Ahmed Yassin Palestinian Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? The Palestinian Authority declared three days of mourning and closed Palestinian schools. What caused this closure? "This is the moment Sheikh Yassin dreamed about
Who were they mourning?
Who were Palestinians mourning in three days of mourning?
The Palestinian Authority declared three days of mourning and closed Palestinian schools. Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh suggested, "This is the moment Sheikh Yassin dreamed about". The Hamas leadership said Ariel Sharon had "opened the gates of hell." Hamas called for retaliation against Israel. About 200,000 people took to the streets of the Gaza Strip for Yassin's funeral as Israeli forces declared a national alert.  The assassination of Yassin also led to the fact that Hamas, for the first time, named as the most popular movement in Palestine by the residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip two weeks after the assassination.  Abdel Aziz Rantisi was announced as the new head of Hamas. At a memorial service for Sheik Yassin, he declared that "The Israelis will not know security... We will fight them until the liberation of Palestine, the whole of Palestine." Publicly addressing the "military wing" of Hamas, Rantisi suggested, "The door is open for you to strike all places, all the time and using all means." Rantisi was himself killed by Israel on 17 April 2004 in an assassination almost identical to that of Yassin. He was killed by three rockets fired from a Gunship by the Israeli Military.  On 31 August 2004, at least 15 Israeli people were killed and 80 injured in a suicide attack against two Israeli buses in Beersheba. Hamas stated the attack was a revenge for the assassination of Rantisi and Yassin. Following the bombing, an estimated 20,000 Hamas supporters in Gaza took to Gaza's streets, celebrating the successful attack. CANNOTANSWER
Yassin
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin (1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) ( ) was a Palestinian imam and politician. He was a founder of Hamas, an Islamist Palestinian paramilitary organization and political party. Yassin also served as the spiritual leader of the organization. 

Yassin, a quadriplegic who was nearly blind, had used a wheelchair since a sporting accident at the age of 12. He was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at him as he was being wheeled from early morning prayers in Gaza City. His killing, in an attack that claimed the lives of both his bodyguards and nine bystanders, was internationally condemned. Two hundred thousand Palestinians attended his funeral procession.

Early life
Ahmed Yassin was born in al-Jura, a small village near the city of Ashkelon, in the British Mandate of Palestine. His date of birth is not known for certain: according to his Palestinian passport, he was born on 1 January 1929, but he claimed to have actually been born in 1937. His father, Abdullah Yassin, died when he was three years old. Afterward, he became known in his neighborhood as Ahmad Sa'ada after his mother Sa'ada al-Habeel. This was to differentiate him from the children of his father's other three wives. Together, Yassin had four brothers and two sisters. He and his entire family fled to Gaza, settling in al-Shati Camp after his village was ethnically-cleansed by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Yassin came to Gaza as a refugee. When he was 12, he sustained a severe spinal injury while wrestling his friend Abdullah al-Khatib. His neck was kept in plaster for 45 days. The damage to his spinal cord rendered him a quadraplegic for the rest of his life. Fearing a rift between his family and al-Khatib's, Yassin initially told his family that he sustained his injuries while playing leapfrog during a sports lesson with his school friends on the beach.

Although Yassin applied and attended Al-Azhar University in Cairo, he was unable to pursue his studies there due to his deteriorating health. He was forced to be educated at home where he read widely, particularly on philosophy and on religion, politics, sociology, and economics. His followers believe that his worldly knowledge made him "one of the best speakers in the Gaza Strip." During this time, he began delivering weekly sermons after Friday prayers, drawing large crowds of people.

After years of unemployment, he got a post as an Arabic language teacher at an elementary school in Rimal, Gaza. Headmaster Mohammad al-Shawa initially had reservations about Yassin, concerning the reception he would receive from the pupils due to his disability. However, according to al-Shawa, Yassin handled them well and his popularity grew, especially among the more scholarly children. His teaching methods reportedly provoked mixed reactions among parents because he encouraged his students to attend the mosque an additional two times a week. Having a regular job gave Yassin financial stability, and he married one of his relatives Halima Yassin in 1960 at the age of 22. The couple had eleven children.

Involvement in the Israel–Palestinian conflict
Yassin was actively involved in setting up a Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1973, the Islamic charity Mujama al-Islamiya was established in Gaza by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and the organization was recognized by Israel in 1979. In 1984 he and others were jailed for secretly stockpiling weapons, but in 1985 he was released as part of the Jibril Agreement. In 1987, during the First Intifada, Yassin co-founded Hamas with Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, originally calling it the "paramilitary wing" of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, and becoming its spiritual leader.

