It was recently reported that "longtime and now recently deceased confidant to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Uri Dan, published a book in France [...] in which he accused the former prime minister of assassinating Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat by poisoning him." If so, why was this not more widely reported in the media? Evidence of a media cover-up? Or bad journalism?

What could be bigger news than a claim that Bush sanctioned Sharon to kill Arafat? And if Israeli journalist Uri Dan, one of Sharon's most intimate friends, wrote this, why did the media not jump on this? The report stated that "Dan claimed Sharon got approval from George Bush by phone early in 2004 to proceed with his plan after he told the US president he was no longer committed to 'not' liquidating the Palestinian leader who then was under siege and practically incarcerated in what remained of his Ramallah compound, most of which had already been destroyed by the Israelis in a lawless act of retribution against him." This is major news and got reported only on the "conspiracy trains" of the Internet. Was it true? Did Sharon kill Arafat, with the blessing of Bush?

Uri Dan did publish a book, "Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait". Dan died just before Christmas 2006, after having been diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year.
Where did the story come from? Everyone attributed the article to Stephen Lendman and assigned a date of December 30, 2006 to it - somewhat too conveniently post Dan's death. The author information read: "Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com." Could it be that a relatively elder gentleman in Chicago was the only person to have read the book and had picked up on a major, though unreported story? Though an extremely controversial claim, none of the book reviews that had appeared when Dan's book was published in October 2006 mentioned it.
Furthermore, it did not sit well with the available evidence. Dan was a trusted friend of Sharon and the official blurb for the book reads as "in 1954 reporter Uri Dan met a young military commander named Ariel Sharon and followed him closely for more than half a century. Dan became Sharon's trusted advisor and a witness to the defining moments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - from secret meetings with heads of state to open warfare in the Sinai. This riveting combination of political history, narrative biography, interviews, and correspondence sheds new light on the conflict in the Middle East and provides an intimate, definitive portrait of Ariel Sharon - a man whose life is inextricably intertwined with Israel's destiny. With Hamas governing Palestine, Ariel Sharon gravely ill and the party he founded, the Kadima, in control of the Knesset, this book couldn't be more timely." This was the promotional blurb for the book, yet no mention of the sensational revelation. Largely, Dan was a defender of Sharon, a friend of Sharon and not likely to smear Sharon's name by linking him with the assassination of Arafat while his friend was comatose. If anything, a man like Dan was expected to deny Sharon's involvement; and if he did say what he had said, then Uri Dan should indeed be remembered as one of the most neutral investigative journalists of the 20th century. However, Uri Dan has been on record stating that "I didn't want to play the objective journalist. At least my subjectivity is known and openly declared: I am on Sharon’s side."

Lendman had summarised the standard story of Arafat's death: "Arafat died in Paris on November 11, 2004 at age 75. He was taken there on October 29 that year and hospitalized for treatment for an undiagnosed illness that began developing in April and became serious enough for him to need special care. It may have already been too late when he arrived as he slipped into a coma on November 3 and remained in that state till his death eight days later from what was explained at the time as complications from a blood disorder. Indeed it may have been true if his blood was poisoned by a substance able to work slowly and from which no cure was possible at least once the former Palestinian leader arrived in Paris."
We contacted Lendman, asking: "I've read your blog entry on Uri Dan, Sharon and Arafat. Could you tell me on which page of the book the quote can be found?" We did not receive a reply.
There was, however, one story from the Ma'an news agency, dated December 29, 2006, which seemed to be at the origin of Lendman's story: "Israeli journalist reveals the secrets of the assassination of Arafat by Ariel Sharon" and began "Bethlehem - Ma'an - The recently deceased Israeli writer, Uri Dan, who was close to Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli Prime Minister, published a book in France in which he accused Sharon of assassinating the former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat by poisoning him. Dan confirmed in his book that Arafat's health began to deteriorate at in April 2004 after Sharon ended a phone call with American President George Bush who gave him the green light to deal with Arafat.
Another writer, Amnon Kabilok, wrote a revision of the book which is entitled 'Sharon', in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He inquired how Uri Dan knew about the sickness of Arafat and its causes and symptoms months in advance of the deceased's symptoms appearing. [...] Earlier, Amnon Kabilok had spoken with his French friend about the death of Yasser Arafat and the attempt to murder Khalid Mash'al, the head of the Hamas political department. He said that his French friend could not believe his expectations that Arafat may have been assassinated. Then he told him that he found a book by a man who was very close to Ariel Sharon, (Uri Dan) revealing the secrets of the assassination of Arafat and the famous phone call between Sharon and Bush in which Sharon told the American president that he is no longer committed to not liquidating Arafat."
From the style of the blog entry, it seemed that Lendman had read this press release, worked it into his blog, which had then been copied by every conspiracy-minded website in the world. And each day, the sites that copied the Lendman blog entry without comment and as factual, grew.

