Dershowitz' diatribe, in legitimizing and promoting the extrajudicial assassination and murder of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, or any Palestinian leader, displays the height of hypocrisy and is an insult to all elemental principles of international law.

If Dershowitz has any understanding of international law, he should be calling for the immediate unconditional termination of Israeli illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, that has been allowed to stand for 36 years, in defiance of international law and repeated Security Council resolutions. He should be calling for the cessation of the brutal practices, to which the Palestinian people have been subjected under this occupation, including detention without charge or trial, torture, extrajudicial assassination,daily humiliation, demolition of thousands of homes, expropriation of property for the creation of illegal Jewish settlememts, and denial of all basic elements of humanity. All these acts are in violation of virtually every article of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and thus tantamount to war crimes, as defined by international law.

Is Mr. Dershowitz aware that international law and the UN Charter entitles all people, including even the Palestinian people, under foreign occupation, to resist such occupation? UN resolution # 2787, of Dec. 6, 1971, cnfirms " ...the legality of the peoples' struggle and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, notably in South Africa.....as well as the Palestinian people, by all means, consitent with the Charter of the United Nations."