Acronyms

I was struck by the cunning of Yasser Arafat and compatriots in devising the Arabic acronym for the Palestian Liberation Organization (from 'In A Ruined Country: How Yasir Arafat Destroyed Palestine,' by David Samuels, Atlantic Monthly, September 2005):

Arafat was also the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the head of Fatah, the PLO's central faction, which he founded in Kuwait in the late 1950s. The title that came first on his personal stationery was head of Fatah, which means "conquest"—a backward acronym for Harakat al-Tahrir al-Falistiniya, the Palestinian Liberation Movement. Spelled forward the acronym yields "Hataf," which means "death."