Shed no tears for Yassin

Editorial

There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with terrorism. Spain got it wrong when it capitulated to Islamist terrorists last week and withdrew from the Iraqi conflict just days after terrorists murdered hundreds of Spanish civilians. Israel got it right Monday when it assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin. The premeditated, deliberate targeting of civilians must be punished in the most forceful way possible and must never – never – be seen to succeed. That was the lesson of Yassin's death.

Of course, the fires of hell, etc., etc., will rain down on Ariel Sharon and the Zionist entity, declared the remaining Islamist murderers in the aftermath of Yassin's receipt of his final reward. So what else is new, Israelis might ask.

It is true that the violence may spike in reaction to Yassin's killing, but it's all relative. For 56 years, Yassin and others like him have been promising the heavens will rain fire down on the Zionist entity. Israel must not be swayed by the rantings and threats of those who kill its citizens. Israel will defend itself, and every human being with a functioning sense of right and wrong will understand why Yassin is dead. And we will rededicate ourselves to supporting Israel in the ongoing conflict.

In a perfect world, there would be no killing, but that is a naive, quaint, hopeful Canadian conceit that has no traction in an environment where riding to school on a public bus is a potential death sentence, thanks in large part to one man: Ahmed Yassin. He, by direct dicta, has killed 377 Israelis and wounded 2,076 more since September 2000 alone. When kind-hearted Canadians criticize Israel for killing him, we need to ask where their sense of moral outrage has been for the past three and a half years.

The message to Palestinians is this: Killing Israeli civilians will get you further from, not closer to, your earthly goals. The problem, of course, is that earthly goals are secondary to people like Yassin. As Yasser Arafat said upon learning of the death of Yassin: "To heaven, you martyr."

Immediately, condolences came pouring in. The British foreign secretary opined that he did not imagine Israel would benefit from killing an old man in a wheelchair. This attitude is ignorant, as well as ageist and able-ist. Yassin has been in a wheelchair since a soccer accident at the age of 12. The wheelchair did not, apparently, impede his ability to oversee the murder of hundreds of Jews and it was indeed late in life when Yassin's career as a killer was at its most prolific. To suggest that age and infirmity should have provided Yassin with immunity is ludicrous.

The deaths of more than a dozen bodyguards and others, whom the media has and will continue to portray as "innocent" bystanders, is a further, though seemingly more brutal message. Being near a terrorist like Yassin – figuratively or literally – is a dangerous place to be. Don't go there.

Yes, Yassin was a "spiritual leader," a leader who urged young Muslims as a religious duty to strap explosives to their bodies, enter crowds of Jews and kill themselves and others. That was the overriding "spiritual" dimension of the man. His religious imperative was to kill Jews and if that has become legitimate theology, the world has become a more dangerous place than we thought.

Obviously, we take a grisly bit of solace from Yassin's death. It is a visceral and retributive gut emotion we experienced on learning of the death, paired with the realization that this battle has taken a new and potentially decisive turn. In the Jewish tradition, as in most traditions, death is to be treated solemnly, with recognition that the gravity with which we observe someone's death speaks to the sanctity of life itself. The gut reaction to this death seems counter to this impulse, but our seemingly cruel callousness at Yassin's death is not as remote from our ethical foundations as it might seem. Yassin embodied death itself. His death may not being peace and coexistence, but his life epitomized mayhem and murder.

It was untoward yet understandable that members of the radical Jewish Kahane movement celebrated Yassin's death with toasts. It bore too much resemblance to the dancing in Palestinian streets on Sept. 11, 2001. Yet, it was Yassin himself who, in 1998, told the newspaper Al-Quds that "the day in which I will die as a shahid [martyr] will be the happiest day of my life."

Who are we to rain on his funeral parade?

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