Xymphora on Riad Hamad's Suicide and the Power of Pipes and Emerson

April 21, 2008
Houdini style
by Xymphora
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
(as always go to X's blog for links which blogger doesn't seem to allow -- or am I missing something. --rb)

The assassination of Riad Hamad reminds me of the assassination of Philip Merrill. These stories are amusing in a macabre kind of way, with impossible suicide scenarios immediately described by clownish police officials as suicides. It is not enough just to kill yourself; the victim has to earn style points by putting himself into physically impossible positions before somehow arranging for the self-destruction. The classic case is still the death of Roberto Calvi, where the police, years after the fact, finally managed to figure out that it was impossible for Calvi to have killed himself in the position in which his body was found.

It is the ultimate anti-Semitic act - the pure distilled essence of real anti-Semitism - to feed a starving Palestinian child, as allowing that child to live and grow up just fuels the 'demographic problem' facing World Jewry in the Middle East. Hamad had described a campaign of government harassment against his charitable work. The trial - or travesty of a trial - of the American government against the food-providing charity the Holy Land Foundation, where the Holy Land Foundation was deemed to be a funder of 'terrorism', ended in a mistrial late last year. In the case of the suicided Riad Hamad, it appears that some group has decided that it is necessary to take the law into its own hands if this 'terrorism' of feeding the starving is to end.

The first concerted American government attack against Islamic charities in the United States, including the Holy Land Foundation, following an article written by Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson calling for a crack-down on the 'terrorism' funded by such charities, occurred in the week preceding September 10, 2001 (Sami Al-Arian, mentioned specifically in the article, is still being persecuted by the American government). A suspicious person might see the timing as part of a plan.