Sunday, May 01, 2011

A marriage made in hell

Melanie Phillips

So Molotov and Ribbentrop are alive and well and living in Gaza and Ramallah. The pact between Fatah and Hamas is of course a marriage of convenience, forged solely to help fool the world into accepting a de facto state of Palestine. If such a pact were to last, then of course it would mean the end of Mahmoud Abbas and the economic and social progress that has been made in Ramallah and environs; these would be replaced by the Iranian satrapy of Hamastan, political dissidents thrown off the tops of tall buildings and women subjected to sexual terrorism and Islamic subjugation.The fact is that Ramallah wants Gaza to be part of ‘Palestine’ like it wants a hole in the head. The point of the exercise for Abbas is merely to finesse the sticky question of whether ‘Palestine’ will include Gaza, and thus enable Whitehall, Foggy Bottom and Brussels to pretend that Hamas has now decided to stop being genocidal fanatics and become instead liberal democrats keen to show off how many friends they have on Facebook (just like all those nice al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood rebels in Libya and Egypt). But instead Hamas would swallow the PA, and Ramallah would kiss goodbye to the good life it has been belatedly discovering is distinctly preferable to never-ending war and economic and social enslavement.

Meanwhile, there are already calls from members of Congress to end US funding of the PA because of this pact, on the grounds that it is unconscionable for American money to be used to subsidise Hamas because of its open ambition to destroy Israel and the genocidal Jew-hatred of its foundational Charter (it’s a shame the same objections are not made to using western money to fund the incitement by PA-controlled media, preachers and teachers to hate Jews and murder Israelis, but let’s skip lightly over that for now). Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has reiterated his country could never deal with Hamas; U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said it would only back a Palestinian government

‘on terms which promote the cause of peace…Hamas, however, is a terrorist organisation which targets civilians.’

Far from leveraging a state of Palestine, this pact could in fact mean therefore that such a state runs headlong into the sand -- even before Abbas drives it into the cul-de-sac of a unilateral declaration that destroys his ability to bargain over its terms. Could it be that, to paraphrase the immortal words of Abba Eban about the Arabs in general, the Palestinians are demonstrating once again how they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity? Of course, a significant faction within Whitehall, Foggy Bottom and Brussels has been pushing for years for Hamas to be brought in from the cold, on the basis that there can be no solution without it. In fact, Hamastan would more likely only lead to a Final Solution. The idea that genocidal fanatics+genocidal pragmatists=Jeffersonian democrats and peace in our time in the Middle East is merely the morally debauched anti-reasoning which passes for educated opinion in the west.


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http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/48235/dialogue-a-western-leftist


Dialogue with a western leftist

By Nick Cohen, April 27, 2011

"You say you support the Palestinians?"

"Yes."

"Which Palestinians?"

"What do you mean 'which Palestinians'? I support all Palestinians. Their oppression by Israel is the great injustice of our time. Western hypocrites ignore racism, and use false accusations of antisemitism to stop legitimate criticism. The Zionist-controlled media label resistance 'terrorism', while ignoring the state terrorism of Israel which is the root cause of all the violence in the Middle-"

"All right, stop there. You still have to choose. Do you support the Fatah leadership in the West Bank, which may be corrupt and unpleasant but is at least presiding over an economic boom and allowing some freedoms, or Hamas, which tortures its enemies and tramples on the rights of women."

"Hamas won Gaza in free elections. Palestinians must unite against the colonial enemy and the Israel Lobby in the West."

"But they cannot unite. Religious reactionaries from the extreme right - and 'the extreme right' is the correct term, by the way - who are building an Islamic emirate in Gaza and want a caliphate to cover the whole world, do not mix with democratic politicians, however imperfect they may be. You saw what happened in Gaza. The Islamists won one election, cancelled all future elections, and threw their opponents from high-rise blocks. If David Cameron threw Ed Miliband off the Post Office Tower, would you still say that he was worthy of support?"

"It is not for us to intervene in Palestinian affairs. Hamas is an issue the Palestinians must resolve themselves."

"Listen to yourself. 'It's not for us to intervene?' You and your friends intervene all the time. You close down Jewish shops, oblivious to the ghosts of Kristallnacht that thuggish policy raises from the grave. You lobby to stop Israeli academics visiting our universities, and don't worry that the last movement to ban Jewish intellectuals was-"

"I knew it, I knew it! I knew you would accuse me of antisemitism. Your kind always does. It's a dirty trick to silence legitimate debate."

"I agree it can be sometimes. But when you will not condemn Islamist movements that lift Jewish conspiracy theories direct from the screeds of European fascism, I am entitled to suspect that you suffer from a severe case of Judeophobia at the very least. Your repeated references to the 'Israel Lobby' and 'Zionist-controlled media' don't reassure me on that score either."

"I am a left-winger, how dare you accuse me of racism? I have fought racism all my life, and don't ignore the Islamophobic racism of Israel and her friends, as you do. If there are antisemitic elements in the Islamist movement, they are a rational response to Western oppression. You would hate Jews if Israelis were doing this to you."

"Dear God, where to begin with that. Do you really believe there's no racism on the left, and that extremism can be rationally explained? In any case, it's not just antisemitism you excuse, is it? You have abandoned internationalism, secularism and, most disgracefully, the struggle for the emancipation of women. Your friends in Gaza have even banned women from sucking on hookah pipes - and, let me tell you, I don't need to have a psychiatry degree to understand the male sexual hysteria that lies behind that telling prohibition. Here's a test. The Palestinian Authority is about to declare the territories an independent state. The Israelis hate the idea, what do you think?"

"I worry that a two-state solution will not be full and just. The expelled refugees must have a right of return."

"That is a recipe for war without end. Israelis will never allow millions of Palestinians to swamp their state. Your trouble is that you are a voyeur. The violence of bearded reactionaries with a Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other excites you. You prefer their thrilling intransigence to the arguments of boring men in suits in Ramallah, who are willing to compromise for a better life. You need the burning corpses of Palestinians and Jews to bring light to your empty life."

"And your trouble is you are a sly apologist for imperialism. You never condemn Israeli atrocities, but use nit-picking points of detail and clever rhetorical tricks to distract attention from crimes against humanity. You are a neo-con and a zio-Nazi, and I am never going to speak to you again."

"Don't worry, there are millions more like you out there, and I'll be having this conversation for the rest of my life. Send in the next one on your way out."

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