March 23, 2004
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Sharon, Bush Endanger Israelis, Americans
Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin proves how reckless and dangerous the Sharon government is, and how complicit and counterproductive the Bush government is.
This illegal, incendiary act will not make Israel any safer. All you had to do to figure that one out was look at the pictures of the throngs of outraged Palestinians marching through Gaza and you would know that another ugly turn of the vicious cycle of violence is soon to follow.
As Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery put it, "This is worse than a crime, it's an act of stupidity. This is the beginning of a new chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he said. "It moves the conflict from the level of a solvable national conflict to the level of religious conflict, which by its very nature is insoluble."
Israel's provocation is not one that will fade quickly from memory, either in the Palestinian territories or elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world.
It will only serve to more deeply ingrain the anti-Israel and anti-U.S. sentiment that already prevails there at frightening depths.
This was the last thing Israel or the United States needed.
And yet the Sharon government, far from backing off, is vowing to accelerate its murderous policy. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz says it aims to kill the entire Hamas leadership, and Israel's army chief, General Moshe Yaalon, has suggested that Israel may also take out the leadership of Hezbollah, as well as Yasser Arafat himself.
Sharon will have to answer to his own people for this reprehensible escalation of violence, but Bush must answer to the American people for his unqualified support for Sharon over the past three years.
When you uncage a lion, it ends up mawling people, and Sharon has been on a rampage for years now.
I know, I know, Hamas is hardly blameless. Sheik Yassin vowed to destroy the state of Israel, and Hamas's suicide bombings are absolutely indefensible. But the Palestinians cannot be vanquished militarily, except by genocide. Sharon has not tried peace; he has provoked Palestinians to violence at every turn, especially whenever a flicker of peace occurred. Plus, as Avnery says in an interview in the latest issue of The Progressive, "Violence is a symptom; the occupation is the disease."
Just as Sharon has made Israelis more vulnerable, so, too, has Bush made Americans more vulnerable. U.S. support for Sharon was not lost on the protesters in Gaza, nor is it lost on the millions of Arabs and Muslims who watch Al-Jazeera.
After 9/11, Bush had two crucial tasks: go after Al Qaeda, and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which waters the roots of Islamic terrorism.
Instead, Bush took a detour through Baghdad and turned a blind's eye on the plight of the Palestinians.
He and Sharon have made every Israeli and every American less safe today.
-- Matthew Rothschild
A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
A republic is where the sheep get to pick which wolves vote on what to have for dinner.
But in a constitutional republic, voting on dinner is strictly
forbidden.
--A Patriot
