To my great disgust, I have never heard the word "but" used more times than in the past week and a half since the targeted killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader and founder of the renowned anti-Jewish terrorist organization, Hamas.
As in, "Yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization, and Yassin was a criminal, BUT ... [fill in the blank with the appeasement-minded relativism of the day]." Shameful.
Leaders from France, Germany, Britain (!), the United Nations, the Arab world, etc., have all chimed in with their condemnation -- both reserved and unreserved -- of the nation of Israel for exercising its right to fight back against vicious terrorist monsters, or "spiritual leaders," if you're a spineless journalist and/or speaking for one of the many Arab thug regimes.
If for nothing else than the sake of distancing myself from such ideas, I will make this as clear as possible: Ahmed Yassin was not a mere criminal, he was the Palestinian version of Osama bin Laden. He may very well have meant "spiritual leadership" to millions of Muslims, but to Jews he meant only violence, fear and death. His humanity was something that existed only in the biological sense. And you'll have to pardon me here, because even though I'm a Christian, I'm about to say something dreadfully un-Christ-like: that terrorist deserved to die.
If you actually need a reason better than that, then consider: more prominent Israeli leaders, such as Benjamin Netanyahu, have recently agreed to provide political support for the phased withdrawal of many parts of the "disputed" territories of Gaza (one of the territories which Israel won, by the way, while waging a defensive war that they did NOT provoke, against enemies who openly called for their complete annihilation), and Yassin's long-overdue demise is Ariel Sharon's message to the terrorists that even though Israel is withdrawing, it is NOT as an act of capitulation to the terrorist attacks meant to make them do so.
Even still, there are those who dare to condemn Sharon for his targeting of Yassin by trotting out the old "cycle of violence" -- that most tired of phrases -- and pointing out that with all the admiration the so-called "Arab Street" had for Sheik Yassin, this could really ignite tensions and thus undermine the peace process. Why yes, we wouldn't want to anger the terrorists; they might do something drastic, like declare an Intifadah. Oh, too late.
Let me tell you something about the cycle of violence: Palestinian leadership could stop it any time they wanted to. If they really want the Israelis to stop retaliating against them for terrorism, they might want to, I don't know ... stop committing acts of terrorism. But then, that would ruin their goal of killing every Jew in sight, and every Jew out of sight for that matter.
Please spare me the hysterics about the Palestinians only resorting to terrorism as a means to get a state. If they really wanted a state, then why didn't they opt for one when they had the chance in 1937, or in 1947 or in 2000? It might have something to do with the crazy notion that the Islamic fundamentalists who hold so much power over the Palestinian people don't really want "peace" and their own state so much as they just want the Jews to do them a nice big favor and stop existing.
And speaking of Intifadahs, let's hit the rewind button and remember how the current one started: right after the Camp David negotiations in 2000. Israel's then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Palestine both its own state AND Israel's withdrawal from all of Gaza and 95 percent of the West Bank. It was virtually everything the Palestinians had ever asked for on a silver platter, and Arafat walked away and kick-started the "Second Intifadah," one of the worst waves of terrorism in modern history.
When the Israelis offer the Palestinians violence, they respond with violence, but not as much as when Israel offers them peace. That's why it's called the "culture of death;" it's a no-win situation.
It has been proved time and again that the only thing that hard line Islamist terrorists respond to is force, not peace. But even without that historical data, there remains a fact that so many "sophisticates" have, to their eternal shame, missed: No nation can ever afford to base its decisions on how much those decisions might anger evil men. This is not right-wing macho posturing, it is a matter of simple moral logic.
In the end, the terrorists have one less terror master to rally around, and this is a good thing.
No buts.
Eric Spratling is a public relations senior. Reach him at eric.spratling@asu.edu. Read his blog online at asuwebdevil.com.
