March 25-31, 2004

pretzel logic

Fear and Loathing

by Howard Altman

The missile that blew the top off of quadriplegic cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s head Monday may have done something that no Arab leader has ever been able to accomplish: create true pan-Arab unity.

All over the Arab world, reaction to the assassination of Hamas’ founder has been ferocious. Tuesday, Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for all Arabs to unite for the annihilation of Israel.

Just as George W. Bush brought the United States no security by taking out Saddam Hussein, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has brought Israel no security by taking out Yassin.

Quite the opposite, according to one of the few voices of sanity left in Israel.

"This makes the security of Israel much worse," says Uri Avnery from his home in Israel.

Avnery, a former member of the Israeli Knesset who left the legislative body in 1981 to form Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, says that Sharon has made a terrible blunder.

"It is poisoning a whole generation of Arabs, millions and millions of children and young people all over the world," says Avnery. "The rage and fury of these people, whom you can see hour after hour on Al-Jazeera, these were people who yesterday may have been neutral or indifferent and now they will become active fighters thanks to an act of folly by a bankrupt administration that had nothing left to offer but to assassinate people. It turns the Israeli army into a death squad."

The diminution of security in Israel is not just polemic conjecture, says Avnery.

"There is a mood of fear in Israel right now," he says. "The markets are empty. The main streets are empty. People are afraid to go on a bus. They are afraid to send their children to school. Everybody understands there is going to be a retaliation. Even if they do not understand the long-term implications, people in Israel understand there is going to be revenge in the near future, because of what has happened when people far less important than Sheikh Yassin have been killed in the past."

Making matters exponentially worse, Avnery says, is that Yassin’s assassination creates a far deadlier new dynamic.

"For 120 years, this has been a clash of nationalist movements," says Avnery, who gave up his Knesset seat so that an Arab colleague could take it. "The Jews and Palestinians both claimed this country as their homeland, and it was a rational conflict over land and could be solved. But, now that it has turned into a religious conflict, we are entering a nightmare of historic dimensions. There is no solution to religious conflicts, no compromise between religious movements."

Sharon, "who is too rigid to understand any of this," ordered the assassination because of his growing unpopularity, Avnery says.

"It is always popular to kill someone," he says. "You kill someone on the other side, you become popular. It is no different than America. But these men, who are responsible for the lives of their nations, should be beyond this primitive response, but I don’t think Mr. Sharon thinks beyond short-range dictates and political expediency."

Sharon and Bush, says Avnery, had better start considering the consequences of their actions.

"If Mr. Sharon and his generals can’t think about it, Americans should," he says. "All these Islamic fundamentalist organizations, which exist all over the world, are not only aimed at Israel and the United States. They are aimed first and foremost against their own governments, which they accuse of being American stooges, American collaborators, selling out to America, like Mubarak in Egypt … like the sheiks and kings in the Persian Gulf, like Morocco and beyond. They are all on the verge of being considered traitors to the Arab cause, and this gives them new motivation, it strengthens fanaticism."

Avnery, who just turned 80, is no naif. He is not mourning Sheikh Yassin who, like Sharon, was a murderous thug who believed only in hatred and massacre.

But, like anyone left who has any modicum of sanity and any hope for the future, Avnery says Sharon and Bush are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

The assassination "is an amazing danger to American interests," he says. "I wonder if a man like President Bush has an understanding of all this. Sharon would have never done this without being sure of American approval, but this is an act against America. Mr. Bush pretends to fight against terrorism, but everything he has been doing in the last three years reinforces terrorism. He is bringing new people to terrorist organizations. New rage. New hatred in the fight against America. Can anyone really be this stupid?"

Unfortunately for the world, the answer is as obvious as it is sad.