Hamas Leader Rantissi killed in Israeli Missile Strike

Tommy Vercetti

Hamas leader dies in missile strike
17/04/2004 - 7:49:42 PM

An Israeli missile strike killed Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi tonight in a strike on his car. Rantisi's son Mohammed and a bodyguard were also killed in the attack, hospital officials said.

The militant Hamas leader was one of Israel’s top targets after it had assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in an airstrike last month.

Rantisi’s car was hit with missiles this evening on the road outside his home, leaving only the burned, destroyed vehicle. After the explosion, Israeli helicopters were heard in the area.

Rantisi was taken to the hospital in critical condition, his body pocked with bloody wounds, and rushed into emergency surgery, but he died five minutes after arriving at the hospital.

Witnesses said there were three people in the car at the time of the explosion. Five pedestrians were also wounded, hospital officials said.

Palestinians ran into the street and called for revenge.

Rantisi is Hamas’ top leader in Gaza and one of the most hard-line members of the militant movement who rejects all compromise with Israel and calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Israel had previously tried to kill Rantisi in a helicopter strike on his car June 10. In a retaliatory attack the next day, 16 Israelis were killed in a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem.

The explosion happened this evening a block from Rantisi’s house in the Sheik Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City, about 100 yards from where Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin was buried after Israel assassinated him last month.

Since then, Israel has vowed to kill the entire leadership of the Islamic militant organisation.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/2004/04/17/story143341.html

Also at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3635755.stm
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=1537

Looks like Sharon's "peace" plan is underway then.

vorbis

bit of a high risk strategy by the Israelis. Still though if they get enough of the terrorist leaders then their operating capability could be reduced.

Tommy Vercetti

Originally posted by vorbis
bit of a high risk strategy by the Israelis. Still though if they get enough of the terrorist leaders then their operating capability could be reduced.

Meanwhile in the real world, it will galvanise support for what you call terrorists.

Memnoch

Originally posted by vorbis
bit of a high risk strategy by the Israelis. Still though if they get enough of the terrorist leaders then their operating capability could be reduced.

Sharon is the biggest terrorist leader of them all, personally responsible for numberous massacres..... what should be done with him I wonder?

Tommy Vercetti

Originally posted by Memnoch
Sharon is the biggest terrorist leader of them all, personally responsible for numberous massacres..... what should be done with him I wonder?

I know, bring him to the white house and endorse whatever he wants to do.

Sand

At the risk of going back over the arguments that were made last time the Israelis killed a hamas leader, the Israelis are perfectly within their rights to kill enemy forces attacking their people. What, are hamas some sort of boy scouts organisation?

Lastone

Actually if you live by the sword? I don’t have a problem with the Israeli’s bumping of Hamas leaders. I do have a problem with their constant claims to the moral high ground and their distortion of facts. Leaders of Hamas are legitimate targets and are combatants.

Since Israel has universal and compulsory military service once you turn 18 and that once you do that service you go into the reserve. That just about makes every Israeli citizen between the age of 18 and when ever they are too old a combatant and a target.

Remember it was not the Palestinians that invented the term Collateral damage.

brendy_eire

For those who think that murdering a Hamas leader is fair game, is it right for a Palestinian then to kill Sharon?

chewy

after the last guy was killed there was a lot of take of the "gates of hell" of revenge attacks by the palestines being unleashed and afaik there wasn't that many, was there?

brendy_eire

Originally posted by chewy
after the last guy was killed there was a lot of take of the "gates of hell" of revenge attacks by the palestines being unleashed and afaik there wasn't that many, was there?

That was only about a month ago though. I assume it takes time to recuit people, make explosives, etc.

halkar

I fear for the ordinary Israelis that will suffer over these assasinations when Hamas starts hitting back. Sharon is just giving them more reasons to hit back. Anything that happens (hope not) Hamas will say in response to these assasinations. Israel gets away with so much with US backing and no one there to stop them. In my opinion they are digging their own graves in that little piece of land and not even their all soldiers nation or US can save them.

The Muppet

It seems to be a case of cut off the head and the body will die. While a peacefully settlement would be the preferred choice there is no sign of that in this conflict and both are still very much at war. People get killed in war and all military leaders are legitimate targets.

As has already been said I too fear that the ordinary civilians will be the ones to suffer when Hamas seek their revenge but that has always been the case so this attack will change little in that respect.

mike65

Strategically its risky but if the policy is sustained then
Hamas will be gradually undermined by the certainly knowledge that the new leader, will die...lets face someone one day is going to decide they'd sooner live.

