Rantisi is brought to justice: “We will all die one day. Nothing will change. If by Apache or by cardiac arrest, I prefer Apache,” he said. It’s nice when cosmic justice and individual preferences can both be satisfied.
UPDATE: Mark Kleiman objects:
The point seems to me an elementary one. Since “To bring X to justice” means “To arrest and try X according to law,” using the phrase “X was brought to justice” to describe a situation in which X was, in fact, shot down like a dog must be an error. It may be warfare, but it isn’t justice.Sorry, Mark, but I don’t see why arrest and trial is necessary for justice, nor do I think that arrest and trial create justice. Rantisi not only didn’t deny responsibility for his crimes, he reveled in them. There is no injustice in killing him. There are sound prudential reasons for generally not giving governments the power to eliminate even obviously and admittedly guilty, unrepetant mass murderers without arrest, trial, etc., but these are prudential reasons only, not interests of justice per se. In Rantisi’s case he was not only obviously and admittedly guilty and unrepetant, but a “ticking time bomb” who was Hamas’s primary contact with Iran and Hezbollah, attempting to import their mass murdering skills to Israel. An operation to arrest and try him would not only have put additional Israeli and Palestinian lives in danger during its undertaking, but would have required additional weeks or months of planning that would have allowed Rantisi to participate in many more murders, and build up the infrastructure of murder. No, the interests of “justice” argue for exactly what Israel did.
As for arrest and trial not creating justice, O.J. Simpson was arrested and tried according to law, but I’d laugh at anyone who says that “justice” had anything to do with either the conduct of the trial or its outcome. Again, we accept such fiascoes because, over the greater run of cases, justice is better served by arrest and trial than by alternative methods of attempting to secure justice. But to suggest that justice is purely a matter of following procedure seems to me legalistic nonsense.
Mark also objects that it’s bad manners to express glee at the death of the likes of Rantisi. Guess we will have to cancel Purim. [I posted the update as I was rushing out for the day, and I thought I had deleted the last two sentences, which I decided did not do justice to rabbinic Judaism’s ambivalent teachings on how one should feel when an evil enemy has been duly punished. But the holiday of Purim does indeed gleefully celebrate the hanging of the evil Haman and his sons, who, according to tradition sought to destroy the Jews of the ancient Persian empire. Meanwhile, I can’t disagree with Pejman:
The objection against “danc[ing] on the graves of one’s recently slain enemies” is frankly bizarre. Again, Rantisi was a murderer and a psychopath on a mass scale–a characterization with which I am sure Kleiman agrees. Why shouldn’t those who support Israel against such terrorists rejoice in his death? Once we in the United States capture or kill Osama bin Laden, will we not rejoice? Shouldn’t we? For the record, I’ll smoke a huge cigar, toast the capture or death of bin Laden, and perhaps even engage in some forms of hedonism (ladies, take note of this–you are invited to help me in this noble cause) once the goal of capturing or killing bin Laden is accomplished. Far from being “bad manners,” such a response would be entirely appropriate–and it is appropriate in response to Rantisi’s death. He was too long of this world. And the world is far better without his presence.]
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