After Sheikh Yassin, what?
Mar 27, 2004
PRIME Minister Sharon of Israel finally had his way and assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the severely paraplegic cleric and founder of the militant group Hamas.
One Man’s Week By John Nagenda
Following the assassination of the Hamas founder, the writer asks:
PRIME Minister Sharon of Israel finally had his way and assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the severely paraplegic cleric and founder of the militant group Hamas.
According to a minister, Sharon took personal charge of the assassination. Leaving prayers (no doubt God was already expecting him beside him), Yassin was being pushed in his wheelchair — what a clear target to his sky murderers — and his pushers, and others, perished with him. He was listed to be killed by Israel for a long time, so his violent demise was not a complete shock in this most deadly of spots in the deadly Middle East. You could employ a cliché and say that Yassin had been living on borrowed time, and that the “lender†Sharon, had come to collect his pounds of flesh.
By this action Sharon, whose penchant for killing goes back to the Lebanese massacres of the early 1980s, where some thousands of men, women and children lost their lives in a few days, has once again raised the bar in the violence and counter violence of the region. For it became all too clear as soon as Yassin’s death had been confirmed that with his assassination Palestine, and more than Palestine, had found many thousands of supporters ready to replace him, and that his martyrdom had been assured. Why then did Sharon assassinate Yassin? I cannot do better than quote, yet again, from the book, The Longest War by Jacobo Timmerman, written about that adventure in Lebanon. “His [Sharon’s] relationship with military geography was almost lascivious.
Napoleon would have loved him before a battle, supported him during the battle, but chopped off his head afterwards.†Israel had no Napoleon. Is it possible that those who have put Premier Sharon in a position where he can directly influence their fate, have forgotten, or never knew, about Lebanon? After his acts there those who knew turned on him in horror and cast him asunder. Is it because memories are so short that they have now gone as far as to give him so long a rope with which to hang themselves? The history of Sheikh Yassin is inexorably linked to the freedom of Palestine, and he would go to any length to attain it. It makes him a freedom fighter in some eyes, and a terrorist in others. And since those who live by the sword often die by it, Yassin must have known that as the number attained by his suicide bombers grew and grew his own turn was approaching. He never turned back. Then also ask, Is Sharon a freedom fighter or a terrorist? Looking at the circumstances of the two, Sharon and the now late Yassin, is it not obvious that with the latter the only real tools to hand were the fragile bodies of those he sent out to commit the final sacrifice, whereas with Sharon the skies are bursting with his bombing machines and the land with his tanks, dismantling Palestine at will, murdering its leaders with impunity? No wonder most of the world rose and strongly condemned Sharon’s act in killing Sheikh Yassin. Needless to say, America only went as far as to speak limply of its “deep disquietâ€, whatever that means. But even so Bush’s government knew full well that more violence would follow, and more after that, in a terrifying cycle which, if unbroken, would in time destroy Israel, and spoil great swathes of the world beside.
It is Israel’s inalienable right to protect itself. But equally Palestine must protect itself, which was Sheikh Yassin’s abiding passion, as also his followers and those to come. It is when you enter this in the equation that you realise fully how futile is Sharon’s chosen method of targetted assassination. For him and those like him who were boastfully basking in the Sheikh’s death on Monday, a night’s sleep would surely have reminded them that the capture of Saddam Hussein not far away in Iraq, increased, not decreased, the counter violence that followed. Is it going to need a change in the US government to find those with enough muscle to rein in Sharon’s excessive behaviour towards Palestine? Bush plainly clearly isn’t up to it; yet it is only America which can do it. Where is November!
* * *
In your columnist’s heart Uganda comes first. But the world is bigger. So the wonderful results being achieved by our armed forces against the evil of Kony play second fiddle to the Middle East explosions. Also, it may seem illogical to condemn the assassination of Sheikh Yassin while eagerly awaiting that of Kony. But Kony has always battened on his own people above all others, treating them with unspeakable barbarity. What is his role towards them? Yassin gave everything, including his life, to the independence of Palestine. At his murder hundreds of thousands of his people turned out to express their agony. When Kony goes most of his people should rejoice. Latest news is that his abandoned deputy Otti was coming south with 300 bandits to take over Uganda. I ask Envoy-you-know-who (and his spawn/acolyte MP): are your instructions therefore that it is Otti whom our President should now address face to face? Aim lower still and hit the target, of A. Awori, MP. This man gets cheaper by the day so that if you wanted to exchange him for a pair of old tyre slippers, the vendor would demand some top-up. When Defence Minister Mbabazi named ADF collaborators who happened to be Muslims, Awori’s contribution in parliament was that he saw in this a violation of the rights of Muslims internationally. This is a kind of begging!
www.onemansweek.com
Following the assassination of the Hamas founder, the writer asks:
PRIME Minister Sharon of Israel finally had his way and assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the severely paraplegic cleric and founder of the militant group Hamas.
