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Jonathan Friendly is the national editor of , which owns the weekly Jewish newspapers in Detroit and Atlanta. He is a former journalism professor at the University of Michigan and a former reporter and editor at The New York Times.
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By Jonathan Friendly
January 21, 2004
Top Israeli officials have signaled anew that they are again targeting the leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin,
for assassination. They shouldn't.
It is not that Yassin does not deserve to die. He has without an ounce of shame sent suicide bombers to attack Israeli civilians and soldiers, and he has said that Hamas will never rest until the Jewish state is eradicated. Far from being a "spiritual" leader -- as he is often styled in the captions of pictures showing him in the wheelchair to which he has been confined for half a century -- he is a vicious, malevolent killer.
Israel has tried several times to kill him, generally in response to yet another terrorist atrocity that Hamas arranged. Last September, it bombed a Gaza City apartment building where he was meeting with other Hamas leaders. He escaped with a light wound because Israel used too small a bomb, in an effort to avoid exactly the sort of civilian casualties that he delights in inflicting on Israeli innocents.
Targeting Yassin is not an issue of morality. Killing him could be justified either as an act of revenge for the destruction he has already wreaked or as an efficient way to decapitate the Hamas leadership and make it less able to carry out further attacks. Most of the civilized world would be as pleased to have him gone as they were to have Saddam Hussein deposed or his brutal sons killed.
Indeed, the Palestinian people as a whole would be a lot better off without the sheik and his swarm. What good, after all, did it do them to have Reem al-Reyashi, a 22-year-old mother of two children, blow up herself and four Israelis at the Erez crossing in Gaza last week? It cost thousands of Palestinians the opportunity to work in Israel while the crossing was closed. Because she falsely cited medical problems to get around the inspectors, the bombing will undermine real Palestinian emergency medical claims for expedited treatment.
Al-Reyashi can hardly become a model of Islamic virtue since she reportedly was forced into the suicide as a way to atone for having sullied family honor by conducting an adulterous affair. And, of course, the brutal act didnšt affect Israeli determination not to be terrified.
Still, killing Yassin would probably not advance Israel's security. It would give him the martyrdom that he has repeatedly said he seeks and it would surely incite other bombings by Hamas members intent on vengeance. Better by far to try to capture the sheik alive and toss him back in the jail where he should have been kept to begin with. It would difficult to seize him, no doubt, but think of the impact it could have on his followers to show him Saddam-style as a prisoner.
Israel should not lose sight of its goal, which is to reduce the level of violence and to give the Palestinians time to come to their senses. Targeting Yassin for death would have the opposite effect.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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