The Day Yasser Arafat Stole My Gas
by Jack Anderson

I had a ringside seat to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon during an earlier confrontation between Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat in June of 1982 which sheds insight on the current turmoil in Israel. I had been invited to dinner at Sharon's ranch. The date happened to coincide with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon which he directed as the Minister of Defense. Rather than cancel our appointment, which might have sent a signal that something was in the works, he welcomed me at his ranch. Between courses he directed the invasion by short-wave radio.

I would describe the Sharon, I have come to know, as Israel's George Patton. He was seen by militant Israelis as a mountain peak silhouetted against the lightening, the bearer of the true flame. He was the rallying point for Israeli hardliners, the graven image before which they bowed. In person he had none of the attributes of a George Patton, none of the dramatic appeal of a Douglas MacArthur. Instead, he was a rather fat, amiable, avuncular presence. He couldn't have been a more delightful dinner companion and, between mouthfuls, he barked orders to the Israeli invaders that belied his gentle nature.

Because of my ringside seat to the beginning of that war, I decided to pursue it further and moved on to Beirut inside the Israeli lines. After I had gathered all the information that I felt that I needed from the Israeli side, I arranged a visit to the Palestinian side.

I happened to be in the Israeli military headquarters when I mentioned that I would, of course, have to get the other side of the story, and that I would seek an interview with Yasser Arafat. They said, "Let us arrange it," and they actually called him from Israeli military headquarters using my name. They kept a watchful eye on his whereabout at all times, knew his number, and didn't have to look it up in the telephone book.

Yasser Arafat came to the phone and invited me to come right away. My first obstacle was how to get across the front separating the forces. It was called the green line, two blocks of what appeared to be pot holes, until you looked closely and saw that they were really shell holes. In fact, some were big enough to be fox holes.

I found out how precarious those two blocks were when the only taxi driver I could get to take me demanded $200 for taking me that two-block drive. When we hit the green line, he floored the gas pedal and wound past the shell holes at a reckless speed.

We arrived at Arafat's headquarters at the appointed time and he came around the corner and greeted me as "the great Zionist columnist." Having put me in my place, he invited me to accompany him as he was going to visit a nearby hospital. This visit, I later learned, was staged for my benefit. He was greeted affectionately by the Palestinian patients who had been hospitalized with war wounds.

The performance unfolded perfectly until the hospital administrator suddenly injected a hostile note. He addressed Arafat angrily, who then took me aside to explain that the administrator was complaining bitterly over Israeli attacks that had hit his hospital.

I noticed my taxi driver following us nearby and beckoned him over and asked if he had heard their exchange. What were they actually talking about? The administrator was complaining bitterly to Arafat for placing an anti-aircraft gun on the hospital roof because it was attracting Israeli fire. To say the least, this is a slightly different version than Arafat had given me.

We went back to his command post where he sat in the midst of his military high command and he briefed me on the Palestinian side of the conflict. I thanked him and made a gracious exit, jumped into the taxi cab and the driver said, we can't go. I said why not?. He answered Arafat has stolen our gas. His aides had siphoned all of our gas, and we couldn't move. I marched back into military headquarters and confronted Arafat. He brushed it aside with an embarrassed shrug, but ordered his people to return enough gas for us to cross the green line at break-neck speed.

Then and now, Arafat struck me most in appearance and performance as an Arabian Jesse Jackson. Those of us who personally know the hypocritical Jackson would be obliged to report that he has created for himself a legend out of pure public relations. He was catapulted into the spotlight by calling a press conference at Chicago's O'Hare Airport after Martin Luther King's assassination. Jackson was wearing a bloodied shirt which he said was the splattered blood of the civil rights hero. Jackson said he was holding King's head as his life slipped away.

The only problem with his story is that Jackson was nowhere around, according to people who were there, when Martin Luther King was shot. The man who cradled his head was the Reverend Ralph Abernathy not Jackson. People at the sight had no idea how he could have gotten a blood-splattered shirt, but this was before DNA samples could have been taken to dispute him. His own colleagues suggested it was probably chicken blood. Thus, he built his reputation out of a compound of lies and myths until it grew into a perception of the man who tried to live up to the image he had created for himself.

This is precisely what happened to Yasser Arafat who used the Jesse Jackson technique to create his own legend. He embellished it by dressing to fit the part. Like Jackson, whose self-portrait gradually became reality, so has Arafat's. He began to acquire some of the power that he earlier had attributed to himself.

As nearly as I can learn, he was no more a leader of the underground at the beginning than Jackson was a leader in the civil rights movement. They both pretended what they were not. But in both instances, the pretense was so effective, they became the persons that they contrived.

Jackson became the civil rights leader who was taken seriously by the world, and he made sure that he could always be found in the spotlight. Wherever a TV camera was pointing at a civil rights crisis, you could be sure Jesse Jackson would pop up and it would always be dramatic. It would always be newsworthy.

In the same way, Arafat was always at the center of any crisis in the Middle East. He always made statements as the underground leader that he eventually became. He now has ties to terrorists that didn't exist when he first created his own image. He has grown into the legend that he created about himself, until fantasy and reality have bonded together.

It is clear that he's been lying to both sides. He was not the peacemaker that he told the Israelis he was; neither originally was he the terrorist he claimed to be to the Palestinians.

George Bernard Shaw, often considered the most brilliant man in England of his time, got a letter from the most beautiful showgirl of the time suggesting that they marry. "With your brains and my looks, what exceptional children we will have," she said. But he responded, "What if they get your brains and my looks?"

Arafat has wanted the Israelis to believe that he had the contacts to make the peace. They looked upon him as a moderate. Now, he is regarded as the terrorist leader he once only pretended to be. He was hoisted there on the swell of his own lies.

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Many of the top investigative stories of the last half century belong to syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. He exposed the role of the Nixon White House in the Watergate scandal and uncovered evidence that the CIA once enlisted the Mafia to attempt an assassination of Fidel Castro. In 1972, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for proving that the Nixon administration was aiding Pakistan while claiming neutrality in the India-Pakistan War. Ever a premier newsman and devoted Latter-day Saint, Jack (now 76) is semi-retired in Maryland with his wife of fifty years, the former Olivia Farley.