Good Riddance

Once again, Israel has committed a horrible crime, this time by eliminating master Hamas terrorist Ahmed Yassin. Evidently, Israel still does not understand that it is not like other countries; its job is to behave like the good ghetto Jew of old, to study Talmud and never protest, let alone strike back, when it is attacked. At least, this is what the rest of the world is saying.

Hogwash. Israel is a sovereign nation, and as such has the right, indeed the duty, to defend its citizens from attack. And Yassin, as the head of the terrorist group Hamas, had the blood of hundreds of Israelis on his hands; this was long overdue.

(Before anyone complains of a double standard for applauding Israel’s raid against Palestinian terrorists while condemning the American invasion of Iraq, I should point out that the two situations are not comparable. Israel is striking back against the terrorists who have not only been proved to have slaughtered Israeli civilians, they brag about it. The US, on the other hand, invaded a country which has never been shown to have any connection with anti-US terrorism that is not more than a decade old.)

Hamas has never hidden its ultimate goal of the annihilation of Israel and the expulsion of its Jewish citizens. Yassin was often described in news reports as “a senior Hamas activist.” He was many things, but he was not an activist. An activist hands out pamphlets, or writes letters, or carries a sign as part of a peaceful protest.

Yassin was a terrorist. From his mouth came the directives ordering Palestinians to strap explosives to their bodies and walk into restaurants, buses and other public places. These human bombs, brainwashed by their own leaders to believe that killing Jews was the path to heaven, were instructed to seek out the heaviest concentration of civilians before detonating. Men, women, children, entire families – as long as they were Jewish, they were fair game for Yassin’s death squads.

Israel repeatedly attempted to get the Palestinian Authority to hold up its end of the Oslo and Wye River agreements by arresting Yassin and other terrorists, a move the PA always refused to do. So Israel had to take matters into their own hands; if the PA will not do the job, Israel will do it for them. The PA is, naturally, protesting Israel’s latest move as an “extrajudicial execution,” not bothering to mention that Yassin presided over hundreds of “extrajudicial executions” conducted as Hamas terrorist attacks. But his victims were only Jews, so who cares?

The media is predictably filled with laments and condemnations, how Israel has “buried the peace process,” how “the attack could herald a dangerous new phase in the dragging conflict,” and other apocalyptic warnings. But after every terrorist outrage inflicted on a café in Tel Aviv or a market in Jerusalem, we never hear complaints that the Palestinians have “buried the peace process.” Instead, we hear calls for Israeli “restraint.” God forbid the Jews should fight back.

Media reports constantly hold up Hamas as a sort of social-welfare organization, as if providing food to Palestinians can possibly provide an ethical balance to killing Jews. And as always we hear that old chestnut, “the cycle of violence,” as if Palestinian terrorism and Israeli self-defense are somehow morally equivalent.

Why is Israel, alone among the nations, consistently forbidden to defend itself? Any other country in the world would be cheered for taking action against the killers of its citizens, just as when the United States rightly struck back against al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11. But Israel, again alone among the nations, is Jewish. And as the world’s only Jewish state, Israel must struggle daily to survive, not just against those who seek its physical destruction but against those who seek its moral de-legitimization. Those who claim that Israel does not have the right to fight back against those who actively kill and maim its citizens claim that Israel is not a legitimate country.

This is not, of course, to say that no criticism of Israel is ever allowed; censure of Israel’s actions is sometimes (but not always) entirely valid. But there is a considerable difference between condemning Israel’s actions and condemning Israel’s existence. And when one denounces Israel for taking the same actions that any other country does without complaint, one is in fact attacking Israel’s very existence as a sovereign nation.

Ahmed Yassin ordered the murders of hundreds of people and not only showed no remorse but was proud of it. Israel should not apologize for its act of self-defense.