Though there are conflicting reports of how it happened, the death of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room was almost certainly murder. On the basis of similar assassinations, the killers were from the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.
Six months ago in Beirut, Al-Mabhouh recovered from poisoning after losing consciousness for 30 hours. That attempted slaying was blamed on the Israelis, who are also thought to have murdered a Hezbollah military commander in Damascus two years ago and last month to have set up a bomb blast in the Lebanese capital which slew two other Hamas officials. The Israelis never confirm or deny any of these operations, preferring to leave their enemies guessing and wondering who among their number may have provided information that made a killing possible.
No doubt they crow about their successes in private. In public, meanwhile, it is rare that an Israeli politician or official seeks to deny these crimes are taking place. And no one should forget these are crimes. If, for example, an Israeli soldier holidaying abroad were murdered in his hotel by a Hamas operative, the Israelis would be the first to call it a terrible crime, echoed, of course, by the White House, and protest to the international community at the barbarity of the Palestinians.
However, when it is a Mossad triggerman who slays someone from Hamas or any other Palestinian or Lebanese group, it is no crime at all, rather an occasion for quiet gloating and behind-the-scenes backslapping.
But Israel simply cannot have it both ways. It cannot appeal to world opinion when it considers itself wronged but ignore that same opinion when it perpetrates wrongs itself, be they the building of more and more illegal settlements in the occupied territories, slaughtering 1,400 Palestinians trapped beneath its Gaza bombardment or even eliminating Hamas people, one by one.
This is not the behavior of the civilized country that Israel pretends to be. Instead it is brutal and psychotic conduct. Some Israelis may rightly feel ashamed of the crimes that are being done in their name — including these extrajudicial executions. Many others, however, no doubt rejoice. Do they recognize how corrosive to their own country is an attitude that condones despicable crimes, provided they are carried out against their Arab rivals?
This is the law of the jungle, the ruthless antics of wild beasts. And these are the people that the Palestinians are supposed to be negotiating with in good faith. This is the manipulative, cynical Israel that Washington has funded and shielded for so long — whose leaders see one law for themselves and another for everyone else.
Is it any wonder that in the face of over 60 years of such violent and amoral actions, the luckless Palestinians have become more and more radicalized as they sink deeper and deeper into despair? The Al-Mabhouh murder was yet another turn of the Israeli screw. Hamas has of course vowed revenge.
When that moment comes, the Israelis and their American friends will howl with anguish at the latest crime that has been visited on them and appeal with loathsome hypocrisy for the world’s sympathy.
