That’s right, the joke isn’t that some Hamas leaders who don’t recognize Israel plan to petition the Israeli Supreme Court to keep their Israel residency active. Nope, the joke is that within a couple of days of their approving the horrific suicide bombing launched by a teenager inculcated with this murderous fanaticism promulgated by these Hamas folks (over 40 people remain in the hospital two days later, which is a very high number), the British foreign minister, Jack Straw, is making overtures to Hamas.
Why would the British be kissing terrorist asses? Well, I guess anybody who knows Lawrence of Arabia recognizes that this is a fine British tradition when it comes to the Arab world. I guess they want to maintain their central role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and rather than leave it to the Russians to be the main betrayers of Europe and the West’s attempts to stifle and alienate Hamas so as to force them to change, they want in on the action.
First he says,
“I hope very much that Hamas realize that those who kill innocent people in this way, by this type of attack that happened in Tel Aviv, are wicked and irresponsible, but more than that, that they do absolutely nothing to further the process of peace in the Middle East or the two-state solution that we all want to see.”
but then he adds,
“Hamas now leads the government and we would like to have normal relations with them as we have had with previous governments. This requires movement by them as well as by us.”
And the reporter adds,
Referring to a Hamas recognition of Israel, Straw stressed he did not expect a formal declaration by the group’s leaders. According to Straw, Hamas must accept Israel’s existence as a fact, but a change in the organization’s charter that calls for Israel’s destruction is not a necessary condition for negotiations between the two sides.
Hmmmm, allow me to parse that for a minute.
Wait, I get it! If some Hamas politicians appeal their eviction from Israel to the Israel Supreme Court, that is a de facto recognition that there is a legal entity called Israel. Voila! Now the British can have relations with the murderers.
This past month’s Atlantic magazine had an article by Matthew Teague called “Double Blind,” about how the British beat the IRA by planting numerous agents in its ranks. Apparently, to appear real to their associates, these men would be just as ruthless and vicious as their cohorts, and would often take leading roles in actions as well. At one point, Teague describes how the British assisted one of these double agents by sending him to the US to acquire infrared technology that would stabilize roadside and other forms of similar bombs. Apparently, until the British did this, the bombs were quite unreliable. Instead of leaving the situation as it was, they helped the IRA make the bombs stable and therefore far more deadly and effective. Apparently, this technology is still in use today in Iraq and other places where these devices are used to attack Western forces (I’m sure Hezbollah used it against Israel in Lebanon).
Screwy? Yes indeed.
One can only wish that the British would stop trying to win by making things far more screwed up than they are already. Leave Hamas be until the Palestinian people evict them; there is nothing to talk about with these murderers. Sadly, I don’t think the world will behave any differently than it has up to now – it’s not as if they didn’t know what Arafat had done and was doing – and shortly will begin speaking to Hamas as if they are merely another political party.
I wonder if the British foreign minister has actually read Hamas’s charter, which also more or less calls for the death of every Jew in the region.
Nah, he was interested in Britain’s relationship with the Saudis.