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An invitation to self-destruct: Hamas should not play into Sharon's hand
By Paul J. Balles *
Al-Jazeerah, March 24, 2004
The assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin is Sharon's invitation to the Palestinians to explode in rage over the death of this poor crippled old man who voiced the resistance of those who refused to succumb to Israeli dictators.
We should never forget that Sharon's ultimate aim has always been to rid Palestine of the Palestinians - to drive them from their homes forever. He cannot simply pull off another Deir Yassin; and he doesn't have a Lebanese group to perform another Sabra and Shatila atrocity on his behalf.
Sharon needs an excuse to organize and execute another bloodbath with enough slaughtered Palestinians to frighten the remaining families into leaving for the new Diaspora of Palestinians. If they don't leave - or more likely, can't leave - they will be executed.
All of this will be done, of course, under the guise of defending Israel and making it secure, with ample reminders of 6 million holocaust victims and the support of the US Congress and administration under Israeli manipulation.
Now that Iraq has been decimated and any threat of weapons of mass destruction development eliminated by American rule, no reason remains to keep Palestinians in their lands in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank as human shields against nuclear, biological or chemical missiles aimed at Israel or Palestine.
Sharon commanded Israel's Unit 101 in 1953 and, according to CounterPunch, "Unit 101's purpose was that of instilling terror by the infliction of discriminate, murderous violence not only on able bodied fighters but on the young, the old, the helpless".
Sharon has never been the slightest bit concerned about who he and his troops slaughter - the aged, women and children - his record of murder and maiming has continued unabated since Unit 101 was first formed.
After an F-16 jet dropped a one-tonne bomb on a crowded residential area in Gaza on 22 July 2002, killing 17 people - nine of them children - and wounding more than 140 others, Sharon exclaimed that the attack had been one of Israel's "biggest successes". Despite harsh international criticism, Sharon remained unrepentant.
Recently, Baruch Kimmerling, an Israeli sociologist, authored Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians that delved into "politicide", defined as a process designed to eliminate Palestinian political existence.
Reviewing the book in Foreign Affairs, L. Carl Brown wrote:
| Kimmerling, an Israeli sociologist and a specialist in Palestinian history, defines "politicide" as a process designed to eliminate Palestinian political existence. The implicit message of his book is that this goal has always been present in Israel's confrontation with the Palestinians. |
Notably, Brown added,
| For Kimmerling, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon embodies politicide in Israeli thought and action, from the 1948 war to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the virtual war against the Palestinian Authority carried out by Sharon since 2001. Politicide is by definition incompatible with a two-state solution and in its extreme form could lead to partial or total ethnic cleansing. |
Sharon's behaviour, criticized by a few humanitarians worldwide who are unafraid to be labelled anti-Semitic and by a few Israeli peace activists, should be recognized by all as psychopathic. The pattern of his behaviour differs from that of a serial killer only in the scope of his weapons, the support he has and number of victims.
Like many psychopaths, Sharon has been clever enough to avoid criminal prosecution for his bloodthirsty fiendishness. He will undoubtedly gloat as the Palestinians attempt to express their rage in whatever retaliation they can manage to muster over Sheikh Yassin's liquidation. That will give him the excuse he's been looking for to justify more carnage.
As Professor Emeritus Naseer Aruri said,
| The assassination of Shaykh Ahmad Yassin, the political and spiritual leader of Hamas, represents a leap forward in the Israeli escalation of the ongoing daily incursions and killings of civilians and other Israeli acts calculated to obstruct initiatives for a political settlement... Sharon has invited a major retaliation, which in turn would allow him to commit new and bigger acts of state terrorism... |
The bigger acts of state terrorism will surely be massive annihilation of enough Palestinians to force any remaining to flee. Hopefully, Hamas will recognize the modus operandi of an astute psychopath and not play into Sharon's hands, inviting their own destruction.
*Paul Balles is a retired American university
professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 34
years. For more information, see
http://www.writerfreelance.com
and http://www.pballes.com.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
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