Saudi newspapers today commented on Israel’s murder of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and criticised the U.S. failure to denouce the killing.
The Jeddah-based Arab News said that Washington’s response to Israel’s criminal act was wholly inadequate. Unlike every other country which has expressed a view, the United States has held back from a clear and outright condemnation of the Hamas leader’s assassination, which is a serious mistake. U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice even appeared initially to approve and endorse the killing; but a few hours later she had to tow the official line that the United States was “deeply troubled”. She then absurdly called upon the Palestinians to stay calm. Whatever the wiser members of the State Department may wish, the impression given by Washington in the wake of this crime is that America approves.
The Saudi Gazette said that as leaders denounced Yassin’s murder worldwide, U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice came close to endorsing it. Hamas was a terrorist organization, she said, and Sheikh Yassin was involved in terrorism. Even Washington must have realized that using a rocket to slay a half-blind, half-deaf septuagenarian in a wheelchair would not be well received by international public opinion. A few hours later, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher adopted a very different tone, saying that the U.S. Government was “deeply troubled” by Yassin’s death. Even then, it took a while for anyone in the Bush Administration to vocalize that concern, and by the end of the day no one in the White House had seen fit to condemn the attack. Hopefully President Bush saw on television the numbers of Palestinians who demonstrated around Yassin’s coffin and the intensity of feeling that now grips Palestinians because, truly, the ‘gates of hell’ have been opened.
Source: SPA
