By request, here is the entirety of Obama’s statements from the guest book at Yad Vashem:

I am grateful to Yad Vashem and all of those responsible for this remarkable institution. At a time of great peril and promise, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man’s potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world. Let our children come here, and know this history, so that they can add their voices to proclaim “never again.” And may we remember those who perished, not only as victims, but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us, and who have become symbols of the human spirit.

I almost entitled this post, “Collective Punishment Hits Gaza,” but decided that wouldn’t be news. The matter involved is the cancellation of Fulbright Grants, a clear instrument of furthering the integration of foreign students into American culture and academia, to Palestinian students in Gaza, so it certainly constitutes collective punishment. But Israeli senior officials were surprised to learn of this, putting the blame on the American State Department that handles the dispensing of the grants.

They said they did, in fact, consider study abroad to be a humanitarian necessity and that when cases were appealed to them, they would facilitate them.

They suggested that American officials never brought the Fulbright cases to their attention.

Neglect seems at fault. But this is just another example of how publicly stated US policy runs counter to the actual policy.

While professing to support the advancement of moderate elements in the Arab world, the US instead has adopted a hardline “siege state” more in line with conservative attitudes in America and Israel. After goading Israel and the Palestinian Authority into holding free elections in the Palestinian territories in 2006, the US has been all too happy to just lock the uncooperative Palestinians in the desert and starve them out.

This is the very model for heightening tensions and crushing the hope for progress, as many Israelis are well aware.

“We correctly complain that the Palestinian Authority is not building civil society, but when we don’t help build civil society this plays into the hands of Hamas,” said Natan Sharansky, a former government official.

Hamas’ hands overflow these days. Their popularity was born of a dysfunctional environment that had Israel starving the Palestinian people of any opportunity save grassroots institutions like Hamas. As it now stands, Israel and the West deliver no promise of prosperity, only persecution.

Examples of the latter abound, like the 60 year-old woman killed by Israeli fire into Gaza today.

At least 487 people, nearly all Palestinians and the majority of them Gaza militants, have been killed since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks restarted in November at a US-sponsored conference, according to an AFP count.

Compared to 487 people, each of them with family and friends thrust closer to an abyss of vengeful nihilism by their death, eight students losing study grants may seem irrelevant. But these are both parts of a single message to the Palestinians: That they cannot look to Israel and the West for hope, but they can count on them for death.

President Bush never gives up.

Not on his allegiance to the corporations he foisted on the lawless and ravaged Iraq. Not on his intellectually bankrupt advisors. Not on the legitimization of domestic spying without inter-branch oversight and of torture.

And today, he used the occasion of celebrating Israel’s anniversary to remind us that he hasn’t given up on trying to influencing American politics when he equated Barack Obama’s policies of engaging our enemies in diplomacy with the kind of appeasement that led to World War II.

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama … to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before … As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

I have no idea what histories he has been reading, but apparently he hasn’t been reading them right.

As Obama pointed out in his response to the comments, diplomatic engagement with enemies who called for our obliteration was the keystone of Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan’s strategies to win the Cold War. The nails in Communism’s coffin were not won by the kind of six-shooter braggadocio Bush spouts off - they are named ‘Cuban Missile Crisis negotiations,’ ‘opening up talks with Beijing and Moscow,’ and ‘Glasnost/Perestroika.’

Some measure of consolation can be taken in the President’s disastrous disapproval ratings. But disapproving of his performance doesn’t immediately suggest disapproving of his message, his values or his competence. And to the extent that this message could have any resonance with the public, voicing it verges on criminal irresponsibility.

Even if one imputes noble motives to Bush, one has to recognize his words as fear-mongering for an invalidated and hateful cause. In short, its not only stupid, as history proves; it’s using people’s fears to defend stupidity.

The disturbing thing is that, as I note, even people who disapprove of him might find truth in what he said, because it stirs their basic fears and aggressions. It inspires the lowest common denominator in people - the distrust of the neighbor and the malice that comes from that distrust - something we all share and that our “better angels,” notably faiths like Christianity, define goodness as being able to rise above.

