Jeffrey Goldberg, Columnist

Who Might Have Poisoned Yasser Arafat?

Hint: Ariel Sharon.

November 6, 2013 at 10:24 PM UTC

Jeffrey Goldberg is a columnist for Bloomberg View writing about the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy and national affairs. He is a national correspondent for the Atlantic, the author of "Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror" and a winner of the National Magazine Award for reporting. He has also covered the Middle East as a staff writer for the New Yorker. Goldberg began his career at the Washington Post. He later wrote a column for the Jerusalem Post, covered the Mafia for New York magazine, and wrote for several years for the New York Times Magazine. He has been a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a fellow of the Jerusalem Foundation. He was born in New York, and now lives in Washington with his wife and three children.

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Word comes now that anexamination of the remains of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader who died in 2004, has found "unexpected high activity" of polonium. According to Arafat's official medical records, he suffered a fatal stroke, but this level of radioactive polonium -- 18 times the normal level -- has prompted scientists to say they "moderately" support the notion, advanced by Arafat's widow and others, that he was poisoned to death.

Although Arafat had many enemies in the Palestinian camp (and was notably unpopular with many Arab leaders), speculation about a culprit has naturally centered on Israel. The spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, Yigal Palmor, disparaged the claim today, saying that it is "more soap opera than science." He cast doubt on the neutrality of the examining scientists, and also raised a legitimate question about whether they had access to all of Arafat's medical records. In Buzzfeed, Sheera Frenkel reportsthat Israel is bracing for a wave of criticism. She quotes Ran Cohen, a left-wing politician, saying that, "most Palestinians believe that we were behind his death, now their anger will be renewed."