What do we know about Gaza? What do we know about Hamas? How do the Arab states (those with rational leadership, stable governments and successful economies) view Hamas? What is the objective of Hamas? Is it unreasonable to ask that Israel, as a state in the community of nations, cease to exist? Is it an inappropriate goal to strive to destroy all of the Jews living next door? These are tough questions which no one asks. The fact that they are the sort of questions which are patently absurd to begin with, yet relevant to the current situation is simply mind-boggling.
Is Gaza a viable society? I think a good argument could be made that a concentration of over a million people, totally dependent upon external aid sources with more than 50% unemployment is probably not. Was Gaza established by the nation-building efforts of Hamas? Nope, it was established in its current form by voluntary ceding of the territory by Israel. Hard to view them as the villains then. Is Gaza attempting to improve their lot by hard work and constructive effort? Nope, they are dedicated to creating suicide bombers, launching unguided rockets into the general area of populated cities in Israel and hopefully acquiring longer-range, more powerful destructive devices in the near future. To raise themselves up? Nope. To bring Israel down.
Does Hamas have a “real” military? Any aircraft? Helicopters? Tanks? Uniforms? Do they target military installations or simply operate a campaign of urban terror? The answers are obvious. If they then choose to tweak the nose of a very capable national military structure and expect impunity, one would have to question the rationality of the leadership. Now they are getting their butts kicked.
Does the world applaud the comeuppance? Read this piece from the UK Guardian carefully:
The Guardian Sticks Its Nose In
My simple reaction is who the hell do they think they are?
Mr. Obama has absolutely NO foreign policy position in this country until January 21st. Period! None! What he thinks is important but irrelevant today.
If this Brit Twit thinks that Obama is going to stand up in support of poor, innocent, Hamas against mean ol’ Israel he is totally addled. There is no justification in any kind of moral universe for the US government under any circumstances regardless of how we would like to curry favor with the Arab world to favor Hamas. There is ample evidence that the civilized Arab world views Hamas as beyond the pale, even at the low standard for Islamic nations.
Yet, we’ve got a supposedly reputable newspaper like The Guardian publishing such mindless twaddle and inevitably we’ve got a couple of hundred thousand readers sucking up the Kool-Aid. Let us hope they are not waiting breathlessly for the Messiah to take office and then embrace the terrorists as the hope for a new Middle East peace process.
If that should happen, we’re in very deep kimchi.
1 comment:
Ed, your opening questions are excellent. And indeed these questions and the answers to them are obvious. For some reason, however, there is a lot of "creative avoidance" going on out there. Why is the obvious being ignored? My guess it has to do with 1) influence of Arab money in the news media; 2) myth of a natural alliance or affinity between the Left and the Arab/Muslim world; and 3) antisemitism.
Yeah, the presumption of the author of the Guardian article is amazing--not that his objections or questions are presumptive--he can say what he wants--but rather the insinuation that alone among all men he is in the driver's seat of absolute global understanding, and that Obama ought to be listening to him before it's too late.... What a laugh. And there's a lot of pandering to Al Jazeera in there too. Odd, isn't it, how deferential the western media is toward Al Jazeera, a news organization that is operated by a consortium of dictatorships?
Kind of funny seeing the leftists getting burned by Obama. "Change" indeed. They were suckered in by their own racism--their belief that ALL African-Americans MUST automatically embrace their view of the world. Hamas is suckering them in much the same way.
C.
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