Jun 17, 2007

Go Hamas! and potd

In a sense, I kind of hope that Hamas will win the bloody civil war taking place in Gaza right now.

I hope that they will fight for a long time with each other and kill each other. But when it is all over and done with, I hope Hamas comes out in control.

Sounds pretty stupid of me, right? Why would I want the radical terrorists of Hamas to take control of the PA and Gaza rather than the moderate Fatah faction?

Let me explain my position.

Fatah has been in control of the Palestinian Authority since the day it was founded. Yasser Arafat was part of the "moderate" Fatah faction of Palestinians.

In my mind, both Fatah and Hamas are bad people. They are both made up of terrorists with no interest in living peacefully with Israel (this does not include all the civilians living in the PA - there might be some of them who do really want to live peacefully with us as neighbors, but the political factions do not).

The only difference between them is PR - Fatah has been good at PR. The world believes that Fatah is really a bunch of moderates who are capable of making a lasting peace. At the same time, much of the Western world (parts of Europe not included), think of Hamas as a bunch of unruly terrorists hell-bent on destroying Israel. In essence, fatah believes the same thing, but has better PR and has devised more manipulative ways of getting rid of Israel.

As Jameel put it, Zeh Neveila, Vzeh treifa.


So, why do I want Hamas to take control?


As long as Fatah has been in charge, the world feels comfortable pressuring Israel to offer concessions. It never mattered if Israel got anything in return. It never mattered if the PA had kept nay of their promises or any of their agreements. Israel always had to make offers. And even when things were not going well in negotiations, Israel would be pressured to make goodwill gestures, sometimes in the form of land, sometimes in the form of releasing terrorists from jail, sometimes releasing money, sometimes easing up travel restrictions through Israel, etc. All this was in order to prop up Fatah and make them look better in the eyes of their people.


The world pressured Israel to play to Fatah because the world considered Fatah moderates. the world considered Fatah to be a bunch of people we could make peace with. Everything had to be done to preserve that.


If Hamas wins, that ridiculous pressure placed on Israel might be lessened. Nobody in the Western world likes Hamas. Everybody accepts that they are a bunch of thugs and terrorists (though some in Europe still choose to ignore that). Nobody will pressure Israel to make goodwill gestures to Hamas.


At least for a while. Eventually they will. But for a while, the PA will look really bad to the world.

So I offer my cheer, "GO HAMAS!!!"

And now for the Picture of the Day.... (drumroll please):

(picture taken from ynetnews.com of a Hamas terrorist at a border crossing. This is called upgraded security)

7 comments:

  1. "Eventually they will."

    my bet is sooner rather than later

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  2. I was going to hattip you, but really Elchonon pointed me to it on ynetnews.com before I saw it on yours. Then after I posted it, I saw it on four or five other blogs as well, so I figured there was no point in a hattip...

    Anyways, hattip to Jameel!

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  3. Unfortunatley, it does not work the way you think it is going to play out Raffi. Now, the West Bank has become a 'seperate political entity'. This means that there are no lessons learned from the Gaza withdrawl - since Gaza is full of Hamas and the West Bank is full of moderate Fatah, we can now wheel and deal with them. (Read: Give them the West Bank) After all, they are moderates!

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  4. welcome back Moshe! You missed the talk by Rabbi Lazer Brody last week in RBS! I was looking for you!

    Anyways, you are right about the West Bank (Olmert already said the new government is a partner for peace talks), but I figure it is just a matter of time (and probably very little) until Hamas takes over there as well....

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  5. You could have made the same argument (about the world "backing off") before the disengagement, but hindsight shows that, as logical as it is, it never came to be.

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  6. I was going to make ari kinsberg's comment but he beat me to it!

    ReplyDelete