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Jewish World Review May 2, 2008 / 27 Nissan 5768 Whitewashing Hamas By Caroline B. Glick
Bombarded by rockets from Hamastan in Gaza, residents of Sderot, Ashkelon
and nearby towns watched as their national leaders conducted negotiations by
proxy with Hamas to release hundreds of terrorists in Israeli jails and
consolidate Hamas's weapons supply lines by suspending Israeli
counter-terror operations during a "cease-fire."
Between trips to the local bomb shelter, they watched Israeli trucks deliver
fuel and supplies to Hamas in Gaza in the morning; and they watched Hamas
store the fuel and supplies in depots near the border in the afternoon. In
the evening they watched news reports echoing Hamas' claims that Israel is
depriving Gazan hospitals of fuel and Gazan civilians of basic foodstuffs.
Wednesday night they tried having a Yom Hashoah ceremony in Sderot but it
was interrupted by incoming missiles. For its part, Hamas marked the
Holocaust with a documentary series claiming that the genocide of European
Jewry was a satanic Jewish plot to cull the Jewish population of its
handicapped and to manipulate the world media.
Hamas captured headlines this week with its allegation that Israel was
responsible for the death of a Palestinian woman and four of her children in
an explosion in Bet Hanoun in Gaza as the IDF targeted Hamas terrorists from
the air. The IDF conducted two investigations showing that the woman and her
children were killed by something else: a secondary explosion caused by
bombs the Hamas terrorists - one of whom was her husband - were carrying at
the time the IDF targeted them.
Hamas's allegations that the IDF killed four children and their mother were
reported by both the international and Israeli media as facts. Those "facts"
were only questioned when the IDF began its probes. Neither the local media
nor the international media thought the fact that the source of their
accounts was Hamas should make them question the veracity of the initial
reports.
When its spokesmen are not busy accusing Jews of planning genocide and
Israel of killing mothers and children, Hamas devotes its efforts to
accusing Israel of killing sick Palestinians by refusing to let them into
Israel for free medical care. As no good deed by Jews goes unpunished by the
UN, early last month the World Health Organization punished Israel for
admitting more than 7,000 Palestinians from Gaza for free medical care
during 2007. Echoing Hamas propaganda, the WHO accused Israel of causing the
deaths of 33 sick Palestinians between October 2007 and March 2008. They
died, the WHO claimed, due to the Jewish state's heartless refusal to allow
them into its hospitals.
The WHO report made mention of the fact that Hamas now controls the
hospitals and clinics in Gaza. No mention was made of the fact that Israel
bears no responsibility for providing health care to non-citizens from enemy
territories, or of the fact that there is no place in the world where such
care is provided-other than Israel. No mention was made of Hamas
intercepting and hoarding hospital supplies for propaganda purposes. No
responsibility was assigned to Egypt - the other country bordering Gaza -
which does not admit any Palestinian patients. The report never questioned
the credibility of its Gazan sources.
As Andrea Levin, the Executive Director for the Committee for Accuracy in
Middle East reporting in America (CAMERA) noted this week in the Jerusalem
Post, it was only due to the quick and detailed response of Israeli
officials refuting Hamas's allegations that Israel wasn't widely condemned
for murdering sick people.
The most interesting aspect of these media reports is that for the most
part, the news agencies reporting Hamas's wild allegations don't even have
correspondents in Gaza. Hamas's habit of kidnapping Western - even pro-Hamas
- reporters caused most Western media outlets to remove their correspondents
from Gaza more than a year ago. The Israeli media has not had correspondents
on the ground since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005.
Yet the same media outlets that realized Hamas is too radical to be trusted
to respect their own reporters' lives refuse to question the veracity of
their stories and are more than willing to credit them as fact well past the
point of professional embarrassment. Indeed, no media outlet - either
Israeli or foreign - has ever asked whether it even makes sense to run
Hamas's propaganda in the first place. They have certainly not bothered to
inform their audiences that the source of their stories is a genocidal
terror group that is currently waging a missile campaign against Israeli
civilians whose goal is to terrorize and kill them just because they are
Jewish.
But then, the media can perhaps be forgiven for their refusal to admit that
their reports from Gaza are generally nothing more than terrorist propaganda
for they are far from alone in their refusal to acknowledge the significance
of Hamas's regime. From Jimmy Carter, to the Bush administration to the
Olmert-Livni-Barak government, denial is the order of the day.
Carter defends his decision to meet with Hamas's leaders in Syria and Judea
by noting that the jihadist, genocidal, Iranian-sponsored terror group won
the Palestinian elections. Since a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas
and still support it, the jihadist, genocidal, Iranian-sponsored terror
group is legitimate, Carter argues. Certainly no peace agreement can be
reached without it.
