| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Assassinating Yassin: The Masses Act Like Asses
"We say to the pig Sharon that we will pound your fortresses
and make you curse yourself 1,000 times for merely thinking of
assassinating our leaders and symbols."
"Sharon has opened the gates of hell and nothing will stop
us from cutting off his head."
"Words cannot describe the emotion of anger and hate
inside our hearts."
"War, war, war on the sons of Zion."
Call it a Whitmanesque sampler of overwrought
condemnations by various leaders of Hamas and other terrorist
groups in response to Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin, "spiritual" leader of Hamas and the godfather of
Palestinian suicide bombing. Call it just another day of insane,
hate-crazed rhetoric in the territories, though it was a bit over
the top even for them.
The usual cast of thousands poured into the streets of Gaza
where they performed by rote the standard ritual consisting of
lamentations, fist-shaking, waving pictures of their beloved
martyr, shooting guns in the air (oblivious to where the bullets
might land), cries for bloody revenge and general hysteria that,
to the part of the world which has adapted successfully to
modernity and comfortably resides in the 21st century, seems
so totally last millennium.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the usual cast of dozens also reacted
to the news in their peevishly predictable way, the European
Union warning that the assassination was "very bad news" for
the Middle East peace process. Interestingly, wave after wave
of suicide bombings against Israel never seems to constitute
"very bad news" for the hallowed peace process. Only when
Israel does something about its attackers is it, according to
Europe, considered to be "very bad news."
One might seriously ask the Europeans how there can
possibly even be a peace process when Hamas and other
terrorist organizations refuse to accept Israel's right to exist
and their objective continues to be either the expulsion or the
total annihilation of every last Jew residing in that tiny
country. One could ask that question--as well as many others,
such as, when will Europe ever get beyond its seemingly
ineradicable anti-Semitism?--but one wouldn't get a
satisfactory answer anytime soon.
What one would get instead is a lot of blather about a "cycle
of violence," unlawful assassinations and moral equivalence
between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli responses. In an
unguarded moment, one might even get a comment about how
world peace is threatened because of "that sh_tty little country
Israel," as was reportedly made by the French ambassador to
Britain, Daniel Bernard, during a private gathering in a London
home, the lowlights of which subsequently turned up in a
column published in the Daily Telegraph.
Monsieur Bernard also reportedly posed the (rhetorical?)
question: "Why should the world be in danger of World War
III because of those people?" One has to wonder if it ever
occurred to the ambassador that if the world is in danger of
World War III, it might not be because of "those people," but
instead because of the people who keep attacking "those
people," and in ways that fall outside the bounds of all
accepted morality and rules of war.
But getting back to the European Union and its usual
reality-challenged statements, its foreign policy chief, Javier
Solana, had this to say about the killing of Yassin: "The
manner in which you fight terrorism is through the law. This
was an illegal act under international law."
So what should they do, sue Hamas? It's all very easy for
Solana and his pals to impart their carefully measured and
proper sounding articulations about the letter of the law when
they aren't the ones risking life and limb every time they ride a
bus or eat in a restaurant. Besides displaying a profound lack
of understanding for the fact that Israel is in a struggle for its
very survival every day, Solana's statement simply isn't
accurate.
There is nothing unlawful about targeting the leaders of an
enemy that is committed to unceasing, uncompromising and
illegal hostilities against another country. Under such
circumstances targeted assassination is not only completely
justified, but can even be viewed as a moral good in that it seeks
to spare the general populace by instead decapitating the
leadership in the hopes of incapacitating, or at least slowing
down, its war-making ability.
That includes whacking a guy like Yassin even though he
was older, confined to a wheelchair and looked like some
innocuous New Age guru who might have taught meditation
classes or lectured on the delights of organic gardening. Forget
about his age, disability and serene appearance. If this guy
ever lectured on the delights of anything, it was the suicide
bombing of innocent Jews. The fact is, you could not have
blown Yassin and his wheelchair into tiny enough smithereens
to equal what he so richly deserved.
The civilized world should be no more distraught over
Yassin's assassination than it was when Saddam Hussein's
psycho sons came out of that half-day gun battle dead as
doornails and looking like Swiss cheese. Nobody fed their
remains to the jackals and hyenas and that seems like a more
than generous concession to the sensibilities of civilized people
everywhere, even EU officials.
The best thing Europeans could do, given that they haven't
the stomach for actually fighting terrorism, is to pipe down and
let countries like Israel and the United States take care of
business. As for the Palestinians, rather than trying to develop
some semblance of a civil and prosperous society, they seem
content to go on worshiping death and martyrdom above all
else. Their boy Yassin got that, in spades. So what's the
problem?
