Maof

Townhall.com March 26, 2004
Here we go again. This script is getting so familiar that anyone can predict the next few days' news out of the Middle East. Or maybe the next year's.
The same succession of events takes place every time a distinguished terrorist meets a well-deserved end. There ought to be a name for the peculiar combination of rage, grief and general nostalgia for a homicidal leader that erupts whenever he himself is killed. Indeed, it already has a name: death worship.
This time the Israelis caught up with Hamas' founding fanatic, Ahmed Yassin, deeply revered scholar and murderer. (No one is supposed to mention the last part.) Deeply moved, the crowds poured into the streets of Gaza to pay their last, raving respects.
The ululations, the blood oaths, the chants, the armed and masked men . . . what a made-for-television spectacle. A cast of thousands with Costumes From the East. A combination of a David Lean epic ("Lawrence of Arabia") and a scene from the Nuremberg Rallies transplanted to the desert sands. Leni Riefenstahl is no longer around to film the extravaganza, but Al-Jazeera is. Call it "Eyeless in Gaza."
The same succession of events always sets in, as if it had been choreographed beforehand. Call it eight degrees of separation from reality:
First, the wire services and NPR make it clear that this was not a terrorist who was killed but a Spiritual Leader. After all, it wasn't as if he had been one of the suicide bombers himself; he only inspired them.
To quote the front-page story in The Wall Street Journal: "Mr. Yassin was a cleric renowned in the wider Muslim world and more a spiritual leader to Hamas than a hands-on plotter of terror attacks."
Think of him as a charismatic Hitler rather than a dull, hands-on Eichmann. Somehow that's supposed to have made him less dangerous. It isn't logical, but logic has nothing to do with it. This is the Middle East.
Second, the United Nations' Kofi Annan, who seldom if ever finds anything illegal when Israelis are blown apart, denounces the loss of said terrorist - excuse me, militant - as a crime against international law.
Third, the European Union seconds Kofi Annan's motion. After all, it speaks for a continent whose record on The Jewish Question is well established by now. Also, Europe has other friends and associates in the Arab world to appease now that it's lost Saddam Hussein.
Whatever the reasons, the Europeans' irritation with Israel for daring to strike back at one of the world's leading terrorists, or maybe just for existing at all, is palpable. Why can't these people go quietly, like the Czechs in 1938?
Fourth, other terrorist outfits fire a few rockets at Israeli outposts to demonstrate their sympathy. If the rockets are fired by Hezbollah from Lebanese territory, the sovereign government of Syrian-occupied Lebanon will protest - when the Israelis fire back.
Fifth, orators throughout the Arab world warn the infidels that now the Gates of Hell will open! (What, they were closed?)
Sixth, various analysts on the talk shows bemoan the loss of another Arab moderate, however immoderate his views. If no one will believe that Ahmed Yassin was a moderate, the description "pragmatic" may be used instead, however impractical his doctrine of jihad-by-suicide.
Seventh, the White House formally expresses Deep Concern in an attempt to distance itself from this attack on a terrorist leader - even as American forces are hunting down terrorist leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and around the world. This is not duplicity but diplomacy, though it's not always easy to tell the difference. And it, too, has a familiar ring. (The Reagan administration officially deplored Israel's taking out Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981 - while a relieved Ronald Reagan chuckled about it in the privacy of the Oval Office.)
Eighth and last, various distinguished pundits, Israeli masochists, and "friends" of the Jewish state now warn that by taking such hasty action against a leader of Hamas after all these years, the Israelis will just inflame the terrorists.
That last piece of advice always brings to mind the story about the two Jews who were being stood against a wall by a Nazi execution squad. Allowed a few last words, the first Jew curses his killers, telling them they will lose the war and roast in Hell and all their crimes will be avenged and . . . then he hears the other Jew whispering in his ear: Shush! You'll make them mad.

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