But then as Hamas clarified just after its leaders met with Carter, any deal
it may reach with Israel is merely a tactic in its ongoing war to destroy
Israel. So while it may be true that no Palestinian-Israeli peace is
possible without Hamas, it is absolutely true that no Palestinian-Israeli
peace is possible with Hamas.
The fact is that far from demonstrating the necessity of negotiating with
Hamas, Hamas's popularity shows the futility of attempting to coax peaceful
co-existence out of a Palestinian society committed to its neighbor's
destruction. Yet just as the media and Carter refuse to acknowledge the
significance of Hamas's terror regime, so the Bush administration refuses to
acknowledge the significance of its broad-based popular support among
Palestinians.
In her remarks Tuesday before the American Jewish Committee, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that Palestinian society today
overwhelmingly supports Israel's annihilation through terrorism when she
said: "Increasingly, Palestinians who talk about a two-state solution are my
age. And I'm not that old, but I'm a lot older than most of the Palestinian
population."
But then, after acknowledging that most Palestinians do not support peaceful
coexistence with Israel, Rice argued that Israel must give them more land,
more guns and more money because as she sees it, now is the time for a
Palestinian state and leaders need to "make hard decisions confidently for
the sake of peace and for the sake of their people."
Rice went on to explain that this appeasement must be done while enabling
the Hamas regime in Gaza to remain in place. As she put it, "the only
responsible policy is to isolate Hamas and defend against its threats, until
Hamas makes the choice that supports peace."
So from Rice's perspective, not only must Hamas not be defeated, it would be
irresponsible to even try to defeat it. The only "responsible" policy for
Israel is to allow Hamas to continue stockpiling arms and building its army
while trying to reach a ceasefire with it. Then too, as far as Rice is
concerned, Israel must curb its counterterrorist operations in Judea and
Samaria, dry out Israeli communities there and in post-1967 Jerusalem
neighborhoods and allow US-trained and armed Fatah militias (who are also
terror-supporting), to deploy in Palestinian towns and cities by the
thousands. This, she believes is the best way to make Hamas transform itself
into a peaceful political party willing to live at peace with Jews.
As for Israel, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government clearly agrees with Rice,
for it is following her policy.
Wednesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to comment on his government's
involvement in ceasefire talks with Hamas during the security cabinet
meeting. When pointedly confronted by Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter
about his apparent decision to allow Hamas to remain in charge of Gaza with
its Iranian trained and armed terror army, Olmert simply said that it would
be inappropriate to discuss such things.
Thursday, the Jerusalem Post reported that the government is enthusiastic
about the proposed cease-fire agreement with Hamas, strangely claiming that
it may pave the way for a second and unrelated agreement in which Israel
ransoms hostage Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity by releasing hundreds of
terrorists.
Then too, the government claims triumphantly that Hamas has agreed to have
Fatah forces deploy at the international border with Egypt. But since both
Hamas and Fatah enjoyed a nearly unimpeded flow of weaponry through that
border when Fatah was responsible for it, it is far from clear why this
would be a positive development.
The simple truths that the media, Jimmy Carter, the Bush administration, and
the Olmert-Livni-Barak government are all unwilling to acknowledge are that
Hamas is a genocidal terror group sworn to Israel's destruction and that it
represents the will of the majority of Palestinians who elected it to office
in 2006 and who continue to support it today.
This plain reality demonstrates that there is only one responsible policy
for Israel to follow and for the international community to support if they
are truly interested in peace between Israel and the Palestinians. That
policy is for Israel to lay waste to Hamas's terror army in Gaza and
overthrow its regime. Only when they are forced to pay a real price for
their support for terror and jihad - as opposed to being rewarded for it
with further Israeli land giveaways - will the Palestinians will be forced
to reconsider that support. Only when they realize that terror will get them
nowhere - as opposed to anywhere they wish - will the Palestinians be forced
to accept Israel as an unchanging reality with which they must live in
peace.
Dichter's condemnation Wednesday of his government's pro-Hamas policies was
not the first time the Ashkelon resident and former head of the Shin Bet has
argued that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's policies are dangerous for
the country. And Dichter, together with Transportation Minister and former
defense minister Shaul Mofaz who has similarly criticized the government's
policies as dangerous, could end the current situation if they had the
courage to act on their convictions. Were they to band together with eight
of their colleagues in Kadima's Knesset faction and leave the government,
they would bring on new elections.
Yet so far, they have refused to take action. Until they do, Dichter, Mofaz
and their colleagues are enabling Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and
Defense Minister Ehud Barak to continue endangering the lives of hundreds of
thousands of Israelis through their bluster and appeasement of Hamas. Until
they do, they are as guilty as the media, Carter, the Bush administration
and their government colleagues of whitewashing and protecting Hamas to the
detriment of their country and to the cause of peace.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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