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There
is no end to the carnage in the Middle East. Every
waking day we can put the kettle on for the news that
will, as assuredly as the rising and setting of the
sun, inform of us some life lost or another barbarity
inflicted. For a large section of the populace constant
fear and trepidation govern the mind as it tackles
the daily grind of finding the next meal. To the outside
eye the region has the appearance of Dante’s
inferno, where the most fiendish act is not ruled
offside. What passes for daily life there has no psychological
resemblance to our own. As opposed to the invasion
of Iraq as we may well be, the public spectacle of
American bodies torn apart in the street in a frenzied
act of ferocity repels our sensibilities. Perhaps,
we will be lectured about succumbing to western bourgeois
sentimentality for harbouring such emotions. Yet better
to stand in the dock on that than to excuse the celebratory
wanton destruction of other human beings.
But
anti-American sentiment in the region has no monopoly
on a mindset that is intent on ripping asunder the
human form, as was all too evident in the Israeli
state assassination of Sheikh Yassin. That action
is being depicted by some as a calculated strategic
strike against those who wish to obliterate the existence
of Israel by blasting its citizens to smithereens.
The historical record shows that in time of war executive
assassination of one’s enemies has always figured
in the deliberations of those who believe that the
perceived evil they seek to remove is greater than
the evil inherent in the act of removal or in the
consequences that result from such action. The assassination
of Reinhardt Heydrich in Prague in 1942 is a case
in point. But Yassin was no Heydrich. And the occupation
of Palestinian land by Israeli state forces bears
more resemblance to the Nazi lebensraum concept than
those activities of Hamas or the other Palestinian
groups involved in political violence.
This
has impacted little on the apologists for Israeli
violence. Front Page Magazine in a bid to shock its
readership into revulsion towards Palestinian political
leaders carried graphic pictures of one Palestinian
activist decapitated and dismembered by his own device,
under the headline ‘The Children of Yasser Arafat
and Sheik Yassin.’ It studiously avoided carrying
pictures of the missile-ravished body of the paraplegic
cleric. Yet the destructive impact of both Hamas ground
attacks and Israelis strikes from the air on human
flesh and bone is equally as devastating.
Israel’s
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed that
Hamas might respond fiercely in the short term, but
that ‘in the long term, they will be restrained
because the leaders will know that they will be assassinated.’
This overlooks Israel’s own experience in the
region. When it assassinated leading clerics in the
Lebanese Hizbullah movement, the response it provoked
was not one of restraint. Instead Hizbullah was propelled
into even greater efforts to force the Israelis to
withdraw from Southern Lebanon, an objective it achieved
in May 2000 when, after 18 years of occupation, the
invading power finally succumbed.
However,
not all in the Israeli cabinet are as gung ho as Bibi
Netanyahu. One minister who opposed the killing of
Yassin, Avraham Poraz, speculated in its wake just
how many Israelis would ‘pay with their lives.’
If the ongoing battle between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority for hearts and minds of the Palestinian
populace has been marked by significant advances for
the Islamists, how are the lives of Israelis safer
now that Sheik Yassin’s death has removed him
from the scene? An Authority long viewed as incorrigibly
crooked pitted against those who epitomise some form
of incorruptible ideological purity and who blossom
on the blood of martyrs, will do little to stem the
flow of recruits seeking martyrdom.
Regardless
of what justification is put forward for the killing,
the fact remains that whatever involvement Yassin
had in directing Hamas’s military campaign, his
role as a moderating influence helped secure a number
of Hamas ceasefires over the past decade. Ahmed Qurei,
the Palestinian prime minister stated that ‘Yassin
is known for his moderation, and he was controlling
Hamas.’ Furthermore, his building of a life-enhancing
infrastructure for impoverished Palestinians around
clinics, schools, welfare institutions, staffed by
dentists, teachers, engineers and doctors, can only
have helped persuade many Palestinians that life had
a certain quality which it would be ill-advised to
garrotte with a bomb belt.
The
pragmatism that Sheik Yassin brought to Hamas, if
replaced by even more ideological and religious fervour,
may mould substantial opinion in Israel to the point
of concluding that its government merely lanced a
boil with a septic needle. And for those who live
comfortably in the Western world under a US ‘protective
shield’, an ill wind now beckons. The rage and
horror experienced by many Muslims internationally
over the slaughter of what they see as an elderly
paraplegic cleric combined with a US attack on an Iraqi Mosque
which caused 25 deaths has, in the words of one observer
‘made the world a more, rather than less, dangerous
place.’
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