March 24, 2004

PARAFISK

”It doesn't take an awful lot of courage to murder a paraplegic in a wheelchair,” writes Robert Fisk. “But it takes only a few moments to absorb the implications of the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin yesterday.” Actually, Robert, old man Yassin was apparently a quadriplegic, so it took twice as much courage to off the bastard. Fisk continues, in his way:

Yes, he enthusiastically endorsed suicide bombings - including the murder of Israeli children. Yes, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, in a wheelchair or not. But something went wrong with the narrative of the news story yesterday, and something infinitely more dangerous - another sinister precedent - was set for our brave new world.

Several obfuscatory paragraphs follow, in which Fisk rambles about Yassin’s earlier jail time, and Yassin being freed as the result of a deal between Israel and the Palestinians (years ago, before matters were at their current level of import). Eventually -- having touched on, and then moved quickly away from, Yassin’s lust for the death of Israeli children -- Fisk makes his point:

Yet another Arab had been assassinated. The Americans want to kill Bin Laden. They want to kill Mullah Omar. They killed Saddam's sons. Just as they killed three al-Qaeda men in Yemen.

The Israelis repeatedly threaten to murder Yasser Arafat. It's getting to be a habit.

Fisk seems puzzled. Why would anybody want to kill Osama bin Laden?

No one has begun to work out the implications of all this. For years, there has been an unwritten rule in the cruel war of government-versus-guerrilla. You can kill the men on the street, the bomb-makers and gunmen, but the leadership was allowed to survive.

Now all has changed utterly. Anyone who advocates violence - even if they are palpably incapable of committing it - are now on a death list.

Poor Yassin, all crippled up and everything. Poor Osama, what with his dialysis issues and advanced decomposition. Leave the infirm murder advocates to advocate murder in peace!

So who can be surprised if the rules are broken by the other side?

Cute. Our fault again. Okay.

The top guys are now in the firing line. Let us not say we didn't know.

I’m not sure what that means, but I think I want to know about terrorist top guys being in the firing line. Repeatedly.

Posted by Tim Blair at March 24, 2004 03:23 AM
Comments

I hope the Israelis just make up a list of the leadership and post it with a warning that unless _all_ violence in both Israel and Gaza and the West Bank ceases, it will kill them whenever and whereever they find them. Hamas' newly announced leader should be told point-blank that he is number one on the list. Then, until the violence stops, they should target them, AND ANYONE STANDING NEARBY with the intention of killing the leadership. It should not matter who might be responsible, go after the known leadership. Anyone who objects to being on the list should be welcome to present themselves at the nearest Israeli checkpoint where they will be publicly strip-searched and conveyed to a courtroom where they can identify themselves, protest their innocence of connections, and have a monitor welded around an ankle and a computr chip embedded appropriately. Then, they can leave. Oughta work.

Posted by: JorgXMcKie at March 24, 2004 at 03:33 AM

So who can be surprised if the rules are broken by the other side?

But the other side has been breaking the rules for years. Unless the center of the center of the financial world did not house any leadership, nor the Pentagon, nor whatever Flight 93 was meant to target. Unless "the men on the street" includes women and children in pizza restaurants and on buses as well as "bomb-makers and gunmen."

Ah, but perhaps in breaking the rules preemptively they were following the Bush Doctrine -- long before it was formulated, yes, but you have to expect that. Clearly the murder of Saint Yassin was the cause of all the violence ever fomented by Yassin in the years leading up to his death.

Posted by: Bob71 at March 24, 2004 at 03:36 AM

"Yet another Arab had been assassinated. The Americans want to kill Bin Laden. They want to kill Mullah Omar."

No doubt all these dark, dusky fellows look the same to Fiskie, but Mullah Omar is not an Arab, he is a Pashtun.

Posted by: Ross at March 24, 2004 at 03:39 AM

Fisk's grip on reality seems really quite shaky. I don't think he's supporting his view of the world in any rational way anymore.

There is a lesson here for people: if you totally drink the polemical kool-aid, sooner or later yo ufind yourself convinced of the innocence of someone who orders the killing of children.

Posted by: Joe at March 24, 2004 at 03:40 AM

"... but the leadership was allowed to survive." He might be presuming that a certain R. Fisk is on such a leadership list, and might now be endangered.
As for the Mossad Poison Ploy, I presume M. Fisk has reliable witnesses to it, or is it a product a fevered imagination (see leader list above).

