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News :: Israel / Palestine |
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Americans for Peace Now condemns the Yassin Assassination |
Current rating: 0 |
by APM via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
23 Mar 2004
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'APN is a Jewish, Zionist organization whose mission is to strengthen Israel's security through peace and to support the Israeli Peace Now movement. " |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
March 22, 2004Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
APN Condemns Yassin AssassinationÂ
Washington, D.C.--Americans for Peace Now (APN) today condemned Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. APN is a Jewish, Zionist organization whose mission is to strengthen Israel's security through peace and to support the Israeli Peace Now movement.Â
"Americans for Peace Now condemns the violence associated with the Hamas terrorist organization and the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin," said Debra DeLee, President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now. "At the same time, we do not support Israel's assassination policy. Although it may satisfy demands for revenge, it has also served to stoke the fires of hatred among Palestinian militants and led to lethal reprisal attacks against Israeli civilians. We fear that the assassination of Sheikh Yassin will escalate the current conflict to new levels of violence and lead to the strengthening of Palestinian hardliners at the expense of moderates in the occupied territories and elsewhere in the Arab world."
Copyright © 2004 Americans for Peace Now
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Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Re: Americans for Peace Now condemns the Yassin Assassination |
by haaretz via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Mar 2004
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w w w . h a a r e t z d a i l y . c o m
Last update - 05:14 24/03/2004
With unclean hands
By Gideon Samet
Killing Ahmed Yassin was not only the mother of all the pinpoint assassinations. It was the prototype of Israeli politics in the era of Sharon, the eternal zig-zagger, doing one thing and its complete opposite; an operation to stop the violence will only intensify and accelerate it. A physical elimination, as if that will pave the way to a future departure from Gaza - while setting Gaza on fire. Castrating the very political process Sharon promised, even if quarter-heartedly.
Those many - according to the polls, the majority - who have ceased believing Sharon are allowed to ask themselves how many dogs and Fritzes, as it's said in the Jewish legend, will have to dive until the disengagement vision comes to fruition next year, if at all, and after how many victims.
The haste of the Yassin execution by Sharon the general is in stark contrast to the deliberate and ever-so-damaging slowness of Sharon the politician. Nothing, including the political threats by the extreme right, need have prevented him from starting the evacuation of the Strip in another month, after returning from Washington. There is nothing to prevent him - other than the threat to his political head - from proving the seriousness of his intentions by removing a few settlements in the West Bank at the same time.
Last week he barely escaped a no-confidence motion. This week, he went through four no-confidence motions like a hot knife through butter. Killing Yassin did that. As he says, nothing personal? Sharon the politician is capable of a lot to survive. Or, in more positive language, there should be personal, full press guards on his flanks on the way to the promise that may - or may not - be kept.
There's a heavy shadow hanging over the decision not only because of the
gloomy gathering clouds of the vengeance attacks. Even the most ruthless of wars have some rules. The first world war killed millions. Nonetheless, as the rule was first phrased in French, there was no shooting at the enemy's general staffs.
That stopped the army at the doors to Arafat's offices. And those who managed to send suicide bombers in containers to Ashdod, are capable, even symbolically, of reaching the General Staff on busy Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv.
Sharon, who doesn't stop at red lights, broke that rule this week. He made the decision with unclean hands, the hands of a leader whose determined orders to kill are trailed far behind by terror-encouraging chronic procrastination in all his political moves. commendations of the Shin
Bet, by order of the prime minister, defense minister, the combative majority on the General Staff and a desperate right in the coalition. Mofaz, a serial spreader of cliches, added error to mistake by dragging al-Qaida and bin Laden into the local terror stew.
But the street, the vast majority, went with turning the Hamas leader into muck. Avraham Poraz, the only member of the coalition who dared defend his opposition to the decision during the cabinet meeting (Lapid stuck to the right to remain silent), sounded lost in the blather of commentaries supporting the assassination that swept through the airwaves. Once again it turned out that there's no Sharon deed or failure, political or military, that won't win an automatic majority as long as it broadcasts the right amount of machismo, declares it will cut off the arm of the terrorists, and comes on the heels of a terror attack. Once again public debate found refuge behind a veil of patriotism.
When the next attack comes, there will be another flimsy promise for another initiative to cut off the arms. This all happened while Sharon's political initiative is lined up before us in row after row of dead words, a virtual vision in which nothing has happened except declarations - and the same platitudinous claim that "the disengagement train has left the station and there is no way to stop it." There is someone who can stop it. Sharon, with the curtains he knows how to pull down over his own moves.
Assassinating Yassin will improve our security? About the same as peace and security were helped by the Sharon government.
Such shaky decisions with a coalition of vengeance coalition and the spin around it are not only signs of the dizziness of an administration that has lost its compass. They seal the fate of more Israelis - because of us as much as because of the Palestinian terror - whether they live or die.
(c) 2004, Haaretz
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Re: Americans for Peace Now condemns the Yassin Assassination |
by PJ
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 Mar 2004
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What do you think then of the facts and argument in this opposing view?:
"In the early months of the intifada, this macho pretense was sustained by the Israeli government's tacit decision not to target terrorist ringleaders, for fear such attacks would inspire massive retaliation. Yassin and his closest associates considered themselves immune from Israeli reprisals and operated in the open. What followed was the bloodiest terrorist onslaught in Israeli history, climaxing in a massacre at Netanya in March 2002. After that, Israel invaded the West Bank and began to target terrorist leaders more aggressively.
The results, in terms of lives saved, were dramatic. In 2003, the number of Israeli terrorist fatalities declined by more than 50% from the previous year, to 213 from 451. The overall number of attacks also declined, to 3,823 in 2003 from 5,301 in 2002, a drop of 30%. In the spring of 2003, Israel stepped up its campaign of targeted assassinations, including a failed attempt on Yassin's deputy, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Wise heads said Israel had done nothing except incite the Palestinians to greater violence. Instead, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups agreed unilaterally to a cease-fire.
In this context, it bears notice that between 2002 and 2003 the number of Palestinian fatalities also declined significantly, from 1,000 to about 700. The reason here is obvious: As the leaders of Palestinian terror groups were picked off and their operations were disrupted, they were unable to carry out the kind of frequent, large-scale attacks that had provoked Israel's large-scale reprisals. Terrorism is a top-down business, not vice versa. Targeted assassinations not only got rid of the most guilty but diminished the risk of open combat between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian foot soldiers. "
Taken from: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004855
An article by Mr. Stephens, editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post |
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Re: Americans for Peace Now condemns the Yassin Assassination |
by gehrig
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Current rating: 0
26 Mar 2004
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I can tell you exactly what I thought the moment after I heard that Yassin had been taken out. First, I thought of the high death toll the retaliation will take on both sides. Then I thought, good riddance to the kind of guy whose "spiritual leadership" was of the "blow Jews to bits and earn your 72 virgins" variety. Then I thought, I would hate to be the guys in the Sharon administration having to weigh the short-term versus the long-term changes in the death tolls and deciding whether it was worth it. We won't know for years; we won't know whether Hamas will start to fracture without their leader until it happens (or doesn't).
Yes, the retaking of the West Bank did result in a lowering of attacks on Israel, but at a cost we won't fully know until the inevitable day in which Israel has to loosen that iron grip.
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