Thomas Carlyle stated, “Violence does even justice unjustly.”
Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas, was a violent leader who was not conducive to a peace-making process. However, Israel’s targeted assassination of Yassin did nothing to help end the long, bloody Mideast conflict. There are both Israeli and Arab political factions that are guilty of mass atrocities against the other, and who have produced a climate where assassination seems like the only option for progress.
Unfortunately, targeted assassinations are never a winning option if they continue to sow the seeds of hatred.
The assassination of Yassin, the leader of a group with a history of terrorist acts, did not shut down the organization of Hamas. Another leader has already taken Yassin’s place, and, if anything, Hamas has only become less predictable and more dangerous. Yassin’s assassination ensured that more violence will be borne of this violence. Reports state that Israeli citizens, of all ethnic and religious belonging, have been paralyzed into a state of fear. Israeli citizens fear, wisely, that reprisals by Hamas will soon begin. Another cycle of bloodshed is anticipated to pay for the blood spilled by Yassin.
Security of states built on violence breeds insecurity among the state’s citizens, which in turn has a devastating effect on the populace’s engagement with the political process. It is only once violence does not dominate the thoughts of all parties involved that work towards peace can begin. If the end goal of the Israeli and Palestinian people is to coexist in relative harmony, acts such as this assassination are steps in the wrong direction. The vast majority of the United Nations Human Rights Commission member states have castigated Israel’s tactics, and Israel in turn has attempted to defend themselves against critics, saying their measures were normal terrorist control. The assassination furthers an environment of hate, and has only worsened Israel in the eyes of states everywhere that are desperate to see displays of moral leadership. Hamas did not, and is not, providing that leadership. But the state of Israel must find a higher ground.
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