"US sinks UN resolution on Yassin" reads the headline on the BBC's Website

Yes, it was a UN resolution but look who sponsored it "The resolution's sponsor Algeria said it seemed the Security Council was "doomed to fail" when dealing with Middle East issues." Algeria, which is having it's own Islamic terrorist problems at the moment.

If the UN is going to have a resolution on Yassin what in the world are they going to do when Osama gets his?

The big questions is - is Israel's policy of killing Palestinian terrorist leaders working?

Here are some thoughts from the Middle East Forum

As a result, the nature of Palestinian terror organizations is that they are secretive and compartmentalized. People hardly know each other. There are no headquarters, files, computers, radio equipment, or organizational memory. Removing one activist can handicap or destroy an entire cell, but removal of one cell does not necessarily bring down the entire organization.

Despite defiant Palestinian rhetoric, Palestinian activists' fear of being on Israel's target list is paralyzing, and that is exactly what Israel wants. Explained Sharon:

The plan is to place the terrorists in varying situations every day and knock them off balance so that they will be busy protecting themselves.[22]

While on the run, the Palestinian terrorist's energy is devoted to survival rather than to planning the next attack. The terrorist detaches himself from his close circle of friends and family and begins to live a fugitive's life. He is forced to spend each night in a different location, often sleeping in the open field. Hours each day are wasted looking for a safe haven to spend the coming night. Most difficult is the distance from his home and family. He knows that any contact with his wife or parents could cost him his life. Consequently, he is completely at the mercy of his confidants, not knowing which one of them might be an Israeli collaborator.

Booby-trapped cars and telephones increase the feeling among Palestinian militants that the long arm of the Israeli security forces reaches their most intimate surroundings. They become nervous and suspicious of collaborators who might live among them. A Palestinian journalist conveyed the atmosphere of fear and confusion in the Palestinian street after Shihada's killing:

People are now looking for wanted men. They are stopping them in the middle of the street and will now begin asking for their identification before they enter a specific residential neighborhood. … No one feels safe. … How do you know who will be Shihada number two, and where the missile will come from? … Someone must have told the Shin Bet (GSS) that Shihada was visiting his house; that someone must live among us, and now everyone is looking for collaborators.[23]

And they should. Despite the deep animosity toward Israel, many Palestinians are still willing to face the risk of the death penalty the PA imposes on collaborators and provide valuable information to the Israelis. In a society where more than half of the families live below the poverty line, one can always find people willing to collaborate with the enemy in exchange for money or other benefits.

Assassinations of military leaders are traumatic events in the lives of their organizations, often leading to a change in organizational behavior. Commanders become extremely suspicious and cautious. They leave few traces of their whereabouts; restrict information about operational planning to small groups of secret keepers; and recruit new members more selectively. The paranoid environment in which terrorists operate reduces their effectiveness drastically. Trust is the bedrock of any human activity, including terrorism. Without it, the organization becomes disjointed; information cannot be disseminated; people do not feel part of a team; lessons are not learned properly.

Additionally, communication between the different cells breaks down. Following the killing of Musawi, Hizbullah squads began to maintain strict radio silence, preventing Israel from monitoring the organization's action. In the territories, Palestinian militants who fear Israeli eavesdropping refrain from using the telephone to communicate with each other. This leads to further confusion and misunderstandings. Such a dynamic has a cumulative, holistic, negative influence on the organization's effectiveness. The influence cannot be precisely measured or even assessed by empirical tools, but it is certainly profound.

Somehow, someway, we have got to get together and solve this problem. Biased UN resolutions and biased BBC reporting is not going to help anybody.