Waste no tears over the demise of one of the worst mass murderers in modern times. In spite of the descriptor "spiritual leader" often affixed to the name of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, there was nothing spiritual or holy about him. Mr. Yassin and his followers had no interest in creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza. His twisted ideology was focused on nothing less than the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic caliphate. He trafficked in the murder of innocents, robbing not only Israelis of their lives and their futures, but also the hundreds of young Palestinians whom he brainwashed and dispatched them to their own deaths.

Yassin masterminded the Dolphinarium attack in Tel Aviv in 2001 where several young Israeli teenagers were blown up waiting to enter the disco, the Passover eve attack in Netanya in 2002, where nearly thirty Israelis were slaughtered as they sat down to celebrate the Passover, and was personally responsible for the June 2002 attack on the Number 19 bus in Jerusalem at the Patt Junction, in which 19 people were murdered and 74 wounded.

E. Joan O'Callaghan, Toronto.