The believed-to-be original article referred to Uri Dan's book, as well as to Amnon Kabilok, a name which only featured on the Internet twice: the Uri Dan story and the other as writing about another Palestinian issue. Our correspondent Sol Aris in Jaffa then confirmed that "Kabilok" was actually "Amnon Kapeliouk", a well-known journalist. He also noted that the Ma'an news agency "is a known mouthpiece for spreading incomplete and scare-mongering reports. I grant that they are doing a brave and noble thing, by being a type of 'voice in the wilderness' that does have the potential to alert the world to atrocities which may otherwise have been overlooked." As a news agency, they obviously were not fluent in English and the story had been too hastily put together: certain sentences hardly made sense, there were factual errors, and this before any mention of the Arafat assassination.
Haaretz had published Kapeliouk's review in its Hebrew edition, but not in its English edition. Though it may not be well-known outside of Israell, Haaretz had been Sharon's most vociferous opponent, never saying a good word about him. So that they would mount yet another attack against him based on Dan's book should not come as a surprise. Were the Palestinians and the Israeli Haaretz spreading false rumours about Sharon's assassination of Arafat to suit their political agenda?

With no news from Lendman, Sol Aris tracked down the quotes to pages 401 to 403 of the French edition of Uri Dan's book. According to Kapeliouk's article, Dan said (p. 403) "Ariel Sharon will be described in history books as the man who eliminated Arafat without assassinating him." Kapeliouk says that "without assassinating" means they did not use "hot" weapons like guns, but something else like poison or disease. This was, of course, Kapeliouk's interpretation, not Dan's words; Dan, it seemed, had not said anything about Sharon assassinating Arafat.
The question about how Dan knew of Arafat's illness ahead of time was asked not by Kapeliouk but by his "French friend" - but all Dan says in the book (p. 401) was that Arafat's health condition began to worsen, which was a matter of wide public knowledge. So we had a highly misleading headline of "Israeli journalist reveals the secrets of the assassination of Arafat by Ariel Sharon", based on Kapeliouk's French source talking to Kapeliouk, and the latter drafting a story as part of "his" review of a book he apparently had not even seen.

We checked Uri Dan's book, the English edition, where it is on page 246-7. The chapter begins: "On April 14, 2004, Sharon was finally able to extricate himself from the promise that he had involuntarily made to the American president in March 2001-not to touch Yasser Arafat. Sharon was at the White House; George W. Bush advised him to leave the destiny of the Palestinian leader in the hands of divine providence, and Sharon replied, half joking and half serious, that providence sometimes needs a helping hand. Without giving Sharon the green light to eliminate Arafat, the president didn't try to impose a further commitment on him, either." It is clear that Bush did not "give the green light to eliminate Arafat", so this is already a factual error in the report. Dan does suggest that Sharon is toying with the idea of "helping" Arafat to another plane of existence. Dan continues: "In any case, George W. Bush had already "let go" of Arafat in political terms when he had mentioned, in his speech of June 24, 2002, the urgent need for a new Palestinian leader who would not be "compromised by terror." When he came out of the White House, Sharon told Israeli journalists that he thought that he would now have some elbow room with regard to the president of the Palestinian Authority. Sharon publicly declared his intention to act, perhaps issuing a last warning to Arafat." Dan thus makes it clear Sharon did not secretly plot Arafat's demise, but told journalists that the US had allowed Sharon to readdress the Palestinian stalemate.
Then, there is confirmation that Sharon thought about removing Arafat. "During the first three years of war against Palestinian terrorism, Sharon sometimes said that he would like to become a simple commando leader again and deal with the Mukata'a himself. After a particularly bloody Palestinian attack, I asked Sharon why he didn't expel Arafat once and for all, or at least bring him to justice for his terrorist activities.
"Do you want a troop of European lawyers landing in Jerusalem to defend that criminal?"
"So what can we do? We can't kill Arafat, and we can't expel him. Do we just let him enjoy total immunity?"
"Let me deal with this my way!" This was an atypically abrupt ending to our conversation, for which Sharon later apologized."
Dan then concludes: "No sooner had Sharon been given greater room for manoeuvre after his interview of April 14, 2004, with President Bush, than Arafat's health declined. Taken to the Percy Military Hospital in Clamart, near Paris, Arafat died there on November 11. He returned to Ramallah only to be buried. The Palestinians immediately accused Israel of having poisoned Arafat and announced that there would be an inquiry into his death. My article for Ma'ariv began, 'Ariel Sharon will go down in history as the man who liquidated Yasser Arafat without killing him.'" The end.

Dan does not speculate about Sharon poisoning Arafat - it was the Palestinians who accused Israel of poisoning Arafat (and with the new release in late December 2006 did so again). Dan never claimed that Sharon killed Arafat, and in fact makes it clear that he did not. In the book, Dan does show that Sharon often toyed with the idea of dealing with Arafat. But if it was going to be an assassination, Sharon would not have used poison, but a sniper, as he had done when taking out other "terrorist leaders". But in the end, Arafat was an old man, and old men die of illnesses.

The story is a good example of inaccurate reporting leading to claims and allegations which are then picked up and distributed without any verification whatsoever. Dan did not claim Sharon killed Arafat. Dan did not claim Bush sanctioned Arafat's killing - in fact, the opposite! In a war, it is dangerous to pick up any story and run with it without verification. Under the motto of spreading "the truth", hundreds of thousands of people have instead been exposed to a lie... and will now believe that Sharon killed Arafat. We should not give credit to Sharon for the things he did not accomplish.