Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound founder of Hamas whom the Israelis wheeled to kingdom come with a few well-aimed missiles, was known as Hamas's "spiritual leader.".

* Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound founder of Hamas whom the Israelis wheeled to kingdom come with a few well-aimed missiles, was known as Hamas's "spiritual leader." Mass murderers can have spiritual values--Himmler was interested in the occult--but they are all diabolical. Yassin was a noxious old mouther--"From the first drop of blood" that a suicide bomber "spills on the ground, he goes to Paradise," he said, while "the Jewish victims immediately go to Hell." His replacement, a former pediatrician named Abdel Aziz Rantisi, has carried on in the same vein: "Bush is the enemy of God.... God declared war against America, Bush, and Sharon." Israel has every right to institute a program of extreme early retirement for such types. Will it "work"? Will attacks in Israel diminish? Can Hamas be deterred? (Yassin advocated suicide bombing for others, including Palestinian children, not for himself or his brood.) In the face of such pathology, the options are few.