We can take little solace that those primal fears will be consistently overcome. But I hope that when a terrified, confused public weighs those fears against the worth of Bush’s words, they remember the most important lesson of his Presidency:

That if any President’s beliefs and strategies were discredited by history, it was those of George W. Bush.

Last week’s much-derided attempt by Jimmy Carter to stir some substance into the Middle East peace process has resulted in a tasty morsel rising: HAMAS has announced it will offer a 10-year truce to Israel if Israel withdraws from the lands it seized in 1967.

Is this a cure-all? Not by a long shot. Is it something new? No again - HAMAS has been repeatedly offering versions of this land-for-peace swap. The reason why this is significant is that it brings up the possibility of peace talks with HAMAS, defying a public perception that they’re fringe zealots hellbent on the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. They may be zealots, but they are not fringe, nor are they adamant against a peace process. They depend on it, and it on them.

HAMAS rose to power among the Palestinians more because of its public works than its extremism. Palestinians who wanted feisty, anti-Semitic, fight-to-the-end rhetoric could look to the PLO’s “Al Aqsa Brigade” or to HAMAS; their loathsome hate speech isn’t what distinguished these groups. The distinction has become that one gets nothing done, is corrupt, cannot control its militias and sucks up to the US and Israel, and the other is HAMAS.

This isn’t just to point out why Palestinians are trending toward HAMAS, and thereby explain their dogged support for it even during this agonizing siege. It is also to explain why HAMAS matters to the peace process, contrary to Secretary Rice’s efforts to turn her nose up and sniff at them.

HAMAS can get things done. It’s seen as having integrity, it can actually enforce a truce that it declares and it has a functional alternative public infrastructure going in the Gaza streets - the kind of soup-kitchen and free-clinic set-up that helped them rise. To ignore them is to only prolong the process as is - which could be the wisest course for IDF strategy anyway, if not in the long-term for Israel and the Palestinians - by ignoring the only player with enough “street cred” to cut a deal with.

In short, HAMAS is a flock of scary dudes, but they have graduated from the level of a local gang, they’re the only player with integrity, and so they have to be worked with. Relying on the PLO just pours aid money into Abbas’ pocket indefinitely, and nobody really trusts them to keep their side of any bargain, anyway.

With Carter putting HAMAS back at the headlines, at further expense to his reputation and in defiance of the indolent and out-of-touch US State Department, we can see that the peace process can be budged. And we’re reminded who peace deals are really struck between: Between enemies.

As an update on the edgey events in the broader Middle East, it has come out that Israel really was after nuclear materials in Syria. September 6th was a busy day for Israel, who both flew a raid over Syrian airspace with a live munition drop on the Syrian border /and/ dispatched commandos that destroyed a North Korean-fostered Syrian nuclear facility. This once again proves that Israel is at the top of their game for multi-tasking regional conflicts.

According to “high level sources”, the raid was a less-than-tidy affair:

Diplomats in North Korea and China believe a number of North Koreans were killed in the strike, based on reports reaching Asian governments about conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials.

This likely means a significant setback for Syria’s plutonium-related plans; President Assad will have to wait on taking out that reverse mortgage on the Golan Heights. And this is an unqualified good thing, as Syria - like North Korea but unlike Iran - is truly an unstable state ruled by a crackpot junta that has far too many terrorist irons in the global fire to do itself any good. Syria has a much better chance of getting its act together than North Korea, but it is still a long way from being a responsible regional leader.

At this point, it is becoming increasingly evident that the broader Middle East - Iran to Israel - is gearing up for war. Every major party is flashing their guns and talking loud. And with the situation in Iraq continuing to circle the drain - thanks in no small part to Iran’s intervention there - the value to the West of winning back some strategic cred by putting a thermobaric boot to Iran’s nuclear program is climbing.

It has been an interesting waltz to say the least. While it had been fomenting for awhile, tracking the events of this September alone shows how each side is using the actions of the other to escalate, all the while speaking as though they want only peace.