"We say to the pig Sharon that we will pound your fortresses
and make you curse yourself 1,000 times for merely thinking of
assassinating our leaders and symbols."
"Sharon has opened the gates of hell and nothing will stop
us from cutting off his head."
"Words cannot describe the emotion of anger and hate
inside our hearts."
"War, war, war on the sons of Zion."
Call it a Whitmanesque sampler of overwrought
condemnations by various leaders of Hamas and other terrorist
groups in response to Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin, "spiritual" leader of Hamas and the godfather of
Palestinian suicide bombing. Call it just another day of insane,
hate-crazed rhetoric in the territories, though it was a bit over
the top even for them.
The usual cast of thousands poured into the streets of Gaza
where they performed by rote the standard ritual consisting of
lamentations, fist-shaking, waving pictures of their beloved
martyr, shooting guns in the air (oblivious to where the bullets
might land), cries for bloody revenge and general hysteria that,
to the part of the world which has adapted successfully to
modernity and comfortably resides in the 21st century, seems
so totally last millennium.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the usual cast of dozens also reacted
to the news in their peevishly predictable way, the European
Union warning that the assassination was "very bad news" for
the Middle East peace process. Interestingly, wave after wave
of suicide bombings against Israel never seems to constitute
"very bad news" for the hallowed peace process. Only when
Israel does something about its attackers is it, according to
Europe, considered to be "very bad news."
One might seriously ask the Europeans how there can
possibly even be a peace process when Hamas and other
terrorist organizations refuse to accept Israel's right to exist
and their objective continues to be either the expulsion or the
total annihilation of every last Jew residing in that tiny
country. One could ask that question--as well as many others,
such as, when will Europe ever get beyond its seemingly
ineradicable anti-Semitism?--but one wouldn't get a
satisfactory answer anytime soon.
What one would get instead is a lot of blather about a "cycle
of violence," unlawful assassinations and moral equivalence
between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli responses. In an
unguarded moment, one might even get a comment about how
world peace is threatened because of "that sh_tty little country
Israel," as was reportedly made by the French ambassador to
Britain, Daniel Bernard, during a private gathering in a London
home, the lowlights of which subsequently turned up in a
column published in the Daily Telegraph.
Monsieur Bernard also reportedly posed the (rhetorical?)
question: "Why should the world be in danger of World War
III because of those people?" One has to wonder if it ever
occurred to the ambassador that if the world is in danger of
World War III, it might not be because of "those people," but
instead because of the people who keep attacking "those
people," and in ways that fall outside the bounds of all
accepted morality and rules of war.
But getting back to the European Union and its usual
reality-challenged statements, its foreign policy chief, Javier
Solana, had this to say about the killing of Yassin: "The
manner in which you fight terrorism is through the law. This
was an illegal act under international law."
So what should they do, sue Hamas? It's all very easy for
Solana and his pals to impart their carefully measured and
proper sounding articulations about the letter of the law when
they aren't the ones risking life and limb every time they ride a
bus or eat in a restaurant. Besides displaying a profound lack
of understanding for the fact that Israel is in a struggle for its
very survival every day, Solana's statement simply isn't
accurate.
There is nothing unlawful about targeting the leaders of an
enemy that is committed to unceasing, uncompromising and
illegal hostilities against another country. Under such
circumstances targeted assassination is not only completely
justified, but can even be viewed as a moral good in that it seeks
to spare the general populace by instead decapitating the
leadership in the hopes of incapacitating, or at least slowing
down, its war-making ability.
That includes whacking a guy like Yassin even though he
was older, confined to a wheelchair and looked like some
innocuous New Age guru who might have taught meditation
classes or lectured on the delights of organic gardening. Forget
about his age, disability and serene appearance. If this guy
ever lectured on the delights of anything, it was the suicide
bombing of innocent Jews. The fact is, you could not have
blown Yassin and his wheelchair into tiny enough smithereens
to equal what he so richly deserved.
The civilized world should be no more distraught over
Yassin's assassination than it was when Saddam Hussein's
psycho sons came out of that half-day gun battle dead as
doornails and looking like Swiss cheese. Nobody fed their
remains to the jackals and hyenas and that seems like a more
than generous concession to the sensibilities of civilized people
everywhere, even EU officials.
The best thing Europeans could do, given that they haven't
the stomach for actually fighting terrorism, is to pipe down and
let countries like Israel and the United States take care of
business. As for the Palestinians, rather than trying to develop
some semblance of a civil and prosperous society, they seem
content to go on worshiping death and martyrdom above all
else. Their boy Yassin got that, in spades. So what's the
problem?