah Poole (biography.com). One of thirteen children, he had only the benefit of a third-grade education before he was forced to help support his large family by sharecropping (discovertheetworks.org). At an early age, Muhammad witnessed extreme prejudice and violence toward African Americans (biography.com). After the lynching of a friend, in 1912, prompted Muhammad to flee his parent’s house a year later (danielpipes.org). In 1917 Muhammad met Cara Evans and married her in 1919, together they had eight children between 1921 and 1939 (danielpipes.org). In 1923, seeking better employment and a more tolerant environment, Muhammad moved his own family, parents and siblings to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked in an auto factory (biography.com). In 1931 Muhammad met Wallace D. Fard, a former salesman preaching a ne...
Rabin must have been assassinated because of the jealousy/revenge of individuals who did not agree with the success Rabin had. This paper argued that Rabin was assassinated because of jealousy/revenge. The findings of this paper were that Amir, the assassin, assassinated Rabin because of the signing of the Oslo Accord. Amir did not believe in the signing of this treaty and felt the need to take matters into his own hand. Amir himself stated to the judge in court that the murder of Rabin was meant to halt the Mideast peace process. There has been sufficient evidence supporting the reasoning’s behind the murder/assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin was a man who strongly believed in his country and a man who strongly believed he could get Israel and the Palestinians to a place of peace. Rabin almost succeeded, but unfortunately, his push for peace came to an abrupt end on that tragic
Most people think Israel always belonged to the Jews but it wasn’t always a safe, holy place where Jews could roam freely. Along with Palestine, it was actually forcefully taken from the Arabs who originated there. The main purpose of this novel is to inform an audience about the conflicts that Arabs and Jews faced. Tolan’s sources are mainly from interviews, documentations and observations. He uses all this information to get his point across, and all the quotes he uses is relevant to his points. The author uses both sides to create a non-biased look at the facts at hand. The novel starts in the year 1967 when Bashir Al-Khairi and his cousins venture to their childhood home in Ramallah. After being forced out of their homes by Jewish Zionists and sent to refuge for twenty years. Bashir arrives at his home to find a Jewish woman named Dalia Eshkenazi. She invites them into her home and later the...
This marked the beginning of the Palestine armed conflict, one of its kinds to be witnessed in centuries since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War 1. Characterized by a chronology of endless confrontations, this conflict has since affected not only the Middle East relations, but also the gl...
Professor Morris Rossabi was born in Egypt and researched throughout the Middle East. He earned his PhD in East and Central Asian history from Columbia University in 1970. He received an honorary doctorate from National Mongolian University in 2009. He is fluent in an array of languages such as: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, French, and German. As well literate in Italian, Latin, Manchu, Mongol, Persian, Russian, and Uyghur.
achieved unprecedented popularity in both Egypt and the Arab world. He was said to be
Muhammad Ali was not always called by that name, born on January 17, 1942 in
Edward Said “States” refutes the view Western journalists, writers, and scholars have created in order to represent Eastern cultures as mysterious, dangerous, unchanging, and inferior. According to Said, who was born in Jerusalem at that time Palestine, the way westerners represent eastern people impacts the way they interact with the global community. All of this adds to, Palestinians having to endure unfair challenges such as eviction, misrepresentation, and marginalization that have forced them to spread allover the world. By narrating the story of his country Palestine, and his fellow countrymen from their own perspective Said is able to humanize Palestinians to the reader. “States” makes the reader feel the importance of having a homeland, and how detrimental having a place to call home is when trying to maintain one’s culture. Which highlights the major trait of the Palestinian culture: survival. Throughout “States”, Said presents the self-preservation struggles Palestinians are doomed to face due to eviction, and marginalization. “Just as we once were taken from one habitat to a new one we can be moved again” (Said 543).