The month began with an ill-timed olive branch - a gesture by the ailing Ahmadinajad government to suggest it isn’t the vitriolic monstrosity that the West and its own inflammatory rhetoric has suggested it to be: They announced the opening of a Jewish center in Tehran. As with Bush’s AIDS relief entitlement, nobody abroad really noticed this sign of compassion, and most of those that did considered it fake. Multi-culti Mullahs are hard to swallow, I admit. Then again, we create the future we decide to believe in.

Keeping that same principle in mind, it was vocally announced that the Pentagon had drafted up a warplan to comprehensively annihilate Iran’s major military installations in a “three day blitz.” The plan itself isn’t nearly as significant as the announcement of it. We draw up plans to powderize our adversaries quite often. Rarely do we make sure everyone in the world knows. And, as with the build-up to war with Iraq, we heard from a familiar cast of characters:

First, the IAEA, whose measured and conservative reports of improvement seem just tailored to offend the five-minute-news, shock-scare-drunk sensibilities of American audiences:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power

And from the Achmed Chalabi du jour: “Resistance fighters” who, though they have likely not been back to their country since cellphones weighted eight pounds, claim their intelligence is most accurate:

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”

What isn’t mentioned is that these sleuths-in-exile are listed by us as a Foreign Terrorist Organization - an inconvenient classification when you’re using them as a public justification for possible military action.

Iran’s response was to announce that they’re not the only ones with WMD in the region, pointing their finger squarely at Israel.

He indicated that countries like Syria, Lebanon and Egypt have been reluctant to join the Organisation of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mainly due to the Israeli stance. Israel has signed the Chemical Weapons Convention but has not ratified it yet.

Again, this attitude may sound like more Zionist-bashing, but when dealing with the actions of other nations, it’s best to consider things from their perspective. The score board reads clear to Iran:

Attacks on Iran - 2
Attacks by Iran (publicly) - 0
Wars started by Israel - 4
Wars won by Israel - 5

So, if you were faced with that kind of an opponent, maybe you wouldn’t be so far off the mark by declaring they’re dangerous. But the US’ strategic interests aren’t seen as being furthered by having a balance of WMD power in the Middle East, and so everybody outside the Arab world ignored this and bit their nails about the amount of centrifuges Iran has - which is, according to some sources, quite a bit.

No more than a day later, Israeli jets slashed through Syrian airspace to the Iranian border, dropped munitions and withdrew. The world journalistic community is still scratching its head as to what this meant. Some have theorized that it was to deter the Syrians from enhancing their WMD arsenal, particularly with nuclear assistance from North Korea, who was spotted delivering materials to them. The most likely explanation, however, is the most obvious: Israel was testing to see how a bombing run against Iran would work out.

“Of course Israel wants to let the Americans do that,” said Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

“But if we are left alone, the Israeli army is preparing to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat - if the political level allows it to - and this could have been a part of that.”

Nothing was done to quell the tensions surrounding this technical act of war. Instead, the rest of the West stepped to the fore to flex its might against Iran. France, which has a firm financial stake in Iran but which also has a fairly anti-Muslim leader, directly threatened force from its highest office if Iran didn’t demonstrate full compliance with international bodies in regulating its nuclear program. Sarkozy himself issued the statements, and they were more for the sake of the US and Israel than any Gallic agitation with Iran:

Sarkozy’s comments might well have been intended to alert Tehran that the leaders of US and Israel regard the so-called US-Iran nuclear standoff as an international problem that requires urgent solution.

Furthermore, US intelligence stated that Hizballah would likely launch an offensive against the US if Iran or its interests threatened. Mind you that this is the same group that the White House was, not long ago, immediately afraid of obtaining a nuclear device to use against us. And again, the significance of this isn’t the report itself, but the release of the report. In military diplomacy, statements are part of the arsenal. Specifically, they’re the trigger.

Iran mulled this over for awhile. France was the only one really keeping the rhetoric high, largely because Sarkozy wants to restore its military and diplomatic prestige. Then Iran issued a statement that, if Israel attacked it, it would respond with bombing.