In 1989, Yassin was arrested by Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering killings of alleged Palestinian collaborators. In 1997, Yassin was released from Israeli prison as part of an arrangement with Jordan following a failed assassination attempt of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal by the Israeli Mossad in Jordan. Yassin was released in exchange for two Mossad agents who had been arrested by Jordanian authorities, on the condition that he refrained from continuing to call for suicide bombings against Israel. The New York Times reported about his poor health at the time: "Sheik Ahmad Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, back home in Gaza after his release by Israel, is so frail he drinks only with help."

Following his release, Yassin resumed his leadership of Hamas. He immediately repeated his calls for attacks on Israel, using tactics including suicide bombings, thus violating the condition of his release. He also sought to maintain relations with the Palestinian Authority, believing that a clash between the two groups would be harmful to the interests of the Palestinian people. Yassin was intermittently placed under house arrest by the Authority. Each time he was eventually released, often after extended demonstrations by his supporters. Yassin criticized the outcome of the 2003 Aqaba summit. His group initially declared a temporary truce with Israel. However, in July 2003, the truce unravelled after a Hamas suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus killed 21 people the previous month. Israeli forces killed two Hamas members in retaliation.

On 6 September 2003, an Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-16 fired several missiles on a building in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip. Yassin was in the building at the time but survived. Israeli officials later confirmed that Yassin was the target of the attack. His injuries were treated at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Yassin responded to the media that "Days will prove that the assassination policy will not finish the Hamas. Hamas leaders wish to be martyrs and are not scared of death. Jihad will continue and the resistance will continue until we have victory, or we will be martyrs."

Yassin further promised that Hamas would teach Israel an "unforgettable lesson" as a result of the assassination attempt. Yassin made no attempt to guard himself from further attempts on his life or hide his location. Journalists sometimes visited his Gaza address and Yassin maintained a routine daily pattern of activity, including being wheeled every morning to a nearby mosque.

Reem Riyashi's suicide bombing at the Erez crossing on 14 January 2004, which killed four civilians, was believed by the Israeli military to have been directly ordered by Yassin. Yassin suggested that the suicide bomber was fulfilling her "obligation" to make jihad, and Israel's Deputy Defence Minister responded by publicly declaring that Yassin was "marked for death". Yassin denied any involvement in the attack.

Involvement in attacks on Israel

Yassin was a founder and leader of Hamas, which is regarded as a terrorist organization by a number of national governments. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon characterized Yassin as the "mastermind of Palestinian terror" and a "mass murderer." The Israeli government repeatedly asserted that Yassin was responsible for a number of terrorist attacks, which targeted and killed civilians.

The Israeli government said the targeted killing was in response to dozens of suicide attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs defended the assassination of Yassin:

Yassin was the dominant authority of the Hamas leadership, which was directly involved in planning, orchestrating and launching terror attacks carried out by the organization. In this capacity, Yassin personally gave his approval for the launching of Qassam rockets against Israeli cities, as well as for the numerous Hamas terrorist bombings and suicide operations. In his public appearances and interviews, Yassin called repeatedly for a continuation of the 'armed struggle' against Israel, and for an intensification of the terrorist campaign against its citizens. The successful operation against Yassin constitutes a significant blow to a central pillar of the Hamas terrorist organization, and a major setback to its terrorist infrastructure.

In his statement Yassin declared that Hamas did target Israeli civilians, but only in direct retaliation for the death of Palestinian civilians. In his thinking this was a necessary tactic to "show the Israelis they could not get away without a price for killing our people." In June 2003, after visiting al-Rantisi in hospital after a failed Israeli missile attack against him, Yassin told reporters: "Israel is targeting Palestinian civilians, so Israeli civilians should be targeted. From now on, all Israeli people are targets." "We got Israel's message. They should now expect the answer."

Views on the peace process 
Yassin's views on the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis were ambiguous. He supported armed resistance against Israel and asserted that Palestine is an Islamic land "consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day" and that no Arab leader had the right to give up any part of this territory. Concerning that territorial conflict, Yassin's rhetoric did not distinguish between Israelis and Jews, at one point stating that "reconciliation with the Jews is a crime." However, film of him exists stating he loved all people including Jews whom he regarded as his religious cousins, and explaining his conflict with them is purely over land he regarded as stolen territory. Yassin's rhetoric was often scrutinized in the news media. On one occasion, he opined that Israel "must disappear from the map." Yassin's declaration that "We chose this road, and will end with martyrdom or victory" later became a repeated mantra among Palestinians.

Yassin on several occasions proposed long-term ceasefire agreements, or truces, so called Hudnas, in exchange for Israeli concessions. All such offers were rejected by Israel. Following his release from Israeli prison in 1997, he proposed a ten-year truce in exchange for total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza and a stop to Israeli attacks on civilians. In 1999, in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper, he again offered a truce:
We have to be realistic. We are talking about a homeland that was stolen a long time ago in 1948 and again in 1967. My generation today is telling the Israelis, 'Let's solve this problem now, on the basis of the 1967 borders. Let's end this conflict by declaring a temporary ceasefire. Let's leave the bigger issue for future generations to decide.' The Palestinians will decide in the future about the nature of relations with Israel, but it must be a democratic decision.