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is a complex movement, which stumbles from one setback to another. The PLO was riven with factionalism; it pursued revolution and diplomacy as if there were no contradiction between the terms. Then, at the moment of winning recognition from Israel, it seemed poised to lose its most precious asset - the support of the Palestinian people, whom it sought to serve. Barry Rubin wrote a history of the PLO in which he investigates and interprets its political circumstances, strategies, and doctrines from their inception in the late 1950s to the events of 1993 culminating in the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn. His book aims to offer a general account of the organization’s history and politics. The task of illustrating the incompetence and corruption of the PLO and its leaders is not difficult, and Rubin seemed to have pursued this task with enthusiasm.
He lived in Kabul, Afghanistan with his father, Baba, and two servants of the Hazaran minority, Ali and his son Hassan, who also happens to be Amir’s best friend.
The Fatimid Caliphates were a 10th century Ismacili Shici dynasty that conquered the Ikhshidid dynasty in Egypt. The Fatimids claimed lineage rights from the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fatima; and, existed during the Golden Age of Islam. “Unlike the cAbbasids or Umayyads, who were led by a caliph approved by the community, the Shica espoused the concept of designation, in which the Prophet Muhammad chose Ali as his successor and in which each subsequent religious leader was a divinely ordained, supreme, infallible Imam who had the final authority in both religious and social affairs.” In 909, the Fatimid was established by the self-proclaimed Imam, Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi, who migrated his missionary work through the Palestine and Egypt before he finally came to settle in North Africa in the city of Raqqada. Throughout history, there have been differing views towards the establishment and core objectives of the Fatimid dynasty being established for economic or for Islamic progression during the Golden Age of Islam; and further, many claimed there was no separation of religion and government within the Fatimid.
I was born in 1981, in Kuwait, exactly in the American hospital in Ahmadi area. My mother said that “the sky was clouded totally and the rain just started, and it was a nice day”. I lived in Ahmadi area about five years as my father
The Arab-Israeli conflict is a struggle between the Jewish state of Israel and the Arabs of the Middle East concerning the area known as Palestine. The term Palestine has been associated variously and sometimes controversially with this small region. Both the geographic area designated by and the political status of the name have changed over the course of some three millennia. The region, or a part of it, is also known as the Holy Land and is held sacred among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In the twentieth century it has been the object of conflicting claims of Jewish and Arab national movements, and the conflict has led to prolonged violence and in several instances open warfare opposing Israel's existence. These wars, which occurred during the years of nineteen forty-eight to nineteen forty-nine, nineteen fifty-six, nineteen sixty-seven, nineteen seventy-three to nineteen seventy-four, and nineteen eighty-two were complicated and heightened by the political, strategic, and economic interests in the area of the great powers. This fight is the continuation of an Arab-Jewish struggle that began in the early 1900's for control of Palestine. The historic and desirable region, which has varied greatly since ancient times, is situated on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean in southwestern Asia. The strategic importance of the area is immense. Through it pass the main roads from Egypt to Syria and from the Mediterranean to the hills beyond the Jordan River. Palestine is now largely divided between Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories, parts of which are self-administered by Palestinians. The ongoing feud is and was based around competing land claims and the two opposing viewpoints are that the Palestinians lived in the region long before Jews began moving there in large numbers in the late 1800's and that Jews believed they were justified by Zionism. “Chiefly, today’s Palestine question has to do with Jews and Arabs. Over the centuries, both groups have developed deep historical roots in a place both regard as a Holy Land. Both have strong emotional ties to it.” (Carrol, 3) This paper will discuss how discrimination against Arab-Palestinians is justified by Zionism and the results of these actions, the origins, purposes, and effects of the Arab “Intifada,” and what the future holds for the Arabs and Jews living in a race/religion biased land.
When Yasser Arafat addressed the United Nations General Assembly, he tried to articulate the actions the Palestinian Liberation Organization had taken and to justify those actions. Arafat points out that the struggles with Imperialism and Zionism began in 1881 when the first large wave of immigrants began arriving in Palestine. Prior to this date, the Muslims, Jews (20,000) and Christians all cohabitated peacefully (pop. 1/2 million). In 1917, the Belfour Declaration authorized increased immigration of European Jews to Palestine. 1 From 1917 to 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine increased to 600,000 and they rightfully owned only 6% of the Palestinian arable land. Palestine population at this time was now up to 1,250,000. 1