One War

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The thing to remember about Israel’s killing of the leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, is that it was part of the same war against Islamic terrorism that America has been fighting since we were attacked on September 11, 2001. There’s no shortage of evidence to mark this point. Bernard Lewis, in his book “The Crisis of Islam,” reports that the Hamas weekly in Gaza, Al-Risala, responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon with the comment, in its September 13,2001, issue: “Allah has answered our prayers.”

A columnist in the same Hamas weekly wrote an open letter “to anthrax” on November 1, 2001, as America was confronting deadly anthrax attacks.”In sound mind, I thank you and confess that I like you, I like you very much. May you continue to advance, to permeate, and to spread. If I may give you a word of advice, enter the air of those ‘symbols,’ the water faucets from which they drink,” the columnist wrote. The translation is from the Middle East Media Research Institute.

In a February 2002 letter reported by the Associated Press, Yassin said holy war against America was an obligation for Muslims. “Sons of Islam everywhere, the jihad is a duty — to establish the rule of Allah on earth and to liberate your countries and yourselves from America’s domination and its Zionist allies, it is your battle — either victory or martyrdom,” Yassin said in the letter, according to the AP. The Israeli government said yesterday that on May 29, 2003, Yassin had praised Osama bin Laden, wishing “that Allah grant him the possibility to continue his fight” against America.

Yassin is responsible, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, pointed out yesterday, for terrorist attacks in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza that have killed 38 Americans since 1993, 28 in the past three and a half years. Not to mention the hundreds of innocent Israelis killed in these attacks on buses, cafés, hotels, and a disco.

In that context, it’s just absurd for the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, to say as he did yesterday that “all parties should exercise restraint.” It makes no more sense than to call for American restraint in the battle to kill Mr. bin Laden. The appropriate move for the White House would be to congratulate the Israelis and thank them for their courage in this battle of the war on terror. Also disappointing was Mayor Bloomberg’s response yesterday when asked whether Israel’s killing of Yassin was justified. “I have no idea,” he said. Better informed was one of Mr. Bloomberg’s potential opponents in the 2005 mayoral race, Rep. Anthony Weiner, who said, “Israel’s bin Laden has been killed. The death of Sheik Yassin has made Israel safer, and has improved the prospects for peace in the region.”

No doubt that we are going to be hearing from the left a new round of warnings that these killings of terrorist leaders don’t make Israel or America any safer, that they just rile the potential terrorists, and that for each terrorist leader killed, new leaders emerge to take their place. But these are the same people loudly, and politically, criticizing the Bush administration for having failed to attack Mr. bin Laden or Al Qaeda before September 11, 2001. It’s important to remember, too, that the military attacks on terrorists, be they in Gaza or Afghanistan, are just one part of a wider security strategy that also includes a drive for democratization, human rights, and rule of law in the Arab world.


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