“It was the best of time. It was the worst of times.” Those words are the start of the Dickens classic Tale of Two Cities. Yesterday was the tale of two (failed) assassination attempts. One was aimed at American presidential candidate Donald Trump. The other targeted Hamas military leader Muhammed Depp. The former resulted in wounding Trump. The latter killed several Palestinians, but not the primary target. Hamas propaganda is already providing the media with numbers of dead (probably highly inflated). Live media coverage of the Trump campaign seems to show that he was injured. Other reports from Pennsylvania say one other person killed and 2 critically injured (in addition to the assassin, who was also killed). Either way, the events are a good lead in to the next sentences of the Dickens classic: “It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness.”
Killing the leaders of a political movement cannot kill the ideas behind the movement. But in the case of Islamic Radicalism it can have a major impact. ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was killed, but his organization (much weakened) is attacking targets in Iraq even as I write this. The fallout from the Depp assassination attempt will almost certainly result in the hostage talks failing, or at least, being postponed. Hamas will try to blame Israel for everything, and get the media to do the same. I don’t know if anyone will remember that this whole war started with a Hamas led invasion of Israeli towns.
Wetherhorn 