An editorial in today’s Boston Globe almost gets the Israeli situation right, except, well, it’s wrong.
In political terms, such a return to armed conflict would likely spell the end of any hope for power-sharing between Abbas and Hamas, and perhaps the end of the Hamas experiment with governing — or even the demise of the Palestinian Authority. On the Israeli side, the effect would be to reinforce the argument of hawks who have been saying that the withdrawal from Gaza was a mistake that has left Israel more vulnerable to terrorism. Even worse, the value of the precedent set when Israeli settlements were dismantled in Gaza may be put in doubt. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will find it politically difficult to withdraw from more settlements in the West Bank, as he planned to do, if the Gaza withdrawal can be construed as having made Israelis less, rather than more, secure.
In human terms, a failure to resolve the immediate crisis will inevitably mean greater suffering for Palestinians and Israelis alike. At the moment, Egyptian diplomats and intelligence officers are trying to persuade the Iranian-backed Meshal in Damascus to release Corporal Shalit. They represent the voice of reason. If unreason prevails, a tsunami of unnecessary suffering will break upon the peoples of the region
How many ways is this editorial wrong? Let’s think.
It’s a good thing if the Hamas government goes down. The hawks were right about the Gaza withdrawal, and it has been proven by the thousands of kassam rockets and hundreds of other attacks on Israel from the Gaza border since the withdrawal. And if the PA died too, that would be a wonderful thing. Maybe then the true palestinian moderates—and there are precious few of them—could get a foothold. Not that I believe that will happen.
Have you noticed that in spite of the dire warnings of a grave “humanitarian crisis,” there is no grave humanitarian crisis? Why is that, do you think? Could it be that Mahmoud Abbas has tapped more of the Arafat Swiss bank accounts and is using that money to pay his people? Hamas is using millions of smuggled dollars to pay their people. A few weeks ago, there was a cute little “reconciliation” between Abbas and Suha Arafat that went under the mainstream radar. Which one, do you think, is the keeper of the codes to the Swiss bank accounts? I’m guessing the makeup was coverup for another agreement between the two thugs over who gets how much of the stolen billions.
The pals don’t need European and American money for food and necessities. They have the money to pay their people’s salaries. They need European and American money to wage war against Israel. Fungibility is a concept that the EU and America are blind to when it comes to supplying “humanitarian aid” to terrorists, just as the fiction of the “political wing” and “military wing” is maintained by all and sundry.
You know, I have a political wing, a business wing, and a homemaker wing in my own organization. The money that I make via the business wing (that would be my job) goes to pay the bills that support my political wing (my weblog) and my homemaker wing (rent, food, etc.). My political wing brings in a tiny bit of income that also pays for my homemaker wing. If you didn’t understand what “fungible” means before now, that should help you figure it out. In the end, the money goes to fund terrorism and attacks on Israel.
The world’s blindness when it comes to Israel is appalling. Not unexpected, but appalling.