Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, died a martyr. And in the iconography of the Palestinian national struggle, when a man dies, his life ends, but when a martyr dies, his life begins — like a pebble tossed into a pond, as it were, that will radiate far and wide.

The murderous assault on the 67-year old Yassin by missile-firing AH- 64 Apache helicopters killed the paralyzed and partially blind Palestinian as he was pushed in a wheelchair from morning prayers at a Gaza mosque. Seven others were killed and at least 15 wounded.

There was no shortage of condemnation of the act by Arab and European leaders, from Cairo to Beirut and from London to Athens. However, Washington, (surprise, surprise!) had nary a word of criticism. The State Department, being the State Department, simply said that “both sides must exercise restraint,” but Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser, not only failed to condemn the killings, but appeared to both condone and gloat over them when she said, “Let’s remember that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that Sheikh Yassin himself has been personally, we believe, involved in terrorist planning.”

Believe what you want, Condi, and remain mired in your ignorance of the fact that Yassin was merely the spiritual leader of Hamas — Hamas being not just a resistance movement like any other, that has resorted to revolutionary violence to free its people from an already 37-year old brutal occupation, but also an organization that spends millions of dollars on schools, clinics, orphanages, mosques, food distribution, sports leagues and other social programs to help a people that have been pauperized by that very same occupation.

What matters is how the Palestinian people themselves will internalize and act upon this latest outrage.

If what leaders of the Zionist entity want is a new wave of violence, then a new wave of violence is what they will most assuredly be getting in the coming weeks, months and years. Hamas was quick to declare that Ariel Sharon, the thuggish, 300-pound gorilla who is prime minister of “Israel,” had “opened the gates of hell and nothing will stop us now from cutting off his head ... the battle is open as is the war between us and them.” And in a statement issued soon after the killings, the group, directly addressing the enemy, stated: “Oh, murderous Zionists, you have bestowed martyrdom upon our sheikh, and we will bestow violence upon you, in every city and every street ... we vow to continue our march, and pursue Zionists wherever they may hide.”

Clearly, Sharon, in the wanton killing of the wheelchair-bound Yassin, will end up putting many Israelis in wheelchairs, and condemning many more of them to death.

So why did he do it? Why did Sharon authorize what appears to have been not just a cowardly act, that he must have known would elicit revulsion around the world, and retaliation by Palestinians, but a dumb act as well?

Perhaps he is out to make a statement, in the manner of a street thug who wants to show that his concession to defeat is tactical, motivated more by design than weakness — to show, in other words, that Israel’s projected withdrawal from Gaza is not similar to its rout in Lebanon in 2000, when Zionist occupation forces made a hasty retreat from there, with their tail between their legs and with Lebanese guerrillas chasing after them. By striking a blow below the belt to Hamas, Sharon thinks that he could prevent the group from declaring victory after Zionist troops leave the territory.

Perhaps he also wants to show that the Quartet’s road map has nowhere to go since he has already rolled it up, and that what the world should accept now is a map of his own, involving withdrawal from Gaza and expansion in the West Bank.

It is this kind of gangsterism that has earned the Zionist entity its image as the most despised pariah “state” in the world, an entity embracing the most racist, predatory ideology in human history.

Only the day the accounts are balanced between Palestinians and the settler state of Israel will the gates of hell be closed and peace will come to the holy land of Palestine.

No other day will do.

— 25 March 2004