Soccer Dad

The Foolish Consistency of Journalists

Ever notice how reporters are unable to escape from the hobgoblins of their limited world view? After Israel killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin the Washington Post reported:

The day after Israeli helicopter pilots assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, Israelis awoke to the kind of pervasive atmosphere of fear that hasn't been felt here in months.

The morning's first dose of anxiety arrived with the daily newspapers: "ALERT" warned the headline dominating the front of the daily tabloid Maariv.

One of the interviewees in the article is quote as saying though she's glad that a terrorist is dead, she wonders if it's worth the number of Israelis who will die in a retaliation.
Hamas in the eyes of Molly Moore is an invincible entity, able to respond to devastating blows immediately. I don't blame Israelis for being scared; past experience has shown that Hamas often retaliates for the killing of their leaders. But it doesn't usually happen right away. A reporter should know that. A reporter also might investigate whether Hamas might have been hurt by the killing of its charismatic leader. But Moore and her paper are too convinced that there's a cycle of violence. She needn't investigate further.
A few weeks later, after Israel killed Dr. Rantisi Moore reported that "Killings May Make Hamas More Formidable"

"The worst thing is a headless Hamas," said Eyad Sarraj, a prominent Palestinian psychiatrist and human rights advocate who has closely monitored the role of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. "A headless Hamas means too many heads, too many agendas. Then you can't control exactly what happens."

Huh? That makes no sense. An organization devoted to terror will do its most effective work when it is organized. Remove the organizers and the terror group will not be as effective.
(A Salon blog, Secular Blasphemy, makes a similar point too.)
There are those who have looked at the bigger picture. There's Charles Radin in the Boston Globe:

But Eran Lerman, a former deputy director of military intelligence who now represents the American Jewish Committee in Israel, said the struggle between Hamas and Israel's forces has fundamentally changed.

''It took a long time, but now these people can't drive from one place to another" without Israeli intelligence knowing it, Lerman said.

''This requires a complex grid of human and signal intelligence, which takes time to establish, but after a while you get a grasp on what's going on. We had this. We lost it in 1993" when the Oslo peace accords were agreed to, ''and we had to get it back."

Now, Lerman asserted, Israel has every reason to exert maximum pressure on Hamas.

''It is the law of diminishing marginal hatred," Lerman said. ''What is the additional hatred you get for killing Rantisi after you have killed Yassin? As a friend of mine in the [security services] says: 'The Palestinians might get really mad. They might even start blowing up buses.' "

And there's Khaled Abu Toameh in the Jerusalem Post who notes:

"It's now clear that [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon has decided to change the rules of the game," said a senior Hamas activist in Gaza City. "Now we understand that the assassinations are directly linked to his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Sharon himself has said that he wants to 'clean' the area before he leaves. This means he wants to liquidate as many Hamas leaders as possible so that the withdrawal would not be portrayed as a retreat. Of course he is mistaken and Hamas will prove to him that the killings will only strengthen us."
Yet the general assessment in the Gaza Strip is that while the assassinations have boosted Hamas's popularity, the movement is now facing a serious leadership crisis. Moreover, Hamas's credibility has suffered a major blow because its followers have failed to avenge the killing of Yassin as promised. Rantisi was the first to threaten an "earthquake" in Israel in retaliation for the killing of his predecessor.

Maybe Hamas isn't so strengthened. Abu Toameh also wrote this nugget:

Although he had repeatedly expressed a desire to die as a shaheed (martyr), Rantisi, like most of the Hamas leaders, did everything possible to avoid death.
Long before he was chosen as successor to Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas who was killed in a similar air strike last month, Rantisi avoided appearing in public unless he was surrounded by a handful of aides and supporters. He knew very well that Israel would not target him when he was flanked by a large number of people to avoid harming innocent civilians.

Two observations: 1) despite the bluster, Rantisi was a coward and 2) Hamas took advantage of Israel's humanitarian instincts.
It might be that Hamas will strike back at Israel successfully, but that doesn't mean that Israel had strengthened the organization by dispatching its leaders.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at April 27, 2004 02:47 AM | TrackBack