Posted on 03/23/2004 12:16:35 PM PST by mhking
London - It doesn't take an awful lot of courage to murder a paraplegic in a wheelchair. But it takes only a few moments to absorb the implications of the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin yesterday.
Yes, he enthusiastically endorsed suicide bombings - including the murder of Israeli children. Yes, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, in a wheelchair or not. But something went wrong with the narrative of the news story yesterday, and something infinitely more dangerous - another sinister precedent - was set for our brave new world.
Take the old man himself. From the start, the Israeli line was simple. Yassin was the "head of the snake" - to use the words of the Israeli ambassador to London - the head of Hamas, "one of the world's most dangerous terrorist organisations".
But then came obfuscation from the world's media. Yassin, BBC World Service Television told us at lunchtime, was originally freed by the Israelis in a "prisoner exchange". Then, later in the day, the BBC told us that he had been freed "following a deal brokered by King Hussein".
Which was all very strange. He was a prisoner of the Israelis. This "head of the snake" was in an Israeli prison. And then - bingo - this supposed monster was let go because of a "deal". So let's remember what the "deal" was.
Yassin was set free by no less than Benjamin Netanyahu when he was prime minister of Israel. King Hussein wasn't a "broker" between two sides.
Two Israeli Mossad agents had tried to murder a Hamas official in Amman, the capital of an Arab nation which had a peace agreement with Israel.
They had injected the Hamas man with poison, and the late King Hussein called the US president in fury and threatened to put the captured Mossad men on trial if he wasn't given the antidote to the poison and if Yassin wasn't released.
Netanyahu immediately gave in. Yassin was freed and the Mossad lads went safely home to Israel.
So the "head of the snake" was let loose by Israel itself, courtesy of the then Israeli prime minister - a chapter in the narrative of history which was conveniently forgotten yesterday. Which is all very odd.
If the elderly cleric really was worthy of state murder, why did Netanyahu let him go in the first place? It was not a question that anyone wanted to ask yesterday.
But there was something infinitely more dangerous in all this. Yet another Arab had been assassinated. The Americans want to kill Bin Laden. They want to kill Mullah Omar. They killed Saddam's sons. Just as they killed three al-Qaeda men in Yemen.
The Israelis repeatedly threaten to murder Yasser Arafat. It's getting to be a habit.
No one has begun to work out the implications of all this. For years, there has been an unwritten rule in the cruel war of government-versus-guerrilla. You can kill the men on the street, the bomb-makers and gunmen, but the leadership was allowed to survive.
Now all has changed utterly. Anyone who advocates violence - even if they are palpably incapable of committing it - are now on a death list. So who can be surprised if the rules are broken by the other side?
The top guys are now in the firing line. Let us not say we didn't know.
That was in 1993 for crying out loud. This guy is a nut!
miserable failure miserable failure miserable failure miserable failure war criminal
Fiskie was beaten by an Afghan mob in December 2001.
Assaulted by the very downtrodden masses he claims to defend!
O the irony!
Now the top guys are vulnerable what where the plots to kill George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II, practical jokes?
And what about the little incident of the plane hitting the Pentagon.
Fisk should be drug out into the street and shot. No jury, outside of Ithaca, would convict.
Whatever they were, Sirhan Sirhan seemed to have forgotten them in 1968.
Oh, you think they're saying that the other side has so far graciously refrained from assassinations, but no longer? Yeah, trying to off Bush I puts a lie to that, too. Who on earth could believe they wouldn't assassinate the hell out of our side if they had the means?
But then, Fisk wanders off into a tangent of Israel letting this monster get out of an Israeli jail in a critical prisoner swap. And? So? Your point is? Germany let Lenin out of jail and secretly transported him to Russia, thinking (wrongly) that Lenin would screw up Russia so it would no longer be a military concern to Germany.
But since Fisk as zero perspective on current events, it is not surprising that he has no perspective on relevant events in history. Fisk ends with a semi-screed on the possible assassination of national leaders, as if this is new. I suppose he hasn't read about any of the various assassination efforts during WW II -- only one was successful, the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto's plane.
In every war, each side would willingly assassinate the leaders of the other side, if they could. Ah, but Fisk's level of awareness has not yet reached the point of understanding that we are at war, now, and have been since 9/11. There is nothing new about this. But it comes as a revelation to Fisk, because of his towering ignorance of history.
Did I miss anything?
Congressman Billybob
Simple. The Isrealis always do anything possible to protect and repatriate captured agents and soldiers, even to the exent of releasing hundreds of terrorists. It is a mistake IMNHO, but it no doubt makes it easier to recurit Mossad agents.
I would love to see even a shred of evidence that such an "unwritten rule" ever existed anywhere other than Fisk's imagination.
Apparent Mr. Fisk claims to believe that.
Apparently Mr. Fisk claims to believe that.
Either this guy is incredibly naive or he is an idiot. The 'other side' threw away the rules long ago. The only reason they still exist to create mayhem is because we so stupidly played by rules. Fire in the hole...kill them all. That is the only rule we should abide by.
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