M. Hamdan Yousuf ("Yassin's assassination cannot be accepted," March 25) claimed that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin "had proposed a landmark peace deal" two days before Israel killed him, but that contradicts Hamas' covenant, accessible via www.fas.org/irp/world/ para/docs/880818a.htm. Yassin founded Hamas in 1987 to destroy Israel and form a fundamentalist Islamic state. Hamas has murdered 500 innocent people and maimed more than 3,000. Victims include Israeli Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Americans, Chinese, Dutch, Romanians and Filipinos. Yassin personally conceived suicide bombings that murdered 22 teenagers at a Tel Aviv discotheque in 2001, 30 people during their Passover dinner in 2002, and 11 people at the Ashdod port, one week before Yassin's death. Yousuf's view that killing Yassin will yield more terrorists dehumanizes Palestinians. Yousuf regards Palestinians as weeds, who grow stronger after being mowed, instead of as humans who make conscious decisions to live or die. Recently, Israeli soldiers stopped two Palestinian boys, ages 10 and 16, before they could detonate explosive belts around their waists. The boys were paid $1 and $20 by Hamas and Yasser Arafat's Tanzim to commit suicide. Wild animals protect their young at all costs, but Palestinian leaders send their children to destroy themselves. How can anyone expect Israel to negotiate with these people?

I was proud, as president of Penn State's Israeli Student Association, that Mazen Abdel-Rahman, then Muslim Student Association (MSA) president, stood with me to honor Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin and Mohandas Gandhi at the International Peace Memorial I coordinated in 1997. It is frightening that seven years later, the MSA glorifies mass murderers and brainwashers who send Arabs to early graves in the name of Islam.