OK, let’s think about what happened to poor old Ahmed Yassin a.k.a. Saruman The White. The fact that the Israeli army scored a direct missile hit on a half-blind, wheelchair-bound 67 year old is:
(a) extremely scary, considering what the repercussions are going to be
(b) cowardly
and
(c) pretty funny in a visceral kind of way
22-Mar-04 at 2:52 pm | Permalink
deja vu, weird : )
> Saruman the White
Ha, in the BBC pic definitely. I wonder if he had hordes of wheelchair-bound Uruk-Hai.
22-Mar-04 at 6:24 pm | Permalink
Seperated at birth..
22-Mar-04 at 9:44 pm | Permalink
Quite funny. Very stupid. extremely scary.
22-Mar-04 at 10:55 pm | Permalink
Don’t give a shit either way. The guy was instrumental in the direction of terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. Nice how he sent others to their deaths in the name of God but wasn’t brave enough to do so himself. Also ironic how Israel does away with one terrorist and is villified yet we can invade whole countries and get away with it.
23-Mar-04 at 9:50 am | Permalink
Do give a shit either way. Over and above America and Britain having blood on their hands over the war in Iraq; yet again Mr. Sharon has used religion as a valid reason for murder. This has made an unacceptable situation all the more inflammatory, and has already provoked a wave of retaliatory measures resulting in more death. It defies explanation.
23-Mar-04 at 12:15 pm | Permalink
> wasn’t brave enough to do so himself
I understand they couldn’t get the wheelchair on the bus.
> Israel vilified yet we get away with it
It’s an extremely pertinent point.
Is it fair to assassinate one terrorist but not the other?
I think to understand the international reaction you must distinguish between terrorists and their agendas. This is an area where the US and Israel deliberately muddy the waters.
Yassin is a figure in a valid political disagreement. In this he is associated with a national struggle, and hence can be regarded as something of a freedom fighter (despite the fact that methods employed on both sides of the struggle are appalling).
Compare with Bin Laden, whose purely destructive, apolitical agenda is difficult to sympathise with.
And of course blowing away n innocent bystanders every time with your helicopter-delivered sledgehammer isn’t terribly clever, as I think was noted here before.
27-Mar-04 at 5:59 pm | Permalink
Yassin may have been a figure with a valid political disagreement, but he wanted a Palestine with a Taliban style regime (which would hardly be a liberation), and I don’t think that sending young and impressionable Palestinians to kill innocent Israeli citizens is particuarly honourable. However I think I must agree with Johann Hari’s sentiments in the Independent last Wednesday when he said; “All that happens when Israel kills Palestinian figureheads is that humilation stabs deeper into their gut. Yassin will now become a ghost at every Palestinian feast, urging martyrdom. He is far more dangerous – both to Israelis and to the cause of a secular Palestinian nationalism – dead than alive.”