“We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime (Israel) makes a silly mistake,” Iran’s deputy air force commander, Gen. Mohammad Alavi, said in an interview with the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Trusting that the American public had forgotten about the Israeli jets breaking into Syrian airspace and bombing on Iran’s border - or simply did not care - the US issued a counter statement calling Iran’s comments “unprovoked” and “almost provocative”, “bellicose and hateful language“, and so forth. They also said, in the same breath, that the US is not taking military options off of the table when considering how to deal with Iran.

And, all across America, worried citizens came home from their 9-to-5, glanced at the one-minute spot about Iran’s latest bluster and the grim response from the US, and lost a bit more hair or sleep.

Things have only become more tense. Analysts are now talking about how Syria’s considering the Golan Heights to be a militarily viable target. More speculation about North Korean involvement in the region bubbles about. And the visit of Iran’s President to the UN in the near future has politicians here snarling. He’s even been called “Iran’s Hitler” - actually a bit of an apt analogy, but important in this context primarily due to the fact that Saddam was compared to Hitler as well.

Just today, Israel showed the world that it’s at the ready, scrambling its jets for the press to ponder about and the radars of its regional enemies to marvel at.

Further evidence that it’s going to be a hot time in Tehran this winter can be found at this excellent article: 10 Indications That The U.S. Is Planning Military Action Against Iran.

Even though HAMAS’ dominance of its immediate political realm is a substantial improvement for peace, it is a symptom of a horrible tragedy. HAMAS is unmistakably an Islamist, propagandistic and ruthless organization. It unrepentantly foments hate against Israel. This is no more alarmingly evident than in the “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” TV show that has enjoyed a mercifully short life on the HAMAS sponsored “Al Aqsa TV”.

Video of the show, available through The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), is so butchered in its editing that one suspects they could have “proven” President Bush advocated armed resistance against Israel using the same technique. But the facts remain: It is a kid’s show, it at least periodically infuses the audience with chauvanistic rhetoric about world domination and Israel’s misdeeds, and it does, indeed, speak of armed resistance, suicide attacks and the glory of death.

Its most notorious aspect is the swollen charicature of Mickey Mouse they have walking around and squeaking some of the most atrocious lines, “Farfour”. Farfour seems alternately an object of ridicule and of adoration, and so I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the hatred he naively - as he often comes off as a naif - preaches is not condemned by virtue of him saying it. The wondering didn’t last long. Clearly he speaks the spirit of the show, as the majority of what he says is backed up by his grim little co-host, Sanaa, a young girl with a hidjab and an undertaker’s manner.

Farfour calls on resistance against Bush and Israel. He talks about building the “cornerstone” of a global Islamic Empire. Ultimately, just this last week, he was beaten to death by an Israeli official for not selling his grandfather’s land in Tel Aviv. As Sanaa put it, “he died a martyr”.

The rhetoric is shocking in and of itself. Taking a step back then, and trying to remember where such calls for resistance and talk of national supremacy might also have been heard, does little to diminish the vileness of “Tomorrow’s Pioneers”. Yes, I am certain there are fundamentalist Christian videos in America that gleefully tell kids come Judgment Day, the sinners will get what’s coming to them and the saved will be exalted. And yes, films like RAMBO Part Three and Red Dawn are just a few famous examples in propaganda against an actual nation of human beings. Even that “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” merges these two aspects, tying them nicely under a ribbon of death-glorification and proffering it to the young, is not the most horrid part of the show.

The most horrid part is that the kids who absorb its hatred and hubris are in a position to actually act on it. They won’t just watch Soviets torn apart and then go to play with their GI Joes with no more worry than the next day’s homework. They won’t watch their family rise out of the reach of a lake of fire into the arms of white and smiling Jesus, and have to merely pray for the Rapture to come swiftly. They will actually go out to tear people apart. Their Rapture could be any day of the week. They are stuck between the pressures of Israeli guns and radical preachings aimed at their heads, of explosive belts and air strikes, of arbitrary, unlawful detentions and arbitrary, unlawful resistance.

