The Shiek
Shiek Ahmet Yassin is dead. I will not miss this particular fundamentalist religious zealot, any more than I'd miss the many other fundamentalist religious zealots who inhabit Judea. Nor do I begrudge Israel the right to target a man who was dedicated in his life to the twin goals of the destruction of Israel and destruction of the Jews.However, I wonder what anyone thinks they are accomplishing here. Kill Shiek Ahmed Yassin, let him live - either way, there are a lot of people out there like Muhammad Abu Hussa, a seventeen year old Palestinian quoted in THE NEW YORK TIMES:
"The fingernail of Sheik Yassin is worth all the Jewish people ... the Jews should be annihilated." He made chopping gestures at his throat, hands and legs. "They should be turned into parts."So - what are we accomplishing by killing this particular religious fundamentalist zealot? We all know the end of Yassin's quest to end the Jews and Israel. Yassin will fail to destroy the Jewish people, as worse than him have failed. His followers may cause people to suffer, for a while; it will be nothing the Israelis have not dealt with before, far less than the Jews have endured. Israel as the Jewish homeland will end within a hundred years, for better or worse; it will end because of population pressure, not because of Hamas or Shiek Yassin's ghost.
So - what are we accomplishing by killing him? The Palestinians are angry, but they are always angry. The Egyptians are angry and finally forgetting Sadat. The Europeans are angry because Israel was their parents idea, and therefor bad. The Americans are preoccupied, but still find time to sign the checks.
So - what are we accomplishing by killing Shiek Ahmed Yassin? Well, to be fair to the people of the war-torn former Roman province, it's not easy to accomplish anything in a city so irrational it has a psychiatric disorder named after it.
