Unprecedented series of assassinations
By Dr. Youssef Makki
October 3- 2024
Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid
Political assassinations have been a common occurrence since ancient times. In contemporary history, some historians attribute the history of the First World War to the reason for the outbreak of that war. One of the reasons was the assassination of Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by a Serbian student named Gavrilo Principe on 28 June 1914. This caused the First Global War outbreak, which resulted in sixteen million deaths. The Entente countries, Britain, Ireland, and France, participated in it against the Central Powers: Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. Despite the devastating effects of the war on the entire world, the events that followed confirmed that it was an unfinished war. By 1928, Europe and the entire world began to experience a major economic depression, which, for decision-makers, could only be ended by a second, more deadly and destructive global war. The assassinations and liquidations were collective, with millions of human victims. In the Arab world, the Jewish state is credited with being the first to adopt assassination as an approach since its inception at the end of the forties of the last century. I have continued this approach at several points to this day. Its assassinations were not limited to politicians and those who rejected its policies but included Arab scientists and experts, whose presence would have contributed to the development of Arab technology and industries. Its assassinations did not target a specific Arab country but included most Arab countries. In the fifties, the Israeli government, headed by David Ben-Gurion, carried out bombings targeting American commercial headquarters in an attempt to wedge with the Egyptian leadership, which took power after changing the political system on July 23, 1952. The assassination approach continued in the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956 and after the June 1967 war. During the war of attrition, Egypt’s chief of staff, Abdel Moneim Riad, was assassinated while visiting the front lines on the west bank of the Suez Canal. The Palestinians’ share of Israeli assassinations was the lion’s, as Palestinian militants were pursued everywhere, including European countries and Arab countries in Lebanon, Syria, and Tunisia. Assassinations have not ceased throughout the history of the Arab-Israeli confrontation. When Hamas was founded in the Gaza Strip, its leaders were physically eliminated, one after another, from its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, to Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who was assassinated on April 17, 2004. After the outbreak of what became known as Hamas’s Al-Aqsa flood, Israel targeted the movement’s leaders, Saleh al-Arouri was assassinated on January 2 of this year, and Israel was also able to assassinate the movement’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on July 31, during his visit to Tehran, to congratulate the election of a new president of the Islamic Republic. The assassination of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah comes in a related context of assassinations, which have become a familiar method adopted by various Israeli governments. Hezbollah’s share in Israeli assassinations was significant, especially after the party announced its support for Hamas in the face of the war of extermination waged by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in the Gaza Strip. The most notable of these assassinations, which included the party’s leaders recently, was the assassination of Fouad Shukr, who serves as Hezbollah’s chief of staff, on July 30 this year. In the previous discussion, we referred to Operation Pager and Walkie-Talkie, which Israel used as a means to kill civilians and innocent people who had nothing to do with Hezbollah; this war of genocide unprecedented in history, in front of the eyes and ears of the entire world, which caused the death and injury of thousands of Lebanese citizens. The September 27 bombing perpetrated by the Netanyahu government in the southern suburbs of Beirut, of which the Hezbollah leader was one of the victims, is a crime by all standards, in which tens of tons of explosives were used and led to the destruction of six buildings with their inhabitants, most of them civilians. Unfortunately, this crime enjoys the broad and absolute support of the administration of US President Joseph Biden, which has stood and continues to support the war of extermination waged by the Netanyahu government in the Gaza Strip and, more recently, in Lebanon. The responsibility lies primarily with the major powers, especially Russia and China. It would be unacceptable for Russia to be preoccupied with its special military operation against Ukraine. Nor would it be acceptable for China to pretend that it was preoccupied with its problems in the China Sea and with the Government of Taiwan. Such pretexts mean the rule of the law of the jungle and disrupt the role of the institutions regulating international relations, especially the UN Security Council and the United Nations General Assembly. The responsibility of the major Powers to protect international law is moral and humane and to hold accountable those forces that flout international principles and laws. If these forces are not confronted, the alternative is to return to the stage where the laws of independence, sovereignty, human dignity, and international security are lacking
