The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats.
The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.
So this is the democracy that the US is promoting in the Middle East?
You get to vote for whoever you wish, but if you choose someone we don’t like, we’ll put you in a secluded corner without food or money until you change your mind and choose the people we want?!
What kind of hypocrisy and double-standards are these?
I’m sorry, but democracy just doesn’t work that way!
When Americans made the mistake of choosing George W. Bush for presidency twice, the rest of the world didn’t go on and cut the U.S. off for their very bad choice, they just lived with it.
That’s how things are with democracy, and with life in general, people don’t always make the right decisions, or the decisions that the rest of the world wants them to make, but in the end it’s their decision and nobody elses.
The world has to live with it and work with it.
[Source: NY Times]
[Via: Sleepless Jojo]
This is pure hypocrisy, that’s just it. It’s “we support democracy” but if you vote for someone we are no particularly supporting, or if we think you’re just wrong. It’s forced “democracy” (and here frankly, concepts of democracy differ from one country to the other, I for one, think it is democratic to have free education all the way through and have decent health insurance, but that is not the case in the USA), and it’s democracy as we want to define it… It’s different rules for different players, and just unfaire overall… This type of action only further triggers hate, violence, and frustration. It’s just plain stupid.
Confrontational attitude does not work, it’s against diplomacy even in an un-balanced world.
Hamas is now in gov, it represents all palestinians, including fatah followers. they must adapt to their new role and tone down their rhetoric. they must gain the trust and the understanding of the world community, including arabs.
i don’t think we should be that naive and believe that the US wants democray at its purist state. Yes for democracy as long as it suits their strategic interests, and honestly i don’t see any problem with that. the US wants friendly (to their policy) governments regardless of the way they came to power
Ironically, hypochritical wants to welcome Hamas not because they’re fond of them, but just to piss off the US…
In this case, Hamas is against the intersts of the US..so by all means they should get rid of him and moeny is a way of doing that.
I mean look at Rice’s comments recently about syria, she does not miss any opportunity to corner those guys, first, it was hariri, then khaddam, now the cartoons.
i don’t think it is necessarily double standards to not want to give your money to hamas. they are a terrorist organization, that would be like giving money to al-qaida. i can understand why nobody would do that. if the palestinians or at least their leadership aren’t going to even want to find a peaceful solution they don’t deserve any money. not having any money is their problem. too bad.
Napo, I agree with you that it is Hamas’ responsibility to put down its arms, get into the political arena and start talking seriously with all sides as its new political role asks of it.
I totally agree that confrontation does not work, and will never work, it just creates more problems.
But still, just like Hamas has to accept its new role and work with it, so do the Israelis and the US.
Dane, I don’t want to get into a debate about whether Hamas is a terrorist organization or not, as I think that the saying that one man’s terrorist is the other’s freedom fighter holds true here, as a lot of people see Hamas as fighting against someone who came and stole their land, killed their people and denied them their rights.
The countries who created this problem in the first place and who fuel the conflict by injecting money into the Israeli war machine have a responsibility towards the Palestinian people, so it is their problem too.
sorry, mmm, I am not a big believer in reagan’s famous quip about terrorists and freedom fighters. besides he made that remark in regards to the contras in central america, who were targeting the government and military not civilians. anybody who willfully makes civilians (as opposed to military/government personnel) the target of their attacks is a terrorist without exception in my book.
also, I don’t buy the standard palestinian line on their land simply being stolen. if you want to know why, well . . . I pretty much agree with these guys:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/media/pdf/BigLies.pdf
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4454
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16351
speaking of hamas,
http://bareknucklepolitics.com/?p=855
MMM,
Relax dude. You know as well as I do that no matter what the US / Israelis do has no effect on HAMAS.
For the past 20 years they
Sandmonkey just pointed out the hypocrisy of the Arab world on the Hamas/foreign aid issue on his blog (http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/)
He states:
Mushir al-Masri, an incoming Hamas lawmaker, condemned the Israeli economic threats.
“This is collective punishment on our people,” he said. “The world should realize that more pressure on the Palestinian people will create more tension and everyone is going to be a loser, including Israel.”
Ohh, so now the collective punishment of a group of people via a boycott of economic goods and suspension of diplomatic tie until the government in power does something it doesn’t want to do is bad? Go tell that to Denmark. Oh, wait, I doubt they care about you anymore. I think that started after seeing how fast your people wanted to kill their people over a cartoon, after their people supported your people for years. Yeah, that may be it!
Hamas admits that to the fact that it was supported and trained by Hezbollah after years of denying this fact as ‘Israeli propaganda’:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3216432,00.html
First, it needs to be pointed out that no reputable historian regards the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as anything other than anti-Jewish propaganda–a pure invention of those who are intent on defaming Jews and stirring up hatred against them (the Nazis used this piece of crap too). So “Tango”, try joining the majority of the world not taken in by this entirely mendacious, fraudulent “document”.
But what I really want to address is the question of Hamas and its refusal to repudiate violent means to create a Palestinian state. I write as someone who holds the view that Israel should withdraw to the pre-’67 boundaries, that Jerusalem should be an international city, that Gaza and the West Bank must be united in some fashion, that all Jewish settlers should either accept Palestinian citizenship or leave the West Bank. I also believe that Hamas and the PLO in general enjoy the “right” to use whatever violent means they regard as legitimate to expel the Israeli army and Jewish settlers from the West Bank. But there is a difference between enjoying a moral right to do something, and the decision to exercise that right. Hamas and the Palestinian are fixated on the moral claim to use violence to force the invader out, and proclaim it unceasingly with righteous fervor. Once a movement enters the realm of power and politics, it’s not enough, however, to animate one’s followers with righteous fervor (and even less, to proclaim that righteousness to the world, as if that is going to change things on the ground). In politics, one looks to the end (as Machiavelli observed), and one must judge whether the means one chooses are likely to bring about the desired objective. Only an utter fool would believe today that the military operations of Palestinians move them one centimeter closer to realizing their objective. Of course, they have a “right” to continue to persist in their resistance to an unlawful, despicable occupation of their lands, but does that matter as much as the choice of means likely to have a measure of efficacy? (The behavior of most Arabs makes me wonder if such a word even exists in Arabic.) Any rational calculation of the efficacy of the violent means employed and exalted in by Palestinian organizations would tell you that their efficacy is virtually zero in terms of helping the Palestinian people achieve their objective of an independent, viable State. The only means which the Palestinian people can employ today with any hope of efficacy are non-violent. A unilateral repudiation of all violence (and the strength to hold on to that repudiation in the face of inevitable Israeli provocations) would turn the tide in favor of the Palestinian people, not only all over the world, but also within the United States and Israel itself. It would require extraordinary organization, discipline and spiritual strength to submit to the violence of others without responding in kind, but if one’s eye stays focused on moving the movement forward towards the objective, that would be the way to go.