I found the recent Wespeak “Let’s stop talking past each other,” by Abby Rapoport, incredibly naive.
The crux of her argument was her belief that Sheik Ahmed Yassin’s death “will bring more violence and less hope for peace” because he “was a legitimate leader.”
Osama bin Laden is a similarly legitimate leader. The legitimacy of both of them pale in comparison to the legitimacy of Adolf Hitler. Obviously, the death of a “legitimate leader” does not necessarily lead to more violence and less hope for peace; it may very well lead to the opposite.
One may reasonably wonder whether the killing of an individual terrorist, even one as evil as Yassin, will ultimately prove beneficial and it is generally positive when people of good will dialog about the Arab-Israeli conflict. We should certainly hope that some legitimate Palestinian Arab interested in negotiating a peaceful settlement with Israel will emerge someday soon.
There is no reason, however, to pretend that the spiritual leader of the Hamas terrorist group and godfather of suicide bombers got anything less than he deserved.
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