Is everybody crazy but us?

Items in today's news:

Suha Arafat, the wife who did not visit her husband for 3 or 4 years, has taken control of what remains of him, and is doing what she can to prevent others from getting close to him or his physicians. Today she announced that officials of the Palestinian Authority want to bury him alive and take power. According to her, he is on his way to recovery, and will return to Palestine to build the nation. Suha is a Christian, but ended her pronouncement with the slogan of Islamic militants the world over: Allah Ahbah!!!!!!

At stake is not only control of what remains of Palestine and the hopes of its people. There is also something in excess of US $1 billion, currently in Arafat's personal control, spread among numerous accounts and ownerships, whose locations are known to only a few, if even to them.

One group of Americans gained access to BBC and asserted the invalidity of the presidential election. No paper trail; electronic voting easy to penetrate; and the major vendor of the machines (Diebold) clearly committed to the reelection of George W. Bush.

Another group of Americans, as reported in the NYTimes, assert the fraudulent nature of official reports about 9/11. The article begins: "The grainy 30-second commercials are eerie and cryptic, and they suggest a government cover-up of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One implies that no plane flew into the Pentagon. The other suggests that 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed late in the afternoon that day, was detonated from within."

So what else is new? Conspiracy and cover-up is part of American mythology. There is no end of complicated explanations as to why Kennedy's assassination (and Lincoln's) were not what the people were told. Disputes and violence within a royal family about resources, power, and succession have been prime material for Shakespeare and comic opera. We have come to expect competition, a lack of veracity, and general mess in Palestine with or without the demise of Yassir Arafat. The present flap is not likely to end smoothly, or be the last chapter in the story. Still in the air are claims about Israel having poisoned him. I have yet to hear that Suha is a secret Jew in our employ, but that may come.

Is there no relief from the craziness? Probably not. For some of us, it's part of the theater called politics. We cannot be rid of it, so we might as well enjoy it. Yet recognition of the inevitable does not relieve the worry that comes from Israel's dependence on two peoples who seem prone to believe the unbelievable: Palestinians and Americans.