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Polarization: Good for you
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Comments
1
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Professor Kim
said:
I interviewed Prof. Adrien Wing of the University of Iowa
about the Palestinian Legislative Council elections. Prof. Wing is an
internationally-recognized expert in comparative constitutional law who
helped to create the document by which the PA is governed. (She was also
instrumental in creating the constitutions of South Africa and
post-genocide Rwanda.)
I hope that you find the conversation of interest:
http://professorkim.blogspot.com/2006/01/former-advisor-to-palestinian.html
Posted by: Professor Kim on January 27, 2006 11:42 AM
2
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Dany
said:
I found it uninteresting. And I found the comment below obscene: "The challenges are fascinating. Let's see how the opposition movement handles providing jobs and fulfilling all the expectations of the people as the formal apparatus of the state. We indeed live in interesting times."
If a person living in the West can write like this about Hamas' ascendancy, then it looks hopeless indeed.
Posted by: Dany on January 27, 2006 12:03 PM
3
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JoJo
said:
Well, the barbarians voted for terror. These same made terror an element of their national policy - all within democratic or (ochlocratic, if you will) bounds.
Should such a people, a people that supports terror be immune to counter-terror action? Should Israel suffer suicide bombers and retort with limited police actions only?
The masks are off. Time too take the gloves off as well.
Posted by: JoJo on January 27, 2006 12:04 PM
4
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Bill Narvey
said:
I listened to part of Professor Kim's interview.
She says that Arafat would be rolling in his grave that so soon after his departure the Palestinians would kick out the party he created and choose to be governed by his enemy, Hamas the Islamic fundamentalists.
Kim is caught up in academia and overlooks that Arafat himself was one of the faces of Islamic radicalism, filled with its hatred of Jews and Israelis and employing all the terror tactics that Muslim radicals use. In fact Arafat is the one who first employed hi-Jackings, hostage taking and suicide bombings.
Arafat in keeping with the fundamentalist Islamic ideology was power hungry, just like the leaders of neighboring Arab nations.
During Arafat's time Hamas played the role of his useful and deadly idiots.
If Arafat is rolling in his grave it is simply that in addition to being no less radical than Hamas and power hungry, he also was a narcissitic ego maniac. That the party he created would be replaced by Hamas would drive him into spasms of anger for there was never room in Arafat's thinking in terms of leading Palestinians for anyone but himself.
I reject Professor Kim's views that the West needs to help Hamas to moderate and if they can then things will be better.
The West does not need to do anything, but see what Hamas is capable of doing for good or bad.
The West has pissed billions of dollars down the drain on Palestinians and they are as dysfunctional as ever. Let them rot if that is their lot.
If however they can show by word and deed that they can rise above the poisonous pondscum of their existence and assume a peaceful and meaningful place in society, then all the credit to them and aid should again flow, but not before.
Posted by: Bill Narvey on January 27, 2006 01:39 PM
5
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Leonard
said:
Ottolenghi is an excellent and well informed political analyst. I agree that the only positive result from Hamas's election is that Palestinian terrorism is now unmasked for the whole World and the Israeli Left to see, and there should be no more talk of territorial compromise with these killers.
Posted by: Leonard on January 27, 2006 01:40 PM
6
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Dany
said:
@Leonard: I argue that Hamas never hid behind a mask, as Ottolenghi claims. To act like there was ever any doubt about Hamas' motives, to pretend their language and actions were ever anything other than crystal clear and genocidal is simply in error.
The point of this is that there can never be any claim that the 'Palestinians' (or anyone else for that matter) didn't know about the motives and intentions of Hamas. If we allow anyone to pretend that we didn't really know Hamas until now, that will mean another lengthy period (with all the dead and maimed involved) before we say "Ok, so they are just another murderous bunch of terrorists that we had to give a chance, who's next that we can deal with?"
I say: Don't deal. Except through Apaches and Merkava's.
Posted by: Dany on January 28, 2006 05:22 AM
Polarization: Good for you
So Hamas won the 'election'. By a landslide. Yesterday I said it doesn't really make any difference, but I might be wrong in one respect: Hamas is a group of murderers that will offend a slightly larger audience than any of the other groups of murderers, like Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa, etc. It will be that much harder to pretend that these are people just like us, who just need a country of their own, a job and good plumbing before they become reasonable and let the Jews live in peace.
Polarization. If there are two opposing sides, instead of a compromise (which requires consent from both sides), it enhances the contrast, forces those involved to take sides, leaves no middle ground.
What is good about the Hamas victory is this: Hamas is the same as all the other Arab terrorist gangs, but WITHOUT THE MASK. Their objective is no different from that of the PLO (aka PA, aka Fatah, aka Arafat gang) but they pretend nothing else. For whatever reason, they do not act like a political party, a peace partner, a reasonable representative of the Arabs, a plausible government.
They want to kill Jews, they want to eradicate Israel, they want worldwide Shariah, and they say so loud and clearly.
It really is kind of refreshing.
The people who are most likely (but that is only in a relative sense) to take notice of the permanent and unchanging desire of the 'Palestinian' people to destroy them are the Israeli's. And as luck would have it, elections are coming soon, and, luckier still, Ariel Sharon will not be taking part. I wondered recently if there was a man who could lead Israel back on track, to sovereignty and freedom.
I hope he's right. Both about the Israeli's being shocked, and about Netanyahu being the right man for the job.Hal Lindsey has this to say:
A person who still doesn't get it is Emanuele Ottolenghi of National Review:
Maybe there are two Hamas's in the world. The one I know does not hide behind veils. They never employed double-speak. That was the PLO.Really? All the world will suddenly look the other way, or even agree, when Israel takes action against Hamas, only because it is now nominally the new 'government'? Talk about wishful thinking!If Hamas wished to play this game like Fatah did before them, they could: There are plenty of other terrorist gangs that can be blamed for violence against Israel, giving Hamas plausible deniability. But Hamas was elected exactly FOR its straightforwardness, its honesty. The Arabs love them for it. They will not hide, but be brazen about their actions. They will invite retaliation. They know the muslim part of the world will cheer them on and support them, and the rest of the world will restrain, condemn and block Israel as they always have.Democracy is an expensive word for mob rule. Here's a good example of that.
Democracy is meaningless if all the people voting are bloodthirsty barbarians:
Wrong. In this sense there is no difference between the 'governments' of Iraq before 2003, the current regime in Iran, and a Hamas PA. They are a threat against all Western countries, against Israel in particular, and THEY AIM TO BE A THREAT. The fact that they were democratically elected makes them WORSE enemies, not lesser.We must NOT respect it. We must be extremely wary. We must take them at their word when they tell the world what their goals are. And we must act with extreme prejudice when they show any sign of acting on their intentions.
Crossposted from GoIsraelGo.blogspot.com
Posted by Dany Belinfante at January 27, 2006 10:48 AM