NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, 31 March 2004 — “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” cries Dick the Butcher, a rabble-rouser plotting to overthrow 15th century England’s King Henry VI in Shakespeare’s play.
But after Israel’s ruthless assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, perhaps Shakespeare would have altered his famous line to, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the leaders.”
For this is exactly what Israel proclaims for all Hamas, Islamic Jihad groups, and even secularists like Yasser Arafat. Six months ago, Israel ‘s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that it had “marked” Yassin “for death.” Now, Israel has openly lengthened its “hit” list.
Israeli Public Safety Minister Tzachi Hanegbi avows: “Everyone is in our sights.” And Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz declared that Israel’s “liquidating” has only just begun.
The Bush administration’s response to Israel’s open policy of indiscriminate assassination is akin to Shakespeare’s Cade, Dick the Butcher’s ruffian leader, who ponders the wisdom of killing “all the lawyers,” then agrees because lawyers are tricky and bad. Cade and Dick then scurry off and kill the clerk of court.
Who was not a lawyer, but close enough.
Back in the 21st century, US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice furrowed her brow, called for calm “in the region,” and then reprised Cade’s death-to-lawyers remarks: “Let’s remember,” former Stanford University Professor Rice lectured, “that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that Sheikh Yassin has himself personally, we believe, been involved in terrorist planning.”
Not “terrorism” per se, but “terrorist planning.”
Does this ring a bell?
Not “weapons of mass destruction,” but “weapons systems plans.”
Few contend that Yassin, practically blind, was an active terrorist himself. His crippled body confined him to a wheelchair and his reedy voice barely whispered.
But he set an agenda long ago, and his refusal to compromise with Israel on any terms, and his demand of Palestine for Palestinians, marked him.
Israeli politicians claim Yassin actively sponsored suicide bombing. But even if true, Israel has no one to blame but itself.
In 1989, Israel had snugly imprisoned Yassin away for life, having tried, convicted, and sentenced him for complicity in the murder of Palestinian Israeli collaborators.
In 1997, Israel agreed with Jordan and the United States on the exact value of Yassin’s life — two Israeli agents caught in a bungled attempt to poison a Hamas leader lawfully within Jordan, a country which enjoyed, in theory, a full peace with Israel. Then-King Hussein had reportedly telephoned the United States, and furiously threatened to execute Israel’s assassins if Israel did not immediately provide an antidote. In settlement of Israel’s egregious breach of Jordan’s sovereignty, Israel traded Yassin for the two Israeli assassins, whom Jordan had every right to execute. Deal done.
Now, following America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, Israel decided its deal for Yassin looked less good than it had seven years ago.
And so, under cover of darkness for an even darker deed, before the daybreak had cleaved from the dark, Israel sent yet more assassins, armed with three missiles from a US-made Apache helicopter. They swooped down from the sky as Yassin, family members, and others left a mosque after morning prayer, and blew them to bits.
If democracy is to bring Dr. Rice’s “better day” to the Middle East, one must question how much the targeted killing of Middle Easterners by both Israel and the US is part of the plan. Although Rice claimed Israel had not “informed” the US “in advance” of its clearly long-considered murder plot, advance notice seems to have scarcely mattered.
One wonders whether Rice would have told the Israelis not to go through with the assassination. Or would she have warned Yassin, as US law requires, so as not to become part of Israel’s murderous conspiracy?
What should profoundly disturb us is that Israel’s “kill all the leaders” policy seems such a perfect fit with America’s own plans for the Middle East. We want to “hunt down” and kill Osama Bin Laden, virtually every Al-Qaeda member and every member of the Taleban. We have advertised bounties on many Iraqi former officials and has already hunted down and killed Saddam’s two sons. We would have likely killed Saddam himself if they had captured him before the war’s official end, when military law turns lawful “targeted killing” into cold-blooded murder. Dead or alive. But everyone knows that dead is easier.
About Israel’s plans to murder Yassin, and then to murder again and again, until the last resisting Palestinian falls dead in Israel’s crosshairs, the greatest democracy in the world says ..... well, nothing.
US Gen. Wesley Clark claims the Pentagon plans to invade, occupy, or otherwise pacify seven Middle Eastern states in five years. How to accomplish this?
First thing we do, let’s kill all the leaders. It makes democracy so much easier to come by.
— Sarah Whalen is an expert in Islamic law and taught law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana.