That kind of horror has inspired an understandable reaction. Observers have shaken their heads and wanted to banish “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” to the ash-bin. Fatah condemned it. It was removed from television entirely until HAMAS took back Gaza. But this does not remove that most disquieting aspect of the story of “Tomorrow’s Pioneers”:

It does not remove those children from that universe of harm and hate. Silence Farfour’s squeaking, and you still have incensed imams, Israeli tanks, crumbling houses, wailing poverty, soldier’s boots in their houses, families dragged away, and missiles - built and paid-for by America - that can shred whole tenements telling them how the world is. And always there is the Quran, taught by the extremists not as the tome of tolerance and inclusion it was meant to be, but as the tool for transcending their worldly misery through most glorious sacrificial fire.

I recently visited the home of Farfour’s cousin, Mickey - Disneyland. For the first time in ages I subjected myself to a trip on “It’s A Small World”. This was not out of a masochistic compulsion - though, yes, the song is still stuck in my head - but out of a genuine desire to be closer to that sentiment of peace and international cooperation. It is that kind of sentiment and cause that the desperate children of the world most need to hear.

We can hope that, somehow, that message reaches them; that we simply don’t know of it because it’s not as lurid as the rabid screechings of the anti-Mickey. We can hope this, but even if it is true, it only does so much. The children of Palestine can watch as much polynational hand holding as TV cares to pour on them. They can be taught to dream all they want of a better future.

But the reality is that they were born for dying in the Unhappiest Place On Earth.

HAMAS recently achieved something that Arab governments from Iraq to Jordan, Egypt to Pakistan, seem either unable or unwilling to do - they freed a Western hostage in the custody of an extremist gang. This should not be regarded as an act of little consequence or of cheap pandering for Western assistance. It sets them apart not only as what the West wants but of what it needs. They are a force of substance, true sovereigns within their domain.

Many despair of HAMAS’ takeover of Gaza. This is the wrong attitude. It is true that HAMAS has the destruction of Israel as a cornerstone of its platform. It is true that they take - or took - aggressive military action against Israel. But it is a mistake to consider these tenets and actions as critical to their political survival and power just because they are characteristic of their doctrine.

HAMAS’ true power emerged not as an instrument of terror against Israel but as hope for the Palestinian people. It is their public works, not their pugilistic demeanor, that won them such support as allowed them to sweep the elections in 2006. They capitalized not so much on the anger against Israel as the disillusionment the people had with the Fatah government. The proof of this is plain to see for the observer who looks beyond the rhetoric and into the actions of the Palestinian movements.

Fatah held power over the Palestinian destiny since its inception in the late 50s, and truly took the reigns after the Six-Day War. They embodied a unified resistance against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands that was both academic and populist, aggressive but scholarly. But rapidly, through the mercenary nature of professional terrorism that knows integrity of cause but not of function, their aims shifted from using their power to simply maintaining and expanding it. Their purpose became less resistance against Israel and more dominance of their people’s future. By the time Yassir Arafat became accepted by the world community as a broker of Palestinian power in the late 1980s, this was evident. Arafat did little to consolidate Palestinian leaders into a functional framework and instead focused on exploiting their loose alliance by offering himself as a source of foreign attention and aid. This led to the formation of an ironically-named “Palestinian Authority” that would sponge up UN and other forms of aid while making none of the internal sacrifices necessary to create an actual authority over the chaos of Palestine. He had all the trappings of a government and none of its coherence.

At Oslo, and later at Camp David, Arafat refused to move the peace process ahead any more than would give him legitimacy as a broker. He remained in power by showing up at the table, but did nothing to actually achieve the aims of peace that brought him there. Where it came to getting more aid and more recognition as a government, he would pursue these ends. But when it came to making the sacrifices necessary to work out a plan with Israel for an actual division of land, he balked.

And why shouldn’t he? He had no real control over the Palestinians, including those, like the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, that nominally swore allegiance to his Fatah party. He could no more make the basic concessions in the peace process than he could make sure that the concessions Israel made would go rewarded and not punished. He, like his sucessor, Abbas, ruled only in name and in numbers of aid dollars.