Mike.

halkar

They will decide to live when Israel stops their terrorist acts and this will not going to happen when they have a terrorist leader like Sharon in power whom only deals with US whom are already corrupted with their ultra rich jewish population and their lobies.
Sharon doesn't want peace and he made it clear when he went to US and try to do a deal behind Palestinians for something that is not belong to them. And part of the deal is Palestinians can return to Palestinian lands but not to the Israeli occupied lands which was taken from them and if they happen to form a country under these conditions Israel will control all of their air sea and borders, where is the future in this?. Why doesn't palestinians demanding 80% Israeli population to go back where they came from? They weren't asked when Israel were settling these people as it pleased itself on the Palestinian lands and now they are still not asked for anything that Israel will be doing.

ArthurDent

Hmm........ reminds me of a line from a poem "Ethics for everyman"

Throwing a bomb is bad
Dropping a bomb is good;
Terror, no need to add,
Depends on who's wearing the hood....
Daily the Church declares
Betting-shops are a curse;
Gambling with stocks and with shares
Enlarges the national purse....
Social morality
Has a duality-
One for each side of the tracks.


Roger Woddis 1917


Guess its all a matter of viewpoint, what is terrorism and what is self defence.

BattleBoar

Originally posted by halkar
Why doesn't palestinians demanding 80% Israeli population to go back where they came from? They weren't asked when Israel were settling these people as it pleased itself on the Palestinian lands and now they are still not asked for anything that Israel will be doing.

Sure if the UN had it to do over, they should have given West-Germany to the Jews and shipped the aryan Germans off to the middle east. Actually, maybe northern greenland would have been a better choice now that I think about. In any case, they didn't, and you can't move them all now. Israel isn't going anywhere. The Palestinians aren't going anywhere. The sooned both sides realize that, the better off things will be.

dathi1

Rantisi will be one of many to die in the weeks to come. I remember his interviews on Sky and the BBC he would answer the suicide bomb questions: "You kill my wife..I kill Your Wife..You kill my son..I kill your son"
Regardless I still support the Palestinians in their struggle against the Zionist terror occupation...I've no religious or cultural identity with them even less so than the Jewish tradition...but as our history tells us here.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of
our prisons or graves we will still evoke a
spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps,
raise a force that will destroy you! We
defy you! Do your worst!
James Connolly

Sand

Regardless I still support the Palestinians in their struggle against the Zionist terror occupation...I've no religious or cultural identity with them even less so than the Jewish tradition...but as our history tells us here.

And I support the Israelis killing of terrorists who murder their civillian population. I balance that with support for a Palestinian state and a palestinian leadership that offers more to their people than an endless war they cannot win. I support leaders on both sides who recognise the futility of this violence and overcome the psychotic fundamentalists who on the palestinian side launch terrorist attacks on people they consider to be no more than apes and pigs, whilst on the Israeli side colonise land on the basis of a manifest destiny within a 3000 year old book full of wonderful accounts of mass murder, torture and rape.

halkar

Originally posted by Sand
And I support the Israelis killing of terrorists who murder their civillian population. I balance that with support for a Palestinian state and a palestinian leadership that offers more to their people than an endless war they cannot win. I support leaders on both sides who recognise the futility of this violence and overcome the psychotic fundamentalists who on the palestinian side launch terrorist attacks on people they consider to be no more than apes and pigs, whilst on the Israeli side colonise land on the basis of a manifest destiny within a 3000 year old book full of wonderful accounts of mass murder, torture and rape.

Oh not again, 3000 year of book and mass murders and holocoust and what next, come and colonise my garden too. Tell me, in what part of 3000 years of history did Palestinians or Muslims ever mass murder, torture and rape you?
Your apes and pigs example is good but it is other way around, you got the sides wrong. It is Israel that treating the Palestinians like apes and pigs after they get them build their infasutructures with their cheap labour and take their lands and put them into refugee camps and bomb them constantly.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Fionnan

Halkar wrote "Tell me, in what part of 3000 years of history did Palestinians or Muslims ever mass murder, torture and rape you?
Your apes and pigs example is good but it is other way around, you got the sides wrong".
What about the behaviour of the Turkish empire in the Balkan's?
Pig = Christians. Monkeys(apes) = Jews, in Arabic slang. Yes i know the Turks aren't an Arab people but they are Muslim.

