According to all the Israeli TV stations this evening, some time before Nizar Riyan's house was attacked, the IDF called him up and warned him of the impending attack. He refused to respond rationally, so that when the bomb arrived he, his family, and his aides were all still there, and most of them were killed.
We'll never know why he stayed put, since he can no longer be asked. I suppose he might have figured that it was a piece of Israeli psychological warfare, and he refused to be swayed knowing that Israel would never endanger his family. Or maybe he wanted them all to be shahids.
The stranger part of the story is the Israeli side of it. There's a war going on, against an enemy whose entire rationale is to kill civilians: as many as possible right now, on the road to destroying the entire country later. Facing this implacable enemy, Israeli intelligence has pinpointed the whereabouts of a top enemy leader. So someone sits down at a phone, dials his number, and tells him, in Arabic I assume, that they're about to kill him and it would be a good precaution to remove himself.
I have never heard of such a method of waging warfare in my life.
And, I assume, most people won't hear of it now, either, as the media probably won't carry it. It will be tagged as preposterous Israeli propaganda, and trundled off to the basement to be used as rat-feed.
Strange as it may sound, I really believe that this is one thing that infuriates world opinion against Israel. Israel is announcing to the world: "We are the most moral country in the world." How would YOU like to be told that SOMEONE ELSE is more moral than you are? I think Israel does best in public relations when it defends itself with vigor, without "taking heroic measures" to be the most-moral war-wagers on the planet.
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