HAMAS, meanwhile, was as much a resistance to this kind of torpid corruption as it was to Israel. It used organic materials to help Palestinian agriculture while Fatah allowed it to languish. It circumvented Israeli restrictions on access to medical care by establishing community clinics. It found people work and formed unofficial governments in neighborhood communities Fatah only taxed, restricted and left to rot. In short, it did something. It did more than just suck up aid money and drizzle it out at a whim like Arafat did.

It is hard to remember now, but the world community - the Jewish community abroad as well - had high hopes for President Abbas when Arafat died. The feeling was that Arafat had become bloated and indolent, had proved himself unable to run his own security forces or enforce any peace, and had proved to be incapable of running anything more than a self-serving funnel for foreign aid and interests. Abbas, seen as more dynamic, could change this. Whether he could or couldn’t, he didn’t. He has been identical to Arafat in his ineffectiveness to realize the peace vision of the West or the freedom vision of his people.

HAMAS does have control of the people in Gaza, and they got it the hard way - having to work as an outsider, and build from the ground up. As grim and bloody and intolerant as their mission and terrorist actions have cast them, they at least have a foundation of power in the Palestinian realm that Fatah did not. Since their seizure of Gaza, they have proved it.

With the exception of an Israeli attack into Gaza intended to weed out rocket attacks, things have been relatively peaceful from HAMAS. Peaceful, that is, unless you are a terrorist group within their borders. For while HAMAS has little incentive to halt the rocket attacks on Israel that have become its hallmark assault, it has shown it will not do what Fatah and many other Arab states have, for years and at ghastly cost, done. It will not tolerate rival armed bands disrupting order in its territory.

BBC Journalist Alan Johnston, abducted on March 12, was held for 114 days. He had been investigating the HAMAS-Fatah conflict that was, at the time, brewing in the Gaza Strip. The source of the conflict was chiefly over HAMAS being refused the ability to join the defense forces of the Palestinian Authority, even though it could control all of Gaza and had the political legitimacy to do so. During the period of that conflict, diplomatic and violent, Johnston languished. Dozens of protests were held. Fatah talked often about doing things to get him free, and did nothing.

Then, as soon as Gaza was no longer ridden with strife between HAMAS and Fatah, HAMAS acted to free Johnston. First they tried swift negotiation, then threat of violence, and - after being deterred from direct action by Johnston’s Army of Islam captors placing an explosive belt on him - then took more innovative measures. They abducted Army of Islam members and affected, in essence, a hostage swap. It worked. It was not clean but, unlike under Fatah’s security tenure, it was quick and effective. Again, let me emphasize: It worked.

And that is what Israel needs - a Palestinian security force that works. For, whether that force is directed against Israel or against criminals like Johnston’s abductors, it is, unlike Fatah, directed. Fatah cannot control its supposed “allies”, most notably the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which has consistently broken cease-fires Fatah put in place and committed numerous atrocities. Israeli and Western politicians may not like HAMAS, but they must recognize that as atrocious as their deeds have been and are, they are better than Fatah spouting pretty words while proving utterly unreliable. A force that is directed, can be directed away. A force that cannot be directed is, at best, an irrelevant bargaining partner and, at worse as the Palestinian Authority’s track record has shown, dangerous.

Many condemn HAMAS summarily on the basis that they call for the destruction of Israel. But did Egypt do any different until Camp David? Did Arafat, before he was given a chance to accumulate more power for himself while never having to actually achieve the peace he was given that power to achieve? The direction leaders wield power in often changes, but their integrity in wielding it rarely does.

This much has become apparent: HAMAS has more in common than Sadat, a man who even worked with the Nazis, than it does with Fatah. Abbas has more in common with his predecessor, who feathered his own nest at the cost of prolonging his people’s agony, than he does with the HAMAS leaders who truly took “all measures necessary” to free Johnston.