According to a minister, Sharon took personal charge of the assassination. Leaving prayers (no doubt God was already expecting him beside him), Yassin was being pushed in his wheelchair — what a clear target to his sky murderers — and his pushers, and others, perished with him. He was listed to be killed by Israel for a long time, so his violent demise was not a complete shock in this most deadly of spots in the deadly Middle East. You could employ a cliché and say that Yassin had been living on borrowed time, and that the “lender†Sharon, had come to collect his pounds of flesh.
By this action Sharon, whose penchant for killing goes back to the Lebanese massacres of the early 1980s, where some thousands of men, women and children lost their lives in a few days, has once again raised the bar in the violence and counter violence of the region. For it became all too clear as soon as Yassin’s death had been confirmed that with his assassination Palestine, and more than Palestine, had found many thousands of supporters ready to replace him, and that his martyrdom had been assured. Why then did Sharon assassinate Yassin? I cannot do better than quote, yet again, from the book, The Longest War by Jacobo Timmerman, written about that adventure in Lebanon. “His [Sharon’s] relationship with military geography was almost lascivious.
Napoleon would have loved him before a battle, supported him during the battle, but chopped off his head afterwards.†Israel had no Napoleon. Is it possible that those who have put Premier Sharon in a position where he can directly influence their fate, have forgotten, or never knew, about Lebanon? After his acts there those who knew turned on him in horror and cast him asunder. Is it because memories are so short that they have now gone as far as to give him so long a rope with which to hang themselves? The history of Sheikh Yassin is inexorably linked to the freedom of Palestine, and he would go to any length to attain it. It makes him a freedom fighter in some eyes, and a terrorist in others. And since those who live by the sword often die by it, Yassin must have known that as the number attained by his suicide bombers grew and grew his own turn was approaching. He never turned back. Then also ask, Is Sharon a freedom fighter or a terrorist? Looking at the circumstances of the two, Sharon and the now late Yassin, is it not obvious that with the latter the only real tools to hand were the fragile bodies of those he sent out to commit the final sacrifice, whereas with Sharon the skies are bursting with his bombing machines and the land with his tanks, dismantling Palestine at will, murdering its leaders with impunity? No wonder most of the world rose and strongly condemned Sharon’s act in killing Sheikh Yassin. Needless to say, America only went as far as to speak limply of its “deep disquietâ€, whatever that means. But even so Bush’s government knew full well that more violence would follow, and more after that, in a terrifying cycle which, if unbroken, would in time destroy Israel, and spoil great swathes of the world beside.
It is Israel’s inalienable right to protect itself. But equally Palestine must protect itself, which was Sheikh Yassin’s abiding passion, as also his followers and those to come. It is when you enter this in the equation that you realise fully how futile is Sharon’s chosen method of targetted assassination. For him and those like him who were boastfully basking in the Sheikh’s death on Monday, a night’s sleep would surely have reminded them that the capture of Saddam Hussein not far away in Iraq, increased, not decreased, the counter violence that followed. Is it going to need a change in the US government to find those with enough muscle to rein in Sharon’s excessive behaviour towards Palestine? Bush plainly clearly isn’t up to it; yet it is only America which can do it. Where is November!
* * *
In your columnist’s heart Uganda comes first. But the world is bigger. So the wonderful results being achieved by our armed forces against the evil of Kony play second fiddle to the Middle East explosions. Also, it may seem illogical to condemn the assassination of Sheikh Yassin while eagerly awaiting that of Kony. But Kony has always battened on his own people above all others, treating them with unspeakable barbarity. What is his role towards them? Yassin gave everything, including his life, to the independence of Palestine. At his murder hundreds of thousands of his people turned out to express their agony. When Kony goes most of his people should rejoice. Latest news is that his abandoned deputy Otti was coming south with 300 bandits to take over Uganda. I ask Envoy-you-know-who (and his spawn/acolyte MP): are your instructions therefore that it is Otti whom our President should now address face to face? Aim lower still and hit the target, of A. Awori, MP. This man gets cheaper by the day so that if you wanted to exchange him for a pair of old tyre slippers, the vendor would demand some top-up. When Defence Minister Mbabazi named ADF collaborators who happened to be Muslims, Awori’s contribution in parliament was that he saw in this a violation of the rights of Muslims internationally. This is a kind of begging!
www.onemansweek.com