After creating a new Jewish holiday last Monday, March 22, the Israeli government may want to bide its time before creating yet another Jewish holiday at the expense of Abdel Aziz Rantisi. It is not that he deserves to die of old age, but this guy promises to be a walking public-relations disaster. He has had an awful week in the perception war due to a combination of his own bumbling, poor luck, substantive news coverage and pro-Israel public-relations efforts.



I initially foresaw yet another image calamity for Israel when I woke up last Monday morning and learned of Hamas leader Shiekh Ahmed Yassin's death. Most C-Span callers on Monday and Tuesday were trashing Israel. One caller proclaimed death to the Jews, and another caller said the Israelis deserve whatever they get. What was really scary about attitudes toward Israel was that most callers were genuinely afraid that Hamas would export terrorism from Israel.



Never mind that as an organized military force Hamas, and every other terrorist group, is too weak to inflict serious damage on Israel itself. Never mind that no organized terrorist incident has occurred in the United States since the 9/11 attacks. Yet Hamas succeeded in already terrifying some Americans, many of whom probably live hundreds of miles from the more likely terrorist targets in the United States.



Here was the basic Hamas argument: Those brutal Israelis had to use missiles supplied by the Great Satan (read: United States) to murder a poor, defenseless, crippled old man bound to a wheelchair. See us marching by the thousands? Now we're mad. We're going to get Israel and at the same time, we're going to get you because you let Israel do this to such a beloved figure.



They we re not mad before? With all those thousands of disciples marching in the street, why did they do nothing more than march? Why bother to sneak into Israel and blow themselves up? What is stopping them from storming the barricades?



Quoted in the New York Daily News was this statement by Hamas' military wing, the Izzedine Al-Qassam: "The killing of Yassin was endorsed by the American government, and our reaction will not be done only by the Palestinian factions, but also by the whole Muslim world."

On Tuesday, Rantisi, upon replacing Yassin, told thousands of his followers, "We will fight them everywhere. We will hit them everywhere." (New York Post) What "everywhere" meant might not be clear, but on Wednesday, Rantisi limited his territory for vengeance when he told reporters, "We are inside Palestinian land and acting only inside Palestinian land. We are resisting the occupation, nothing else. Our resistance will continue just inside our border, here inside our country."



Before letting Americans off the hook, Rantisi and his people probably did not think that if they threaten Americans and even manage to make good their threats, then they might kill members of the Pity-the-Poor-Palestinian Club, those in the United States who maintain that the Palestinians are pure as the driven snow and Israel is the villain.



In the interim, mainstream media outlets were not only reporting Yassin's history, but also his very words, such as those recalled by the New York Daily News' Richard Chesnoff: "There will be no peace as long as there is a Zionist-Jewish state. Our holy goal is to liberate all of Palestine, and if the Jews do not go, they will die. All of Palestine is Islamic land, every inch."



Of course, supporters of Israel hammered home the explanation for the Sharon administration's actions. In so many words, they posed a legitimate question: Just what can the terrorists do that they have not already done?



Finally, Americans collectively gasped in shock when they watched footage of a gullible Arab teenager stripping at a West Bank checkpoint, where he was discovered wearing a genocide bomb belt. The Arabs have been sending children into combat, in some form, since the uprising during the Shamir administration. Still, this incident stripped Hamas of all possible credibility.



Perception is important. It can build support or destroy your legitimacy in the eyes of people whose help you need, and vice versa. Ariel Sharon is a lightning rod and Israeli officials frequently disregard the fundamentals of effective public relations. The only Likudnik who has consistently made sense to Americans has been Benjamin Netanyahu.



The Arabs have at times been very effective in generating undeserved sympathy, especially in Europe. This Rantisi shows signs of making Arab terrorists appear to be nearly as awful as they deserve.



Rantisi's flip-flop over how his people will exact their revenge certainly contributed to the terrorist's image. Previously, he displayed his hypocrisy: though recruiting young people to be suicide bombers, he has no explanation as to why he will not wrap a bomb belt around his teenage son. Before much time passes, Israeli officials may want to publicly question how Rantisi, as a pediatrician, could send other people's children to their deaths.



If Israel plays its cards right with Rantisi, maybe it can minimize the number of Arab holidays.