Cheers
JMH

Posted by: J.M. Heinrichs at March 24, 2004 at 03:43 AM

Didn't someone try to kill George Bush the elder in a desert a few years back? I think having the top guys in the firing line has been something of a wet dream for the osamas and saddams for quite a while.

(*)>

Posted by: birdwoman at March 24, 2004 at 03:47 AM

he's saying that gwb and blair are targets.

Posted by: Mr. Bingley at March 24, 2004 at 03:47 AM

Sure, nothing new. GWB and Blair have been targets for a long time, as have been previous presidents.

Posted by: jonathan at March 24, 2004 at 03:50 AM

Stealth edit alert: for clarity, "these top guys" has been changed to "terrorist top guys".

Posted by: tim at March 24, 2004 at 03:54 AM

Fisk isn't a journalist. He's Leni Riefenstahl with a ballpoint pen.

Posted by: Jeffersonian at March 24, 2004 at 04:08 AM

I think Fisk makes a good point. And the conclusion I draw from it is that Israel's forebearance in not wiping Hamas out the moment it got going cost hundreds of Israeli lives. If the heads of such groups had known all along they were at personal risk, history might have been very different-- for the better.

Posted by: Mike G at March 24, 2004 at 04:09 AM

No, Jeffersonian.

Reifenstahl was skilled and professional.

Fisk is a hack.

Posted by: Sigivald at March 24, 2004 at 04:27 AM

Of course. I stand corrected.

Posted by: Jeffersonian at March 24, 2004 at 04:45 AM

"But something went wrong with the narrative of the news story yesterday, and something infinitely more dangerous - another sinister precedent - was set for our brave new world."

What Fisk means here is, now that he is adding his dangerous and sinister twist of logic and morality to the already liberal-biased news narrative, our brave new world will never be right again

He may have a point

Posted by: c at March 24, 2004 at 05:11 AM

You know, I feel better about my decision every day.

Posted by: Galen at March 24, 2004 at 05:28 AM

Fisk does raise a point I've never understood - why does Israel let Hamas exist, period? Why not wipe them out?

For some dumb reason, western countries have had this idea that they don't have to fight against terrorists more than slighty. Just retalliate with a tit for tat attack.

The US did it too until 9/11. Major mistake. The US is starting to correct it's mistake (until a Democrat wins the presidency), and Israel needs to correct it's mistakes as well.

Posted by: Jeremy at March 24, 2004 at 06:29 AM

"Why not wipe them out?"

Indeed. Particularly given the target-rich nature of the environment:

http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=5081

...The three surviving Hamas leaders, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, Mahmud
a-Zahar and Ismail Hania took turns receiving crowds of Gaza residents in
the tent. The three took care not to be in the tent at the same time out
of fear it would be targeted by the IDF.

Posted by: Bruce at March 24, 2004 at 07:19 AM

Fisk does raise a point I've never understood - why does Israel let Hamas exist, period? Why not wipe them out?

Because when they do it even their buddies in the US start whining about the damaged peace process. As said in an earlier post, our official reaction has been mealy-mouthed and morally offensive.

Really, if Hamas had been doing this to America directly, everyone up to Arafat would have been bombed to splinters by now in retaliation.

Posted by: Sortelli at March 24, 2004 at 08:06 AM

"Really, if Hamas had been doing this to America directly, everyone up to Arafat would have been bombed to splinters by now in retaliation."

Sorry Sortelli -- Not if a democrat was in office. If Clinton was in office another asprin factory would be in ruins.

Posted by: Ike J at March 24, 2004 at 10:21 AM

err, sorry to get all smutty, but, how does a bloke who is quadriplegic manage to father almost a dozen kids. My knowledge is sketchy, but I assumed that once the spinal cord went all feeling went 'down south' as well.

I'll happily be corrected over this, but er is this an Arab 'Bob Roberts', and is this where Tim Robins got the plot?

Posted by: Pat at March 24, 2004 at 11:17 AM

Pat, you posted this in two comment threads so far. Quit it, or get banned.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 24, 2004 at 11:40 AM

Sorry, Mistress, wont, do, again, Mistress....

