Hamas by Secretary Powell’s Definition
We occasionally pick on the EU. Last time it was for the EU’s willingness to overlook the fact that Hamas blows up Jews because it s also runs schools and hospitals for poor Palestinians. We noted that Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany and put unemployed Germans back to work – and important social benefit of National Socialism. We guessed the Europeans were pleased that the Allies didn’t take that into account because they might have decided the liberation of Europe would frustrate the social service side of Nazism to the detriment of the German people.
We occasionally pick on the EU. Last time it was for the EU’s willingness to overlook the fact that Hamas blows up Jews because it s also runs schools and hospitals for poor Palestinians. We noted that Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany and put unemployed Germans back to work – and important social benefit of National Socialism. We guessed the Europeans were pleased that the Allies didn’t take that into account because they might have decided the liberation of Europe would frustrate the social service side of Nazism to the detriment of the German people.
Out tongue was only half in our cheek. But we apologize; we were too sure of ourselves, too quick to think this lunacy had affected only the EU.
Our own Secretary of State, Colin Powell said, “If an organization that has a terrorist component to it, a terrorist wing to it, totally abandons that, gives it up and there is no question in anyone’s mind that it is part of its past, then that is a different organization.” According to The Washington Times, he “praised the extremist group’s ‘social wing’ for doing ‘things for people in need.'” We are tempted to carry the analogy and ask if Sec. Powell would accept a KKK hospital for poor people in the rural South because they are “in need.” (Oh, the KKK hasn’t abandoned its nasty ideology? Well, who are we to judge when there are needy people out there?) But we will take the high road and try to explain why his comments are foolish, as well as repulsive.
Palestinians are “in need” because aside from the generally bloody work of Hamas’s “terrorist wing” that make the Israelis suspicious of Palestinians and less willing to hire them – the “terrorist wing” deliberately hits targets that prompt Israeli retaliatory measures that prevent more Palestinians from earning their own living. Hamas bombs crossing points where Palestinians used to cross to work in Israel. They target Israeli naval boats near Palestinian fishermen. They know that Israel will have no choice but to further restrict the number of Palestinian workers in Israel and close the fishing areas. Hamas deliberately created the circumstance where Israel is no longer willing to provide easy access for Hamas’s “terrorist wing” to reach its intended targets, in turn increasing Palestinian poverty, which Hamas’s “social wing” can then claim to ameliorate.
This is the old saw about the man who kills his parents and pleads for mercy from the courts because he is an orphan.
It also deprives the PA of tax money from Palestinian wages – because fewer Palestinians are working in Israel. Then Abu Mazen has to come here and beg the Congress to give him money so he can compete with the “social services” of Hamas.
Nazis don’t have social wings. Hamas doesn’t either. What they have is a racist ideology that is served by making poor people poorer and more beholden to them for “services.” It would be far better for the Palestinians, as it was for the Germans, for Secretary Powell to demand that Abu Mazen liberate his people from Hamas, put them back to work and then run his government off the taxes they pay.