The news of the death of Yasser Arafat in the pages of the European press necessarily travelled by Internet. For the dailies went to press before 3.30 am, the time at which the death of the Palestinian leader was officially announced. “ Yasser Arafat, the eternal combatant”, is the headline in La Croix on the home page of its website and it added: “ The death of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority at the age of 75 leaves a political vacuum and grave uncertainty about the future of the Palestinians”. For days journalists had followed from Paris the state of health of the Palestinian leader, issuing a series of bulletins and denials about his demise. Bruno Frappat, editor in chief of La Croix, recalls that it is not the first time in history that this has happened. “ The death of Lenin he wrote in an editorial on 9 November was hidden from the people to ease his succession. The end of Franco, following an interminable process of therapeutic persistence, was preceded by a series of obituaries, even before he had died. Pius XII was even photographed by his doctor on his deathbed“. The French dailies, and not only they, devoted extensive coverage to the succession of the Palestinian leader. In an interview with Le Monde, published on 11 November, the Franco-Palestinian historian Elias Sanbar asks for “free elections” for Palestine. “ The ballot he says must be really democratic. In other words, all those who want to do so, must be able to stand as candidates and each candidate must be able to conduct his own electoral campaign. But how can an electoral campaign be conducted in areas delimited by over 700 Israeli checkpoints? That means that the occupier would have to withdraw to allow freedom and the freedom to vote”. Sanbar asks, in this regard, for “international supervision” and in particular thinks the Europeans could “guarantee the democratic holding of elections“. The Italian Catholic daily Avvenire also comments on the Arafat succession. “ For the Palestinians writes Fulvio Scaglione (5/11) it will be crucial not to lose the occasion to revive at least negotiation, if not dialogue. But for that to be serious and fruitful, the Palestinians will have to present a recognized and credible leadership. And they will have to find it in a hurry”. “It is difficult to imagine that the succession of Arafat will be wholly painless. It is to be hoped that, closing a cycle for them dramatic and glorious, the Palestinians do not succumb to that totalitarian sense of their cause that has already led them to lose at least one great opportunity“. The “Buttiglione case” has attracted at least one page even in the English press. In an editorial (5/11) written for the English Catholic weekly The Catholic Herald, Mary Kenny compares and contrasts what is happening in Europe and in the USA. “ The week before last writes Kenny the candidate to the Justice Commission of the European Union, Rocco Buttiglione, was rejected for his personal positions, for his religious views that probably represent the majority of Christian thought“. Evidently “ the EU stigmatises religion” seeing that “ it deliberately excluded God from its Constitution“.- Kenny notes that exactly the opposite is happening in the United States: the two candidates to the Presidency of the USA “ made an appeal to their strong religious beliefs, anxious to impress the electorate by showing how much they respect the Lord and live according to the Bible“. The German press, on the other hand, devotes extensive coverage to the murder of the Dutch director Theo Van Gogh. “ ‘War’ and ‘dissension’ in the model country of liberty“, writes J. Reckmann in the Frankfurter Rundschau (10/11). “ Many Dutch people ask themselves whether this was not the beginning of the end for Holland as the bulwark of toleration“. Die Welt hosts an article by Zafer Senocak, a writer of Turkish origin, who comments as follows: “ With the killing … of Theo van Gogh, a threshold of pain was passed. […] Islam in its present form does not only polarise positions but also creates a climate in which the rule of law is threatened“. Writing about the multicultural society as the “ living lie of Europe“, Dirk Schümer explains in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (11/11): “ The acts of violence in Holland must clarify to the political elites throughout Europe that it is precisely the Dutch laxity to evident violations of the law, and the habit of providing lawless spaces within peaceful multiculturalism, that have made forms of fundamentalism particularly strong“. And the weekly Der Spiegel (08/11) asks: “ It was not an assassination, it was an act of butchery, of a kind that Amsterdam has never seen before. The assassin did not only want to kill, he wanted to sow fear and terror. He has succeeded“.———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1340 N.ro relativo : 80 Data pubblicazione : 13/11/04
