Back from a long and exhausting (but rewarding) business trip, I woke up to the news that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and "spiritual" leader of Hamas, has been eliminated. Israel Radio mentioned the lurid detail that a bystander was seen carrying away his severed head.
Israel is bracing itself for revenge attacks.
My only question concerning Yassin is whether he earned his death a hundred times over, or merely fifty. Yet what is just is not always what is wise. We can only hope that Ariel Sharon knows what he is doing. At any rate, unlike his predecessor Ehud Barak, Sharon is not wont to utter empty threats, and it had been announced so many times in reponse to recent Hamas terror attacks that "the leadership, including Yassin, is not immune from elimination" that the latest outrage in Ashdod harbor essentially meant some Hamas head was going to roll or Israel's threats would lose creditibility.
For those not up on their history: Yassin originally sat in an Israeli prison until a 1997 botched assassination attempt on Hamasshole Khaled Mash`al forced Israel to exchange him for Mossad agents captured in Jordan. Then-PM and current finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu (a brilliant spokesman but a clearly incompetent PM) had pressed for the operation despite apparent (operational) misgivings on the part of the operatives.
UPDATE: Getty Images has extremely graphic pictures. (Hat tip: LGF, which also has a merciless parody on the BBC's "life in pictures" of Yassin.)
The parody was great, just great.
Posted by: Michael Cosyns | March 24, 2004 at 02:00 AM
Better late than never: welcome back.
Whish I'd seen you posting again earlier. Blog'm!
Posted by: Flint | March 24, 2004 at 02:14 AM