One of the Best
One of the finest bloggers I've come across stopped writing for a year. He is now back. Nelson Archer, the author of Europundits has a great short entry on the Hamas victory.
He notes the upside of the Hamas victory: it clarifies the situation. The Palestinian people will not accept Israel - they have created an anti-semetic culture that has chosen hate, and refused to acknowledge the rights of their neighbors. We have been dancing around this issue for years, hoping that perhaps it was an issue of corruption or time and that somehow, the Palestinians would eventually come aroud and prove themselves to be fair minded. We now know, it was never to be, that as much as we would hope and think that the Palestinian people can be liberal minded - they aren't. And this is the fundamental issue the Western world needs to face in the 21st century - that democracy in the Muslim world clashes directly with liberty. It is a mind fuck.
The downside, is of course, Hamas is bloody and capable, and will be richer and more powerful than before, and will use that power to punish Israel.
Israel will hit back and the West will stand by and watch, not ever restraining Israel again. Why should we?
1 comment:
“democracy in the Muslim world clashes directly with liberty”
I will skip directly past the obvious argument that true democracy in itself is an exercise of liberty, the occasionally distasteful results of which are not limited to the Muslim world, and jump directly to my own observation. If I had lived my entire life in a refugee camp, had experienced nothing but political powerlessness in the face of both overt and underhanded superpower support of my opponent, and still had to tolerate condemnations of my bad attitude and absence of liberal-mindedness I think I might just vote for a party that is unambiguous about my right to exist, despite the effect that it may have on everyone else. The future nature of Palestinian support for Hamas will eventually show the kind of impact that these factors have had. If Hamas maintains legitimate political support because of its extremist agenda, and not in spite of it, the results will be clear—lacking any other acceptable options, the Palestinian people have pushed the red button the only way that they can.
And considering the Western attitude about the Palestinian issue it wouldn’t surprise me if we never “clarify” why.
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