"The attacks inside Israel are operations we carry out in response to Israeli crimes against our people"
About this Quote
A vocabulary of retaliation is doing the heavy lifting here. By framing attacks “inside Israel” as “operations,” Ahmed Yassin isn’t just describing violence; he’s laundering it into the language of strategy, discipline, and inevitability. “Operations” suggests something clinical and contained, a tactical answer to a prior offense, not a moral choice made in the present. The phrase converts agency into procedure.
The sentence is built like a legal brief: cause (“Israeli crimes”) and effect (“we carry out”). That structure matters. It’s designed to preempt the first question outsiders ask - why target civilians? - by insisting on a single explanatory chain where Israeli wrongdoing is the prime mover and Palestinian violence is reactive. “In response” is the key hinge: it claims moral symmetry while quietly arguing for moral permission. You can hear the intended audience too. For supporters, it offers coherence and justification; for skeptics, it dares them to dispute the premise of “crimes,” shifting the debate from tactics to grievance.
“Our people” compresses a fragmented political reality into a unified victimhood, a rhetorical shield that blurs lines between combatant and civilian, state and society. It also signals representational authority: not “some Palestinians,” but a collective body whose pain authorizes action.
Context sharpens the intent. Yassin, as a Hamas founder, spoke from within a movement that treated armed struggle as both resistance and recruitment. The quote functions as messaging: it normalizes escalation, recruits through anger, and internationalizes blame by placing Israel permanently in the dock. It’s less an explanation than a strategy for legitimacy.
The sentence is built like a legal brief: cause (“Israeli crimes”) and effect (“we carry out”). That structure matters. It’s designed to preempt the first question outsiders ask - why target civilians? - by insisting on a single explanatory chain where Israeli wrongdoing is the prime mover and Palestinian violence is reactive. “In response” is the key hinge: it claims moral symmetry while quietly arguing for moral permission. You can hear the intended audience too. For supporters, it offers coherence and justification; for skeptics, it dares them to dispute the premise of “crimes,” shifting the debate from tactics to grievance.
“Our people” compresses a fragmented political reality into a unified victimhood, a rhetorical shield that blurs lines between combatant and civilian, state and society. It also signals representational authority: not “some Palestinians,” but a collective body whose pain authorizes action.
Context sharpens the intent. Yassin, as a Hamas founder, spoke from within a movement that treated armed struggle as both resistance and recruitment. The quote functions as messaging: it normalizes escalation, recruits through anger, and internationalizes blame by placing Israel permanently in the dock. It’s less an explanation than a strategy for legitimacy.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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