Credit Where Credit is Due

Readers of this blog know well that the ABC is monitored closely for its coverage of Israel and the conflicts in which it is embroiled.

So credit should go to David Hardaker - ABC's Middle East Correspondent. Hardaker has written an article called The art of Middle Eastern conspiracy theories.

It begins:

The reporter's job is to get the facts. Sounds simple enough, but try doing that in the Middle East.

It sounds like the start of an apologist's refrain for all the inaccuracies - inaccuracies that coincidentally appear in ABC's articles, but not in those of Jerusalem Post or Ha'aretz.

However, the article soon reveals a more honest streak:

Recently there has been a re-run of an old theory that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died not because he was a naturally ailing 75-year-old, but because he was poisoned.

The claims come from no less an authority that Mr Arafat's personal physician of 18 years, Dr Ashraf Kurdi.

The trouble is, the doctor has brought forth not an ounce of proof. All he has is a heap of suspicion about why he was not allowed to see Mr Arafat when the old leader was on his deathbed in Paris three years ago.

But Dr Kurdi is far from alone. Most Palestinians simply assume the poisoning story to be indisputably the truth, and that of course it is Israel's secret service, Mossad, that did the job.

The "Arafat was poisoned" story is but the latest in a long line of lurid conspiracy theories in the Middle East. In some ways, it is its own art form.

The editor must have been asleep at the wheel. How else to explain how this one got through?