Look carefully at the web page article from the Jewish newspaper Shimachu (reproduced below) (http://www.shamash.org/jb/bk970404/edit.htm).

Read the article carefully. Then use the TV programme to help you decide for yourself who the real Yasser Arafat is. When you have thought through your ideas, put together an email to the writer of the article. Your email should start like this:

Dear Sir/Madam

If you really want to understand Yasser Arafat you need to know something about his past…

The Internet has many thousands of discussion boards (sometimes called newsgroups). Use a search engine to find discussion groups which are considering Yasser Arafat and/or the present situation in Palestine. This activity would be most effective if you worked in pairs or small groups and searched sites based in different countries. When you have completed your searches:

• Work out how many messages seemed to be in favour of Arafat
• Work out how many opposed him
• See if there is a pattern to these findings (e.g. did all messages from the USA oppose Arafat?)

Finally, choose the message you most strongly disagreed with and write a reply to that message.

A common feature of the careers of leaders like Yasser Arafat is that their popularity changes over time. Arafat has sometimes found that he cannot keep the respect of world political leaders and remain a hero to all of his own people at the same time. Use the programme and the recommended websites to research this issue. You could represent your findings on this graph which shows how well respected Arafat was. Make sure that you can explain why the points on the graph are where they are at a any point in time. So, if you decide that Arafat’s standing in September 1970 was very low with world leaders you need to explain why with a key, or a short label on the graph.

April 4, 1997

Just who is Yasser Arafat?

So, is this how a peace process collapses? With a hail of rocks, suicide bombings and renewed economic boycott of Israel?

If Yasser Arafat's goal were to kill off the Oslo Accords, he couldn't be doing a more efficient job.

Fine, Israel's decision to build new housing for Jews on Jerusalem's Har Homa was ill-timed. But the world seems to have forgotten that Israelis have put their very existence on the line by trusting their Arab neighbours and the peace process to create a better life for everyone in the Mideast.

One misstep should not have provoked this degree of violence. What ever happened to civil disobedience?

Regardless of Arafat's public protests to the contrary, he has basically done nothing in the past two weeks but encourage Palestinian militants.

Arafat is convincing Jews everywhere that he is a terrorist first and a statesman second.

No one is asking Arafat to be a Nelson Mandela. But if he were even just a tiny bit like Jordan's King Hussein, the majority of Israelis, who are moderate and want peace, would feel as if they could trust him.

Instead, he is playing into the hands of the Israeli right, which has never abandoned its distrust of Arafat.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world's leaders should be ashamed. Even as they condemn the building on Har Homa, they should condemn just as strongly the Palestinians' return to violence. Where is the UN resolution on such acts?

And those who say this current disaster is purely a function of Benjamin Netanyahu and Har Homa shouldn't forget that it was Shimon Peres who felt compelled to close the territories last year after a series of suicide bombers killed scores of Israelis.

So we're asking: Will the real Yasser Arafat please stand up? Or has he already?

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