First of two parts
The former legal counsel for the formerly living PLO terrorist Yassir Arafat makes such a head-turning appearance she could have participated in model-oriented Fashion Week recently in Manhattan.
Diana Buttu, a low-key “independent attorney-journalist”-academic who divides her life between Cambridge and Ramallah, West Bank, was dressed smartly, like a stylish lady of the world, yesterday when she came to the Culver-Palms United Methodist Church.
Toronto-born Ms. Buttu, a cultivated lady of exquisite breeding, addressed an enthusiastic audience of Arabs and Jews who were dominant among cultural flotsam and jetsam on the subject of colorless Mahmoud Abbas’s world-stopping speech on Friday at the United Nations.
Her fly-in was sponsored, among others, by two Jewish peace-now-not-later-with-the-Palestinians, a combination that typically signals a radical program.
Quite the opposite.
She was a pleasant revelation.
Clearly partisan, Ms. Buttu nevertheless showcased the principal talent of a onetime Palestinian spokesperson: Reasonableness, bordering at times on seductiveness.
This is a sense that emerges and can be artificially enhanced when you walk into a congenial setting armed with a dynamite topic — a large, square, high-ceilinged, brilliantly lighted meeting room stocked entirely with rabid activists who will agree with you if you say square is circular or night-time means sunshine.
Their hyper-partisanship did not detract from the agenda of the disciplined Ms. Buttu.
Her mission turned out far different from the tone that had been anticipated.
She spoke in an almost restrained, conversational manner. Her tone could have been mistaken for girl-talk over tea and crumpets at a society party.
(To be continued)
