The Helicopter vs. the Wheelchair

[Assad-u-LLAH]

The Helicopter vs. the Wheelchair In the memory of the assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin

The Helicopter vs. the Wheelchair
By Dr. Samah Jabr

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2004, pages 10-12

Neither the fact nor the brutal manner of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s cruel assassination was surprising—nor was Israel’s indifference to the severe human cost other Palestinians paid because they happened to be around Sheikh Yassin when he was targeted.

Sheikh Yassin is not the first and will not be the last Palestinian leader killed for struggling for Palestinian rights. Israel has assassinated many Palestinians and non-Palestinians—intellectuals, writers and artists from across the political and ideological spectrum—who led the fight against its occupation of Palestine. Under all its democratically elected prime ministers, Israel has assassinated Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories, in refugee camps and throughout the Diaspora.

What astonishes, however, is the stunningly accurate way in which Sheikh Yassin’s assassination ****phorically reveals the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The image of an American-made Apache helicopter launching three sophisticated missiles to kill a quadriplegic—an almost deaf 69-year-old man, made nearly blind by the “moderate physical pressure” applied by Israeli prison interrogators—leaving his mosque in his wheelchair following dawn prayers, exemplifies, on a smaller scale, what is taking place in occupied Palestine. Israel resorts to the logic of power to smother the Palestinians’ power of logic in struggling for a free and decent life in the land of their birth.

Sheikh Yassin was expelled as a teenager from his village, Al Joura, near Askalan, in 1948. For the rest of his life, he lived as a refugee in a small, modest house in a poor neighborhood in the Gaza Strip. Even though he was a captive of his wheelchair, Sheikh Yassin had a creative mind and a big heart. A brave, influential, daring speaker, he was known for his wisdom, balanced assessment and steadfast faith. He did not struggle to exterminate the Jews and create an Islamic empire, as the manipulative Western media likes to portray him. In fact, he distinguished between a Jew and an occupying Zionist. He did, however, advocate armed resistance to liberate occupied Palestinian land and end Israel’s daily killing and oppression of Palestinians.

Some of us agreed, some differed with the visions, opinions and strategies of Sheikh Yassin and his organization, but we all knew he loved Palestine and so we loved him, and we united with him in this love. Those who are aware of the politics of the occupied land know that Ahmed Yassin was a fair, sage, responsible leader. Indeed, many Israelis refer to him, and to Ismael Abu-Shanab, the high-ranking Hamas leader who was assassinated last year, as the soft-liners in the Islamic resistance movement. The two men knew when to say yes and when to say no to armed resistance, they cooperated with the Palestinian Authority and offered more than one hudna—truce—that the Israeli government violated.

The Israelis could very well have arrested Sheikh Yassin had they thought that removing him from the Palestinian public would be beneficial. They could have taken him to court and tried him if they really believed they could prove him guilty of terrorism. But they chose extrajudicial murder—even though they knew very well that this could severely harm Israel’s security, and jeopardize political options for a resolution of the conflict.

But it is no secret that the Zionist project has always used terror to achieve its objectives. This is what they have declared and practiced since the first international Zionist congress in 1897. They use terror to kill Palestinians and evacuate their lands, to threaten Arab nations and blackmail the international community. They killed Sheikh Yassin to call for more blood and spread fear and intimidation in Palestinian hearts.

“I, too, like Hitler, believe in the power of the blood idea,” wrote Chaim Nachman Bialik, Israel’s much-admired poet, in his 1934 “The Present Hour.”

Israel’s killing machines work in synchrony with its media machines. The day after Ahmed Yassin was assassinated, international media broadcast footage of a 14-year-old Palestinian boy from Nablus who arrived at the Hawwara checkpoint wearing a vest of explosives.“ He came seeking help from Israeli soldiers,” said an IDF spokeswoman, “and he was well cared for. But we need to find out those evil people behind him.”

The point of the report was to show the world how horrible Palestinians are and that they truly deserve death, and to serve as damage control for the images of the smashed wheel chair over the large bloodstain—all that is left of Yassin—in the previous day’s news reports. Only Al-Jazeera reported that the boy’s “mental capacity…is very low,” and quoted another boy from Nablus, also presented as a would-be suicide bomber, who reportedly told his family that the Israelis “told me to do this or else they would kill me.”

Even the international community’s weak official disapproval of Sheikh Yassin’s assassination was smashed in the face by another American veto of a Security Council resolution condemning the latest Israeli violation of international law.

Today, there is a feeling of dread and deep depression among Palestinians. While we have different opinions of what has occurred and various expectations of what will ensue,the one thing we all realize is that Israel is seeking a bloody war, not a peace, with the Palestinians.

Our task now is to develop strategies corresponding with this realization. Despite our mourning, anger and apprehension, giving up certainly is not an option.

In their attacks on Palestinians over the decades, Israelis have put many of us in wheelchairs—physically and mentally—and sought to cripple and restrain us. Despite his death, however, Sheikh Yassin, a man bound to his wheelchair, has given us a model of resoluteness, sincerity and gallantry. We hold our heads high for being the children and grandchildren of the man who chose his path, and lived and died according to his principles. The teacher is gone, but his lessons are eternal.

Samah Jabr, living in Jerusalem, is a psychiatrist currently working in the west bank