Hey Joe!

You are beginning to sound just like me.

Keep it up.

Trent Telenko:

You are beginning to sound just like me

Hey! If you don't have something nice to say about somebody... ;)

Even if it is one by one—these monsters have to be eliminated before they take us all to the abyss!

*It's religion gone mad*

The truth is coming out. Soon the whole world will comprehend the truth about violent, misanthropic Islam.

Lili

OK, who's next???

Should have posted this on Good News Saturday!

Anyway, the guy must have had 9 lives. How many attempts has he escaped? Glad to see they finally got him. Hope it was a silver bullet and that they also drove a wooden stake through his heart!

...a pediatrician as it were , who ordered a school bus filled with children blown up ... to make a political statement .

amf Rantissi .

the french are saying "every State has the right to defend itself .......but not when it violates international law " .

hmmmmm .

Are these assassinations still a means, or are they now ends in themselves?

Andrew Lazarus:

Are these assassinations still a means, or are they now ends in themselves?

Your point is well taken. Does removing Rantissi make Israel more secure or Israel's position stronger. Or will there just be another Rantissi? It is the organization that make the thug or the thug the organization? Is this a largely symbolic action or a merely symbolic action?

I'm really asking these questions--I have no answers.

FWIW, the best rationale I have seen is that these hits are setting up the PA for an all out civil war after Israel withdraws. By taking out the current leadership, the argument goes, Israel will leave a power vacuum which the Pali's behind the wall will want to fill. When and if they run out of gas (and bodies), they might THEN be ready to really talk with Israel.

Oscar is correct. That appears to be Israel's current goal. Eliminate local leadership so that when the Wall goes up the Palis start to kill each other, instead of Israelis. Someone else mentioned that if he isn't dead by then, Israel may kill Arafat right after the wall is complete, in order to start a full scale Pali civil war.

Andrew - Both.

It is just that people like Rantissi, who has preached hatred and genocide and planned terror, die. In that respect, his death in and of itself is a worthwhile end.

Second, the scarcest resource in any organization is good leadership. This is especially true of terrorist organizations, which depend on good leadership to pull their secretive, disparate activities together (and often have "organizational memory" solely in the heads of certain individuals, again as a necessary consequence of their activities and orientations).

Steady elimination of terrorist leaders perceived to be competent in ways that go beyond the maintenance of their own roles may not end terrorism - but it will make the organizations and attacks which remain much less effective. So it's also an important means.

This last bit may do more than enything else to explain Yasser Arafat's continuing existence, by the way.

That all may be, but it seems like decapitating these organizations serves a purpose in the short term as well - has there been any successful major terrorist attack on Israel since Yassin was killed? Maybe I've missed something but it seems like the 'leaders' on the Palestinian side are recently a lot more interested in ducking for cover than in executing a major attack. Strange how martyrdom doesn't seem quite so appealling when it doesn't involve a gullible illiterate teenager...

Now that was funny! Those scary little psychedelic trolls from Wonka Inc sure know how to do the smackdown...

thx for the laugh on what is usually a grim biz

Jeff: Israel has been taking out the midlevel leadership as well. There was a recent arrest of some two dozen terrorists rounded up in Nablus shortly after Yassin's assassination, I believe.

May there be many more, until the bastards can't blow up a paper bag.

That all may be, but it seems like decapitating these organizations serves a purpose in the short term as well - has there been any successful major terrorist attack on Israel since Yassin was killed?

I'd credit the wall with most of the reduction in terror.

The security fence does help an awful lot. A parallel assassination strategy will enhance and extend its effectiveness.

It seems that most sane people (not the French and other Europeans) understand that the security fence will most likely prevent further deaths in Israel. It should be completed rapidly.

Of course that leaves the Palestinians to do what they want to do to each other. They will find out that they have permanently eliminated their economic activity (or most of it), but that is their choice.

There's a strategy that psychologists call "reward A, and hope for B." A domestic version of this is when a child screams for a treat they've been denied, and the parent gives them the treat and hopes that they won't scream next time. International versions of this strategy include the Spanish elections and over many years the response of so many countries to Palestinian terrorism. The world has repeatedly rewarded A (Palestinian terrorism), gotten A again, and hoped for B (Palestinian acceptance of Israel's right to exist). For obvious reasons, Israel cannot afford the luxury of such flawed thinking.

The problem is one of shaping behaviour. This can be done in two ways - by rewarding the behaviours you want to see more of, and punishing the behaviours you want to see less of. When the Palestinians start showing some of the behaviours Israel and her friends want to see more of, the rewards will follow. In the absence of such behaviours, the only sensible strategy open is to punish the behaviours we want to see less of. Chief among those are planning and carrying out terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Killing Yassin, al-Rantisi, and any other terrorist leaders is both eminently sensible as an exercise in behavior modification and, as Joe says, absolutely justified.

Yassin ,Rantisi ...? Israel plans to bring about a civil war ? After the wall is up ...?

Yada yada .....

its like this , you had two mad murderous dogs doing a lot of barking and a lot of killing .
So what do civilised men do ?

You whack 'em both and then you worry about the mad dog population and what their absence will mean .

In the mean time there's two less in the world ,and that's a plus .

Worry about their deranged religious society creating more ? That's gonna happen no matter what .

so ....another one pops his head up -POP!!! another one bites the dust .

Islam has been in the process of creating these monsters for quite some time and what has already been produced ,is more than ample supply to fill the voids . This will go on ad infinitum until Islam changes its thinking and nothing less .

I'm not sure that the Israeli goal is to make Palestinian internecine conflict, post fence-completion, worse. And I don't buy Den Beste's argument that with the fence in place, Israel has no reason to care what happens among the Palestinians. (Even the best fence isn't physically impenetrable; nor would it shield them from the political and economic effects of a prolonged civil war going on next door.)

I would expect these assassinations to have the opposite effect, making such a conflict shorter and more decisive; and I suspect that's just what Israel intends.

With easy access to Israel cut off for suicide-bombing purposes, and with the more rabid leaders either dead or in indefinite duck-and-cover mode, the radical leaders would have a much harder time recruiting and motivating followers. The field would be clear for a saner leader to build a following, with the tacit understanding that if he becomes too radical, he catches a missile. Such a leader would have a terrific incentive to police up the terrorists: better that he do it himself (and appear strong, even if it alienated some), than wait until Israel did it for him (and appear weak).

The Israeli idea seems to be, to borrow a metaphor, to make Hamas and the other terrorists into a weak horse, allowing for a stronger-looking horse -- one more agreeable to Israel -- to emerge.

If all this is so, the question remains: where does Arafat fit into all this? Is he simply the last item on the IDF's "To Do" list? Or is it the Israelis' hope that Fatah (though surely not Arafat himself) could serve as a base for the emergent Palestinian leadership?

Kevin: more likely as a last item. While arafat's diplomatic shield no longer protects him in Israel's eyes (finaly!), he has another form of protection to rely on.

Simply put, Arafat may be seen as incompetent at all tasks except hanging on to power. IF one believes that, and believes his removal would only result in the emergence of more serious enemies as leading forces (Hamas, Hezbollah), then ironically he becomes the perfect enemy. Why would you kill him?

Answer: You wouldn't, not until the more serious enemies were dealt with and done. And by then, natural causes may have done the job on Arafat already given his poor health.

If not... his visibility means it isn't that hard to arrange a bullet with his name on it later on, if the Israelis decide that it makes sense.