THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 66, April 1, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
AMBIGUOUS RESPONSE: DISTURBING REACTION TO YASSIN'S DEATH
By Daniel Mandel
FULL STORY:
Since September, 2000, when the current Israeli-Palestinian hostilities erupted, Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, has engineered
52 suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, claiming the lives of hundreds and wounding thousands. Last Sunday, an Israeli army
helicopter fired the missiles that ended the life of the Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, together with three bodyguards and five
bystanders.
On any reasonable accounting, Yassin's death is a success for the Israelis in combating those deploying indiscriminate murder of
civilians -- indiscriminate mass murder of civilians that is all of a piece with the Madrid bombings that claimed the lives of 200 more
than a week earlier.
How has the United States and the world responded to this success? With an ambiguity and incoherence that is standard in this
conflict.
The White House found it "deeply troubling." The State Department promptly equalized Israel and Hamas, issuing a statement
calling for "maximum restraint" from "all sides." Spokesman Richard Boucher, as so often, affirmed Israel's right to self-defense
(something that never needs affirmation in any comparable context) but immediately exempted from inclusion in this category the
latest Israeli action on which he was being queried.
The reaction in Europe was more unbuttoned. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman described it as a "setback,"
before adding that it "goes without saying that the Prime Minister also condemns today's killing." EU foreign ministers issued a
statement condemning Yassin's killing as "extra-judicial." And U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan "condemned" what he termed an
"assassination."
This was only marginally removed from the Palestinian reaction: Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia described the killing as a "crime."
Abu Qusai, commander of Yasser Arafat's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the Gaza Strip, warned rather redundantly that "every Israeli
will be a target for the militants."
Missile strikes, like most military acts, are inherently risky, often claiming the innocent as well as the guilty. As a general rule, the less
surgical the strike, the wider the concern expressed over methods. Here, however, the rules are actually different. Whatever measures
Israel adopted – roadblocks, curfews, withholding revenues, returning fire, missile strikes, targeting individual terrorists, incursions
on the ground – all produced condemnation in the past.
In short, various governments do not dispute Israel's right to self-defense in principle – merely in practice.
That this is not how the rules work elsewhere is beyond doubt. Thus, when an American warplane bombed a Baghdad restaurant in
April, 2003, missing all intended targets, including Saddam Hussein, but claiming 14 innocent lives, there was no suggestion from the
European Union that the bombing was "extra-judicial" or, that had it succeeded, it would have amounted to an "assassination." Such
language has little place in armed conflict.
The surreal quality of official statements on Israeli actions derives from many things – hypocrisy, expediency, and spurious
even-handedness – but, above all, from the fiction that Israel is engaged in something other than a war. A bogus state of peace and
endlessly incipient negotiations supply the rationale that regards a counter-terrorist success as "deeply troubling" and
"extra-judicial."
The reasons for the near-universal embrace of this fiction could fill books, but boil down to this: Most of Israel's neighbors either
seek Israel's demise or would be pleased to see it occur. Most people outside the region would prefer not to know this. They choose
to proceed on the basis that the terrorists and the hateful attitudes that animate them are the workings of an unrepresentative fringe.
No amount of polling of Palestinians, over however long a period, will convince them otherwise.
It is more agreeable to believe that the conflict is presently soluble and that the onus is thus on Israel, as the stronger party, to make
concessions, not fight. In Europe especially, where attitudes towards Jewry are, to say the least, complex, a reiteration of Israeli
wrongdoing also acts as valve for pent-up guilt over the Holocaust. Diplomatically, too, it is a tempting maneuver to purchase
goodwill by agreeing with Arab governments harboring restive populations and sending increasing numbers of immigrants to the
continent. Prejudice and fear go hand in glove.
A similar process of denial is at work in the opposition to the wider war on terror from the anti-American Left, which believes that
Islamist terrorism originates in reasonable claims amenable to negotiations, not non-negotiable ambitions obtainable purely by
force.
Both processes of denial speak of an inchoate decadence, an inability to see things as they are for fear of upsetting cherished
illusions. It is far from sensible, and it makes for poor analysis. But it has its purposes.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
The Middle East & the Arabs
Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
More on Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
War & Peace in the Real World
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Daniel Mandel is a Middle East analyst based in Philadelphia and a fellow in history at Melbourne University.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
March 29, 2004
The article appeared earlier in the Washington Times (March 25, 2004) and on the Internet websites maintained by the
Middle East Forum
and the