If one is to learn one thing from history, it is that irregardless of our religous or cultural backround, we are all still people and ALL still capable of carrying out the most horrible, warped and dispicable acts imaginable or unimaginable.


BTw, Haj Amin al Husseini. Grand mufti of Jersulem and Palestinian leader of the time spent WW2 in Berlin and raised 2 Bosnian Muslim Allgemeine SS divisions, who were responsible for "rear area security". Leadership of a nation usually reflects its people wheter a democracy or not.

BarryFry

Originally posted by dathi1
Rantisi will be one of many to die in the weeks to come. I remember his interviews on Sky and the BBC he would answer the suicide bomb questions: "You kill my wife..I kill Your Wife..You kill my son..I kill your son"
Regardless I still support the Palestinians in their struggle against the Zionist terror occupation...I've no religious or cultural identity with them even less so than the Jewish tradition...but as our history tells us here.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of
our prisons or graves we will still evoke a
spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps,
raise a force that will destroy you! We
defy you! Do your worst!
James Connolly

However tempting, I don't think Israel/Palestine today is analogous to Ireland in 1916. Quite simply, the Brits had a lot more room to maneouvre (i.e. they could go home) than the israelis do now (i.e. they've got nowhere to run).

A slightly more accurate analogy would be the North in the mid-seventies - lots and lots of rather pointless tit-for-tat killing in the interregnum before both sides become sufficiently dissillusioned to abandon long-cherished dogmas.

Only much worse. The Israelis are WAY more stubborn than the Unionists, and the palestinians WAY more fractured, romantic and addicted to "martyrdom" than the Republicans.

And thats not even mentioning the suicide bombers and helicopter gunships.

halkar

Fionnan, most of the countries in Balkans joined Ottomans to escape cruelty of Christians of the time. Ottomans did somehow managed to keep people from almost every religion that is on the world at the moment for many centuries. Of course we can not compare Ottomans to Arabs as even though both sides being Muslims Arabs didn't really liked the Turks as Turks always have been more secular than Arabs for centuries even under Ottoman rule. Many of the Ottoman state men weren't Muslims which is even difficult to see in our so called Modern World of today.
I never beleived the conflict between Israel and Palestinian is a Muslim - Jew conflict even though religion always gets in the way and used as an excuse for both sides. And when religions get involved somehow all world gets involved and nothing solved.

When I conqure the world I will ban the religion

Seaneh

Originally posted by brendy_eire
For those who think that murdering a Hamas leader is fair game, is it right for a Palestinian then to kill Sharon?

If you can't see the differance between the IDF and Hamas you REALLY need a reality check.

halkar

What is the difference? Both kill civilians, one has fancy uniforms and other doesn't. Does having uniform gives them to snipe around?

brendy_eire

Originally posted by Seane
If you can't see the differance between the IDF and Hamas you REALLY need a reality check.

No difference whatsoever in tactics. Both kill military personnel and civilians.

vorbis

its the targetting that is different. Afaik the IDF don't intend to wipe out every palestinian in the disputed territories. Hamas's stated aim is to not leave a single Jew in Israel. They also deliberately and systematically target civilian areas. The IDF has killed its fair share of civilians but they're hardly attempting to butcher as many palestinians as possible.

Seaneh

Originally posted by vorbis
its the targetting that is different. Afaik the IDF don't intend to wipe out every palestinian in the disputed territories. Hamas's stated aim is to not leave a single Jew in Israel. They also deliberately and systematically target civilian areas. The IDF has killed its fair share of civilians but they're hardly attempting to butcher as many palestinians as possible.

Thank you.
Someone with a brain at last!

The IDF wasn't setup with the AIM of killing every arab Muslim in Isreal and the Dispoted areas, if it was, the tens thousands of muslim arabs in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa would be dead by now.

bonkey

Originally posted by Seaneh
Someone with a brain at last!

This is the second thread (both today) where you have been abusive to other posters.

Make sure there isn't a third.

jc

Memnoch

Originally posted by Seaneh
Thank you.
Someone with a brain at last!

The IDF wasn't setup with the AIM of killing every arab Muslim in Isreal and the Dispoted areas, if it was, the tens thousands of muslim arabs in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa would be dead by now.

the IDF don't need to kill them all, sharon's ethnic cleansing by displacement is proceeding nicely according to plan with blessings from G Dubya