Danny Rubinstein fits in the middle of the spectrum of op-ed writers who appear regularly in Ha'aretz. He writes intelligently and knowingly about the Palestinian Authority: neither from the extreme left that believes all would be rosy if it were not for Israeli perfidy, nor from the extreme right that nothing there can possibly work.

Today's article is discouraging. It portrays wide acceptance of the belief that Arafat died from Israeli poison, along with other myths that the Palestinian elites and mass purvey and, seemingly, accept as gospel: that there is a map in the Knesset that shows Israel spread from the Nile to the Euphrates, and that the blue stripes on the Israeli flag symbolize the aspiration of the Jews to expand their empire to those proportions.

Since Arafat's death, we have heard from George Bush that a Palestinian democracy is possible, and will lead to peace. Danny Rubinstein's article makes me wonder how that can be..

Yet another vignette of unreality comes from the description of the shooting that occurred yesterday when Abu Mazan and other dignitaries visited the mourning tent set up in Gaza to memorialize Arafat. News film shows more than 100 men fleeing in disarray when the shooting started. Abu Mazan himself said that he was not a target for assassination. Maybe some emotional youngsters shot only at the canvas ceiling. One view is that it was not a serious attempt at assassination, but only a warning to Abu Mazan not to depart from the preferred course of continued intifada.. (This in itself would caution us about the prospects for peace with a Palestinian democracy.) Yet two of Abu Mazan's bodyguards died in the incident. Perhaps from heart attacks or Israeli poison.

One can list a number of essentials for democracy. They include the legitimacy of political competition and criticism; a moderation of political temper so that the winners of elections are placed in office; free media that generally is responsible in reporting the truth, and is not so extreme in criticism as to incite violence; and an emphasis on credibility over myth in depicting one's opportunities and adversaries. Some of these things can be put into place by a government concerned to enhance its democratic character, or insisted upon by outside monitors. Early signs are that Palestinians are lining up firmly behind one candidate for their president. Will Bush and other western democrats accept the facade of choice as real democracy?

Some elements of democracy are the deeper stuff of culture that are likely to resist change from within or without. Prominent among these is knowing the difference between stories that are reasonably close to the truth, with a concern to verify allegations, as opposed to the ready acceptance of wild stories that demonize adversaries.

Yassir Arafat is dead. Many of us would welcome a replacement who will be responsible, and join with Israeli leaders in seeking a formula for accommodation. We would like to believe that it is wrong to perceive Palestinians as a barbaric mass that admires killers of children, does not know the difference between truth and falsehood, and believes that we are nothing more than the evil figures portrayed in anti-Semitic cartoons. We should always test views about our adversaries, but recent signs do not make me optimistic.