Assassination
Yassin was killed in an Israeli attack on 22 March 2004. While he was being wheeled out of an early morning prayer session in Gaza City, an Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship fired Hellfire missiles at Yassin and both of his bodyguards. Before the attack, Israeli F-16 jets flew overhead to obscure the noise of the approaching helicopters. Yassin always used the same direction every morning to go to the same mosque in the Sabra district that is  from his home.

Yassin and his bodyguards were killed instantly, along with nine bystanders. Another 12 people were injured in the operation, including two of Yassin's sons. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, Yassin's Deputy, became the Hamas leader after his assassination.

Reaction to assassination
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, condemned the killing. The UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution condemning the killing supported by votes from 31 countries including the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa, with 2 votes against and 18 abstentions. The Arab League council also expressed condemnation, as did the African Union.

A draft resolution condemning the extrajudicial execution of Yassin and six other Palestinians, as well as all terrorist attacks against civilians was brought before the United Nations Security Council and vetoed by the United States, with United Kingdom, Germany, and Romania abstaining. The United States explained that the draft resolution should have condemned Hamas explicitly following its sponsored suicide bombings in Ashdod the week before.

Palestinian
The Palestinian Authority declared three days of mourning and closed Palestinian schools. Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh suggested, "This is the moment Sheikh Yassin dreamed about". The Hamas leadership said Ariel Sharon had "opened the gates of hell." Hamas called for retaliation against Israel. About 200,000 people took to the streets of the Gaza Strip for Yassin's funeral as Israeli forces declared a national alert.

The assassination of Yassin also led to the fact that Hamas, for the first time, was named as the most popular movement in Palestine by the residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip two weeks after the assassination.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi was announced as the new head of Hamas. At a memorial service for Sheik Yassin, he declared that "The Israelis will not know security... We will fight them until the liberation of Palestine, the whole of Palestine." Publicly addressing the "military wing" of Hamas, Rantisi suggested, "The door is open for you to strike all places, all the time and using all means." Rantisi was himself killed by Israel on 17 April 2004 in an assassination almost identical to that of Yassin. He was killed by three rockets fired from a Gunship by the Israeli Military.

On 31 August 2004, at least 15 Israeli people were killed and 80 injured in a suicide attack against two Israeli buses in Beersheba. Hamas stated the attack was a revenge for the assassination of Rantisi and Yassin. Following the bombing, an estimated 20,000 Hamas supporters in Gaza took to Gaza's streets, celebrating the successful attack.

Israeli
Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Defense Minister, branded Yassin "the Palestinian Bin Laden" and said, "If we have to balance how many more terrorists Yassin would have sent, how many terror attacks he would have approved, if we weigh this on the scales, we acted rightly".

Avraham Poraz, Israel's Interior Minister and member of the centrist Shinui Party, said he believed the assassination of Yassin "was a bad idea because I am afraid of a revenge coming from the Palestinian side, from the Hamas side." Shimon Peres, then leader of the Labour opposition, was critical of the assassination, suggesting that it "could lead to an escalation of terror".

Arab world
King Abdullah II of Jordan described the assassination as a "crime"; Lebanon's president Emile Lahud vehemently denounced the Israeli act as "...a crime [which] will not succeed in liquidating the Palestinian cause"; Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah said: "Violence will increase now because violence always breeds violence"; the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mohammed Akef, described Yassin as a "martyr" and his assassination a "cowardly operation."

Western world
Jack Straw, then British Foreign Secretary, said: "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself – and it is fully entitled to do that – against the terrorism which affects it, within international law. But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing and we condemn it. It is unacceptable, it is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives." The European Union's foreign policy head Javier Solana expressed concern that it might impede the peace process.

In response to a question about the killing, U.S. President George W. Bush responded:As far as the Middle East, it's a troubled region, and the attacks were troubling. There needs to be a focused, concerted effort by all parties to fight terror. Any country has a right to defend itself from terror. Israel has the right to defend herself from terror. And as she does so, I hope she keeps consequences in mind as to how to make sure we stay on the path to peace.

