Ajami on Yassin

In this week's US News & World Report, Fouad Ajami writes about the assassination of Sheikh Yassin: A legacy of pain and poison. While not really saying anything new about it, he says it beautifully. One interesting point that he does make is one that has been made previously by others, namely that terrorism in Israel was a precursor for terrorism in the rest of the world:

"Terrorism probes the world, tests its limits, and always redefines our moral awareness downward. We can't say for sure what the contribution of Yassin was to the wholesale slaughter of September 11. Strictly speaking, the "death pilots" were not his men. But in hindsight, the terrors visited on Israel by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were a dress rehearsal for greater terrors to come. The young men--and, in time, the young women--with explosive belts in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and the restaurants of Haifa were a herald of more terrible calamities. The way to perdition had been found: The cult of "martyrdom" had been sanctified. Religion had been remade; from solace and ritual it had been changed into a weapon of combat."

We now see by the events of 9/11, and 3/11, as well as Turkey, Morocco, etc., that by allowing terrorism to flourish against Israel, and not taking the decisive steps to allow Israel to wipe out the terrorists, we have given terrorists some measure of legitimacy. It is the "root cause" argument, and it is wrong. The root cause of terrorism is not poverty or despair; it is nihilism, the desire to destroy, not to the desire to build something else.