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Jewish World Review April 22, 2005 / 13 Nisan, 5765 Springtime for Hamas By Diana West More shocking than the White House seal of approval for Hamas "business professionals" is an emerging consensus that the murder "wing" of the outfit isn't so heinous after all
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There's something in the air — and it's not the prattle of baby birds.
It's chatter. Some people listen to the sound, hear dialogue and say
it's swell. I think it sounds like a new language of capitulation.
Since when? Maybe since the Bush administration realized that democratic
yearnings in the Palestinian Authority might actually find fulfillment
in these same "business professionals" — whose charter, not
incidentally, draws inspiration from the Quran and cites the fraudulent
"Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in its calls for the total destruction
of Israel.
As Andrew C. McCarthy noted at National Review Online, the old
"improving people's lives" routine is a hallmark of every terror
organization from the Nazis to Al Qaeda. And as Islamic history
professor Raphael Israeli has explained, "The so-called military wing
(of Hamas) cannot exist without the financial backing of the so-called
social welfare wing." This suggests both so-called "wings" find the
words of the Hamas charter equally thrilling: "Israel will rise and
remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated all its
predecessors."
More shocking than the White House seal of approval for Hamas "business
professionals" is an emerging consensus that the murder "wing" of the
outfit isn't so heinous after all. Last week, Reuters reported that E.U.
foreign ministers gathered at a Luxembourg castle to consider "the
previously taboo idea of dialogue with Islamic opposition groups" —
namely, Hamas and Hezbollah. The question before them, posed by E.U.
foreign minister Javier Solana, was: "Has the time come for the E.U. to
become more engaged with Islamic 'faith-based' civil societies?"
Silly them. The European Union has been engaged in multifarious ways
with such "faith-based" societies since lo, about, 1973, according to
Bat Ye'or's new book, "Eurabia" (Farleigh Dickinson University Press).
Still, the bloc could always become more openly engaged. No more
skulking around, as revealed by a recently released transcript of a
secret 2002 meeting between Alistair Crooke, then a high-ranking E.U.
official, and Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, subsequently
assassinated by Israel in 2004. In the 2002 meeting, according to
World Net Daily, Crooke blamed terrorism on "Israeli occupation,"
referred to Hamas terrorists as "freedom fighters," and let stand a
Hamas claim that Israel was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
Crooke remains "faith-based" busy, having launched Conflicts Forum, a
think tank devoted to finding common ground between jihadists and
Westerners (gag). Last month in Beirut, Crooke hosted policy-interested
Yanks and Brits and terrorists from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim
Brotherhood and Pakistan's Jamaa Islamiyya. Said Crooke to the Lebanese
newspaper, The Daily Star: "The issues of use of violence and
accusations of terrorism must be addressed, of course" — of course —
"but frontloading the process by demanding that groups be disarmed
before anything else can happen is likely to fail." I wonder if he asked
any of his guests to check their suicide-belts at the door.
Such spring feverishness seems contagious. Last week, the Brookings
Institution and Qatar assembled 150 international notables, including a
former White House adviser (Rand Beers), Euro-Islamist Tariq Ramadan,
Judea Pearl (Daniel Pearl's father) and a deputy assistant secretary of
state, to discuss, among other things, as the Daily Star put it,
"whether and how" to include jihadist groups in democracies. Even
broaching the subject has got to be encouraging to terrorists, rewarding
murder and intimidation with the increasingly tawdry trappings of
self-rule and international recognition. By conference's end, Islam
Online, reliably or not, was trumpeting "the U.S. is ready to 'accept'
the involvement of Islamist groups ... should they understand 'the rules
of the game.'"
But they already do. Also this spring, at yet another convention,
Hamas's Khaled Mashal declared, according to a MEMRI translation, that
"tahdiah," or calm, in the Palestinian Authority was only a trick and
that "resistance" would continue as long as the "occupation" (read:
Israel) exists.
Some trick. Some rules. Maybe the real problem is that the West doesn't
realize it's all a deadly game.
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JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Diana West | ||||||||||
