A lot of fuss is being made about the US and EU boycott of Hamas, the "democratically elected" government of the PNA. More fuss is being made over the arrests of their leaders. The fussers are forgetting a simple fact: Hamas is a terrorist organization. They support terror, they back it and they do it. If you like bombs blowing up in your subways ("underground") and aircraft slamming into skyscrapers, people getting their heads cut off and suicide bombings, you'll surely love Hamas. Otherwise, probably not.
That's not just Zionist propaganda. The
United States State Department lists Hamas as a terrorist organization. The
European Union lists Hamas as a terror group. The Hamas itself announces that it is a terrorist organization.
Hamas has never hidden the fact that they are a terrorist organization and is quite proud of it. Hamas leader Abu Marzuk told Der Spiegel:
"No Matter What, the Violence Will Never Stop". Hamas is "resisting" the occupation - of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Yaffo. Hamas claims all of Israel, and the
Hamas charter insists that all of Palestine is a Holy Waqf, given to the Muslim people by Allah."
The
Washington Post points out that the Hamas have nobody to blame but themselves for the current mistery of Gaza and the arrest of their leaders.
Hamas government officials endorsed the militants' demand that Israel release Palestinian prisoners it has legally arrested in exchange for a soldier who was attacked while guarding Israeli territory. Hamas justified this position by citing the terrorist movement Hezbollah...
...if Hamas wants to be equated with Hezbollah or define itself as at war with Israel, then Israel has every right to try to destroy the Islamic movement's military capacity, to capture its leaders (it has arrested more than 60 since Wednesday, including eight cabinet ministers) and to topple its government. Isn't that what happens in war?
Washington Post seems surprised that Hamas compares itself to Hizbullah. Washington Post should check the State Department terrorist list.
However, the Post wrote an excellent editorial, so here's a bit more of it:
As it is, Israel's Gaza incursion has been reluctant, slow, carefully calibrated -- and as of yesterday, casualty-free. In addition to the arrests, Israel has disrupted power supplies for slightly more than a tenth of Gaza's population, occupied an abandoned airport, rained shells down on empty fields and bombed the Hamas-controlled interior ministry while it was empty. Yesterday it again postponed a larger operation aimed at stopping the launching of rockets at Israel from northern Gaza in order to allow more time for mediation by Egypt. Meanwhile, the rocket firings continued -- another act of war that Hamas has encouraged, if not sponsored.
Actually Qassam rockets are manufactured by the Hamas, so they didn't just "encourage" the rocketry.
Ami Isseroff
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Replies: 1 Comment
IMO Hamas has progressed, by virtue of its participation in the election and success. from a "terrorist" organisation to being the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people chose Hamas on the basis of its Charter / Manifesto, and we who call for democracy must respect that choice. That by electing Hamas to be the government of Palestine, the Palestinian people have chosen to return to a state of war is again a matter of them exercising their democratic voice. As a democracy they must live with the consequences of that choice, and no amount of opinion surveys encompassing a few hundred opinions should devalue the outcome of the electoral process. This is the same criterion applied to any other democracy.
Equally we should not be fooled by the fiction that the Palestinian government maintains that the armed factions are in so way separate from the government and thus beyond their control. The repeated failure to seriously attempt to exert control over these factions is in itself tacit acknowledgement that the Palestinian government is content with their existance and effectively party to their activities.
If we in the "west" consider these armed factions and political movements like Hamas to be terrorists we therefore have a novel situation where a democratically elected government is regarded as a terrorist body, something quite new. It is I believe an error to adopt this stance. It is more logical to recognise and accept that it is the choice of the Palestinian people to return to a state prior "Oslo". That being the case our understanding of the obligations upon the state of Israel must also change and we need to accept that Israel is not obligated in any way to faciliate the continued capacity of the Palestinian state to prosecute war, and this transference of medical and other humanitarian supplies and / or people across the land borders with Palestine whould be suspended. If Egypt on the other hand faciliates such transfers that remains a matter of their own policies.
Israel's failure to date has been in not stating this simple situation ad nauseam until it is understood and accepted by the West. In part this informed by Israel's own failure to re-adjust from being occupier to neighbour.
Rod Davies, Monday, July 3rd
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