Posted on 03/23/2004 6:48:48 AM PST by dead
Here, we have all be waiting for something to happen - the inevitable next bombing and more mass death as postwar Iraq deals with the first anniversary of the US-led invasion.
But when the attack came, it was from the Israelis in Gaza. Sheik Ahmed Yassin was dead and Arabs had a new martyr.
As they have done since September 11, Israeli officials couched their defence of the strike in the rhetoric of George Bush's "war on terror", comparing Yassin to Osama Bin Laden.
But, just as the lessons of the "war on terror" are not learnt in Washington, neither have they been understood in Israel. The US is so distracted by its war in Iraq that the terrorists have run amok, striking more often around the world in the past year than in the preceding 12 months.
In Israel and the occupied territories the number of Palestinian strikes has fluctuated over the years, but four years of Israel's targeted assassinations and an increasingly free hand allowed by Washington have failed to halt the bloodshed.
Yassin's death will be satisfying for some Israelis, but if the plan is to end combat and find peace, it is a setback, because taking out the Palestinian leadership does not end the war.
Like Israel's deliberate campaign to weaken Yasser Arafat, Yassin's execution will do to the Palestinians what the "war on terror" has done to al-Qaeda - fracture the leadership, leaving angered and autonomous cells to exact revenge, competing with each other for greater body counts as their leaders compete to fill the leadership vacuum.
Some Israeli counter-terrorism experts, such as Reuven Paz, were rude enough to puncture the mood of celebration with warnings that Hamas's military leadership was in Damascus and Beirut and that its operational side remained intact. "I think that its ability to recover, with the help of the massive support it will now receive from the Palestinian street, will be very quick."
It is easy and dangerous to dismiss the outpouring of Arab rhetoric in the wake of Yassin's death as more of the same. Sift through it all though, and you find something not heard before.
Hamas has consistently confined itself to the struggle with Israel, refusing to take on other Muslim causes or to attack US targets. But this time it warned it held Washington responsible and it issued an unprecedented appeal to "all the Muslims of the world" for reprisal attacks.
Al-Qaeda seems to have heard the call. An internet statement attributed to one of its off-shoots, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which claims responsibility for the Madrid bombing, urged vengeance. "We call on all the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades to avenge the sheik of the Palestinian resistance by striking the tyrant of the century, America, and its allies. We say to fighters in Palestine your real enemy is America."
The Yassin attack earned worldwide condemnation, except from the US, where Condoleezza Rice uttered an uncaring "there's always the possibility of a better day in the Middle East".
It was only later in the day that the State Department piped up to declare itself deeply troubled.
It should be.
The US is still struggling for credibility in Iraq and right across the Middle East as it goes about imposing its model democracy for all Arabs; recently it was forced to abandon a plan to foist economic, political and cultural change without consultation on the Middle East through a meeting of G8 countries in June.
The reforms are desperately needed. But unilateralism and the gun can take you only so far.
As the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has gone about his own plans to wall off the Palestinians, the US has done nothing to put its road map peace plan in place.
Remember the tour of the Middle East by the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, before the war in Iraq, when he told Arab leaders they had to back Saddam Hussein's removal so the US could tackle the Israel-Palestine crisis?
Sharon and Arafat will never bring peace to the Middle East. Inaction in the face of global conflict is often justified with the argument that a peace can be kept - not imposed.
But they are so punch drunk in the Middle East, so mired in historical and personal enmity, that the issue will never be tackled sincerely unless the Green Line between Israel and Palestine, the old 1967 border, becomes a blue line, with international forces keeping the sides apart. Then they might talk. In the meantime expect the worst.
Among mourners at Yassin's funeral was Adel, who said he was a university professor.
He asked: "Have you seen a dead man walk? Israel will find out that there is a man who can kill more Israelis when he is dead than when he was alive. That man is Sheik Yassin."
The US is so distracted by its war in Iraq that the terrorists have run amok, striking more often around the world in the past year than in the preceding 12 months.
This line of reasoning really pisses me off.
The very same people who scream about the horrors of the “cowboy, unilateralist, preemptive” US have the nerve to sit there and bitch because we haven’t found a way to barge into every country on earth and crush the terrorists on their soil.
The statement amazes me, too. The propaganda within the line becomes more apparent upon rewriting it to say ...
The terrorists of the world see the war in Iraq as a threat to their existence -- causing them to run amok and strike harder.
There was another man in a wheelchair who was'nt wicked That Hamas found maliciously entertaining - LEON KLINGHOFFER!
It'll be far enough.
L
Appalling, but not surprising. Consider the mantra of those who met Hitler in 1930s: "Herr Hitler is a very civilized and intelligent man."
Suppose Rice, if she were alive then, were utter similarly lukeworm words about the great, "civilized and intelligent Herr Hitler," she would be similarly condemned for being uncaring.
There is really nothing new in this conflict, except for one important distinction: we are alone. And not just in a particular fight --- in Iraq or elsewhere --- but we are alone as a Western nation with Judeo-Christian values. Europe has taken the place of the Soviet Union: they are socialist and "post-Christian." This means they will forever --- as long as we ourselved remain Western in our values, that is --- be on the other side and we will be alone not just today but tomorrow as well.
Oen half of our population is "European" too. If not this election, how long do you think it will take for the dubmed down nation that does not learn anything Western in schools any more to get tired of conservatives? 2008? 2012?
This is a long war and killing Yassin is just one small step for justice. Terrorists need to know that they are in the gun sights and the safety is off.
Al Capone from The Untouchables.
I must have missed this. Since when were we forced to do anything?
"Cheers" for Condy!
It was only later in the day that the State Department piped up to declare itself deeply troubled.
"Boos" for the State Department, which will now have to go through the unseemly effort of updating their rolodexes!
But not HERE, where it counts pal! (I am a typical American, so uncaring for the rest of the world).
Anyone else see something funny in this sentence. I suppose the author really wanted to make the point that terrorism has increased, so instead of saying that terrorist acts worldwide are up compared to the preceding year, he says that they have struck more often in the last {one} yer than the preceding TWELVE months.
Boy, that 12 sure is bigger than one, maybe by putting it this way, I can make the looooong 12 months look like so much more time than 1 little year.
Oh, boo hoo hoo... snif... sobbbbbbbbbbb !
; ^ ) hahhhahahahaa
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