United States Representative to the United Nations John Negroponte stated that the United States was "deeply troubled by this action by the Government of Israel", while asserting that the U.S. would not support any U.N. Security Council statement condemning Israel's assassination of Yassin that did not include a condemnation of "Hamas terrorist attacks". According to his statement to the UN Security Council,

See also

 Hamas
 Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi
 Muslim Brotherhood

Notes and references

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

External links
 Reports on death
 "IDF strike kills Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin" (Israeli MFA)
 
"Assassination of Sheik Yasin Opened Pandora's box"
 Interactive Guide: Sheikh Yassin assassination – The Guardian
 Profiles of Yassin
 BBC Obituary
 Guardian Obituary
 UN Response
 U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Condemning Israel for Hamas Killing

1937 births
2004 deaths
20th-century criminals
Al-Azhar University alumni
Assassinated Hamas members
Assassinated Palestinian politicians
Blind politicians
Deaths by Israeli airstrikes
Hamas leaders
Male criminals
Palestinian criminals
Palestinian imams
Palestinian Islamists
Palestinian Sunni Muslims
People with tetraplegia
Politicians with physical disabilities
A mourning ring is a finger ring worn in memory of someone who has died.  It often bears the name and date of death of the person, and possibly an image of them, or a motto. They were usually paid for by the person commemorated, or their heirs, and often specified, along with the list of intended recipients, in wills.  Stones mounted on the rings were usually black, and where it could be afforded jet was the preferred option. Otherwise cheaper black materials such as  black enamel or vulcanite were used. White enamel was used on occasion particularly where the deceased was a child. It also saw some use when the person being mourned had not married. In some cases a lock of hair of the deceased person would be incorporated into the ring. The use of hair in mourning rings was not as widespread as it might have been due to concerns that the hair of the deceased would be substituted with other hair.

The use of mourning rings dates back to at least the 14th century, although it is only in the 17th century that they clearly separated from more general Memento mori rings. By the mid-18th century jewelers had started to advertise the speed with which such rings could be made. The style largely settled upon was a single small stone with details of the decedent recorded in enamel on the hoop. In the latter half of the 19th century the style shifted towards mass produced rings featuring a photograph mounted on the bezel before the use of mourning rings largely ceased towards the end of the century.

Use of mourning rings resurfaced in the 1930s and 1940s in the United States. The rings were made of bakelite and mounted a small picture of the person being mourned.

Mourning rings have sometimes been made to mark occasions other than a person's death. In 1793 one was made for William Skirving after he was sentenced to penal transportation.

People who bequeathed mourning rings 

 
Cesar Picton, d. 1836, bequeathing 16 rings
Sir Anthony Browne
Col. Nicholas Spencer
William Shakespeare (mourning rings cited in Shakespeare authorship question)
Princess Amelia of the United Kingdom
King Richard II of the United Kingdom
Jeremy Bentham (Philosopher) d. 1832

References

Rings (jewellery)
Death customs Filial mourning () refers to a bureaucratic norm, practiced since the Han dynasty, whereby officials of the imperial government of China were obliged to resign their posts and return to their home upon the death of a parent or grandparent.

Description
The meaning of the phrase literally means 'to encounter worries/loss', i.e. bereavement. Once used to refer to all forms of mourning for one's parents, it evolved in meaning to refer only to the practice of officials resigning their posts for mourning.

The roots of the practice lie in the Confucianist focus on filial piety as a key virtue of government, and thus was instituted during the Western Han dynasty, when Confucianism first became the official ideology of the empire. During the mourning period, banqueting, marriage, official activities and participation in the Imperial Examinations are all proscribed. The length of the mourning period is nominally three years, though in practice it has been described as being between twenty-five to twenty-seven months; this is also in line with Confucian prescriptions, since it takes three years for a human child to be fully weaned. At the end of the period, officials will be returned to the same rank as their last previously served post.

Nonetheless, given the length of the mandatory mourning and the tight restrictions on political or public activity, this practice often had a negative effect on the career of officials. Measures did exist to allow the government to recall an official in mourning; this is often applied to key officials in the bureaucracy, who are unable to leave their duties immediately as prescribed, or in times of emergency. On the other hand, failure to report a deceased parent and submit to filial mourning was an offence, and officials were liable to be impeached upon discovery.

Even the Emperor was subjected to filial mourning, though his indispensability to administrative duties means he need only mourn for 27 days, instead of months.

The Filial mourning nowadays (Republic of Korea)
The custom of the three-year mourning period was introduced to Korea during the early Goryeo period, and continued only intermittently as many complained it was too long. It spread around the country during the late Goryeo period after the great Neo-Confucian scholar-official Jeong Mong-ju (1337-1392) spent the entire threeyear mourning period living in a shack beside his parents’ graves. It became the norm among the Neo-Confucian literati class during the following Joseon period.

Hence, when a parent passed away, people were expected to build a shack beside their parent’s grave and stay there till the threeyear period was over. Over the three years, they abstained from meat and liquor and did not sleep with their wives.

Nowadays it seems obvious people can not implement this practice anymore. 
Among traditional korean families the Filial mourning is still practiced, thus in a different way. One who lost his, of one of his parents, is supposed to keep a low profile for three years, not letting himself to be tempted by "pleasures".

References

Further reading

Death customs
Han dynasty
Chinese words and phrases