Posted by: Pat at March 24, 2004 at 11:48 AM

Too late asshead, you've been banned from the site for being cute and posting your stupid question to my blog twice. Needless to say, your entries have been deleted before being allowed to appear. If they asks us nicely, we might unban them yes we might precious. Or we might not.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 24, 2004 at 12:05 PM

Fisk's hysteria notwithstanding, I've never seen the problem with this.

One of the major points of egalitarian democracy is that nobody's indispensible. Yeah, Bush would be hard to replace right now, but let's face it: If he died tomorrow there are people ready to take over. They'll do differently. You can't guarantee they'll do worse. In sports terms, we've got a deep bench.

Compare that to the typical dictatorship. The United States wouldn't be all that different given John Kerry as President, compared to how, say, Zimbabwe would be different if Kim Il Bob got offed. If somebody offs a dictator, things get 'way different. If somebody offs a President or a Prime Minister, we pick another one and go on.

The inviolability of heads of state is just a remnant of the days when all heads of state were effectively kings, and kings formed a sort of club (or even a family group.) Offing the neighbors' king might work, but what if the plebes overgeneralize?

Egalitarian democracies can afford to go after the leaders of the opposition, and in my opinion should make it a regular part of warfare rather than treating the notion with distaste. Hard on Presidents and Prime Ministers, perhaps, but they knew the job was like that when they took it.

Regards,
Ric Locke

Posted by: Ric Locke at March 24, 2004 at 12:21 PM

Hang on there:

"For years, there has been an unwritten rule in the cruel war of government-versus-guerrilla. You can kill the men on the street, the bomb-makers and gunmen, but the leadership was allowed to survive."

He means both sides. Both sides have refrained from killing leadership, according to Fisk.

"So who can be surprised if the rules are broken by the other side? The top guys are now in the firing line."

And now he's saying the Israeli leadership has just become a legitimate target, for breaking that rule.

Fisk? Tell it to Rehavam Ze'evi.

Posted by: Joe Geoghegan at March 24, 2004 at 01:39 PM

Yassin wasn't a leader on a par with Bush, Blair or even with Saddam and Arafat. He was merely the capo of a bunch of terrorists, whose modus operandi wa and remainss the murder of civilians by extremely repulsive means in order to sow terror. As such, neither he nor his wiseguys had standing as lawful combattants. Indeed, not only Hamas but all these Islamist terrorists remind me of pirates, the enemies of all mankind as the older international law put it, when international law meant something other than the latest trendy fad of the Tranzis.

Posted by: Michael Lonie at March 24, 2004 at 01:47 PM

Note Fisk's complaint that "Anyone who advocates violence - even if they are palpably incapable of committing it - are now on a death list."
Well hey, in the case of Yassin, isn't this the same as saying "Hey, I didn't actually kill anyone... I was only giving orders!"
Interestingly, that argument apparently clears him (and possibly Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, etc) of any and all charges!

Posted by: RAK at March 24, 2004 at 02:56 PM

"So who can be surprised if the rules are broken by the other side? ...
The top guys are now in the firing line. Let us not say we didn't know."
I get it now. Hamas etc has refrained from targetting the top Israeli leaders because of their staunch ethical commitment to rules of engagement, not because they cant get close enough to them.

Posted by: max power at March 24, 2004 at 08:56 PM

Anyone who advocates violence - even if they are palpably incapable of committing it - are now on a death list.

Would that include Pilger?

Posted by: Andjam at March 24, 2004 at 10:34 PM

And, of course, Fisk _would_ indeed find that Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, et al are guiltless in the deaths of millions. At least he's consistent.

Posted by: JorgXMcKie at March 24, 2004 at 11:32 PM
Fisk does raise a point I've never understood - why does Israel let Hamas exist, period? Why not wipe them out?

Steven Den Beste has a good theory.

Posted by: E. Nough at March 24, 2004 at 11:41 PM

Fisk has completely lost it, assuming he ever had to begin with. A man in a wheelchair! A wheelchair for chrissakes!

Posted by: Sean at March 25, 2004 at 01:56 AM

Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Yes, I remember. The man Israel backed in the late 1980s to undermine and reduce the influence of the PLO. Worked a treat too.

Yes, I remember now.

Posted by: Miranda Divide at March 26, 2004 at 10:23 AM