Why the Assassination of Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin Must Be Condemned
by Ozlem Altok
September 11 did
not
mark the
beginning of a new world. Not everything is different
now. For a great majority of the planet's people, things
are as before. (That is, if you don’t count the waiting
lines at the airports--which are not a big concern for
most of the world’s people, who do not fly anyway.)
Terrorism
is
not
a new phenomenon. Terrorism, according to the French
government, was what the Algerians did startingfrom
1860s up until 1960s. The term terrorism was used by the
British to describe resistance movements in Burma and
Malaysia.
Since its inception in 1948, the state of Israel has
been fighting terrorists! Could there be a link between
colonization and terrorism? Are states automatically
immune from deserving the label ‘terrorist’ by virtue of
their institutionalized and diplomatic status?
There is
much talk of terrorism, and there is the "war on
terror," whose end even the most enlightened, including
G.W. himself, cannot foresee. What is terrorism anyway?
Broadly speaking, it is "the use of indiscriminate
violence (meaning that which possibly harms innocent
civilians) as a means to achieve political ends." It is
important to point to "innocence" as a concept, yet
defining it may be more difficult. Are adult Israeli
settlers in Gaza and West Bank (all illegal under
international law) innocent just by virtue of being
civilians?
Do they not bear any of the guilt, given the state
subsidies they receive to settle lands whose previous
inhabitants are more impoverished and humiliated with
every passing day?
Some
progressives are uncomfortable speaking out against
Israel’s assassination of Hamas’ spiritual leader,
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The United Nations--which, thanks
to deliberate and consistent hindrance from the United
States, has failed to protect the Palestinian
people--has already condemned the attack. On the morning
of March 24th, Condoleezza Rice reminded the nation:
"Let's remember that Hamas is a terrorist organization
and that Sheikh Yassin has himself, personally, we
believe, been involved in terrorist planning."
The
operative clause here is "Let’s remember that." Whenever
a government official, especially a member of a criminal
government such as the one ruling the United States at
the moment, tries to remind people of something, we as
progressive people must try to remember other things
that
they want
us to push aside. Those other things, consigned to
oblivion by active propaganda on the one hand, and our
compliance on the other, serve to tie our consciences in
knots, diminish our ability to think critically, and
reduce us to comfortable little beings. Some may prefer
this, and say "That s.o.b deserved it; he is responsible
for the killing of so many innocent people." The problem
with this outpouring of compassion for Israelis who lost
their lives, this humanistic catharsis, is that it omits
an analysis of the root causes of the problem and thus
is misdirected. (Not to mention the hypocrisy of the
same people's silence in the face of
Palestinian
deaths.)
The logic
in such complacency is based on the oft-heard claim that
Israel is acting in self-defense, and avenging its own
dead. This argument is easily refuted, though, simply by
reference to a Zionist leader, head of the Jewish
Agency’s Colonization Department, who stated as early as
1940 that:
There is no room for both peoples in this country . . .
. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from
here to neighboring countries. To transfer all of them,
not one village,
not one tribe
should be left. [1]
The self-righteous spokespeople for the criminal
activities of Israel have claimed again and again that
whatever Israel does, it does in self-defense. This
seems to fly well only when fed by our incapacity to
remember or do a little factchecking on our own. Here is
a more recent quote, this time from the infamous "Koenig
Memorandum" (named after then Minister of the Interior,
Israel Koenig) that was meant to remain secret, but was
leaked to the press in 1976: "We must use terror,
assassination, land confiscation, and the cutting of all
social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab
population."[2]
If these seem still too ancient to have any bearing on
Israeli policy, take a look at how Ariel Sharon when he
was Foreign Minister, addressed a meeting of militants
from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, as reported by
Agence France-Presse on November 15, 1998: It is the
duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion,
clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that
are forgotten with time. The first of these is that
there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State
without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation
of their lands. The point here is that the recent
assassination is not a retaliatory action.
It is part of a bigger, deliberate and hardly secret
plan. So how does the State of Israel go around
uprooting people, killing them, building walls where
their trees blossomed one year ago, electing as prime
minister a war criminal whose pleasure is compounded
every time the Palestinian resistance strikes back – for
that will give him a further pretext to quench his
thirst for blood? [3]
The answer is simple: the United States, the world’s
sole superpower, permits, feeds, and sustains it. To
help picture the extent of this activity,
let us compare federal aid to each New Jersey resident
($976 a year) with the direct US aid received by each
Israeli citizen ($657). [4]
So, you
ask, why should the assassination of an Islamic
fundamentalist like Ahmed Yassin be condemned?
First,
assassination of anyone must be condemned. Seven people
were killed along with Yassin in the attack. Condemning
such attacks is not tantamount to mourning for Yassin’s
death personally. Condemning such attacks does not make
you a staunch supporter of Hamas, or anti-Semitic. This
form of an extrajudicial death penalty is not
acceptable. It is, even as a result of judicial
proceedings, inhuman. Second, Israel has made it clear
that it is serious in crushing rightful resistance to
its brutal colonial occupation, and aims to stir up more
resistance to justify more brutal attacks. Third, the
Israeli Defense Forces have an irrefutable tradition of
collectively punishing Palestinians, and they will use
the aftermath of the assassination as reason to harass
and kill randomly. Fourth, even though Hamas does not
enjoy a majority of Palestinians’ support, the newly
found support it has is thanks to Israeli policy of
leaving Palestinians nowhere
else to turn.