And now Israel and its supporters must discern which is the better partner to broker peace with - the one that promises war and acts on it with total authority, or the one that promises peace and exploits its lack of authority to continue a war.

And for those who still see HAMAS as intractable, I would clarify two important qualities of peace making.

First, all peace talks have to be born of the brutality war.

And second, achieving peace takes more than just word.

_________________________________________________

I found this Op-Ed piece by an Israeli scholar to be a brilliant observation of how HAMAS reflects the realities Israel must deal with in the peace process, not the agonizing fantasies that the policies of the West and Fatah indefinitely promote.

Across the world, crucial political scenes are being smeared by sensationalist pot-stirrings and opportunistic spin. Fun as this sounds, these factious foamings do no one any good except for the media and small, petty parties doing the stirring. They endanger the fate of the entire world just so that someone can sell advertising space or keep their campaign chest stuffed.

In Gaza and the West Bank, the proverbial slings and arrows were recently real bullets. But as damaging as the takeover of Gaza by the militant HAMAS party’s militias was in real terms, it’s the subsequent dialogue that does the worst long-term harm. President Mahmoud Abbas of HAMAS’ rival, the entrenched and corrupt Fatah organization made by Yasser Arafat’s grasping hands, was quick to trumpet all allegations of HAMAS brutality in the takeover. They’ve as much as promised a state of siege against Gaza, doling out enough cash to win what little favor it can from the common Palestinians while standing tough against any real cooperation or talk of reforming a unity government with HAMAS.

Outside observers might wonder why Abbas is stalling, when his nascent country is literally divided. The reason is that no sooner than HAMAS cut the lands run by the Palestinian Authority government - though occupied at leisure by the Israeli military - in half, foreign aid from all the western nations that had been cut off since HAMAS was elected began rolling in. Now Abbas doesn’t have any real control over his own militias; he has shown no capacity for actual improvement of Palestinians’ lives or substantial moves towards statehood through negotiation with Israel; he doesn’t, as the conflict two weeks ago showed, even have the capacity to run or defend his government. But he will be a favorite of the cameras now that he’s free to call his former colleagues in the Palestinian government “murderous terrorists”. He will be championed as the lone rational voice in the wilderness of occupied Palestine. And, most importantly for him, he will be able to indefinitely bilk the West of aid money to keep he and his Fatah pals rolling in dough and clinging to power.

This doesn’t give HAMAS a pass either. They’ve been as hardline as ever, but only if you buy into the spin of Abbas and the West do they sound as unreasonable as HAMAS - who has as a party platform the destruction of Israel - customarily sounds. Take note of some of the above points. First, they were denied foreign aid entirely. For those of you unaware, the Palestinian territories essentially subsist solely on aid and slave wages from Israel. Second, HAMAS was elected. Like it or not, the democratic elections chose HAMAS to lead the country - to staff ministries, lead the parliament, and fill all functions except for the highest executive powers that Abbas is now all too happy to exploit, like dissolving the government, enforcing martial law “state of emergency”, and sopping up aid money.

Which brings us to why HAMAS fought to seize Gaza in the first place. The reason is because Abbas and Fatah, such as they are, refused to let any of HAMAS’ people into the Palestinian law-enforcement and military forces which they had exclusive control over. Take a hard look at that, reader. Both sides of our esteemed aisle got their blood up when allegations of vandalism by the outgoing Clinton Administration officials against the White House hit the air waves. Imagine now if the Democrats had controlled not just the White House, but all of the armed forces and police, and refused to let any Republicans serve.

HAMAS first responded by entreaties. Then by negotiations. Finally, after Fatah militias began trading fire with them in the streets of Gaza, they took over. Again, this is not to say that HAMAS is the very soul of logic, but it entirely dispels the notion that Abbas, as he would like to claim, is playing fair. In fact, the last major incursion against the Israelis in Gaza, detailed in an earlier post on this weblog, was not by HAMAS but by one of Abbas’ own Fatah militias!

The chain’s links are easy to follow - HAMAS wins the popularity contest and the government because of Fatah recklessness, corruption and mismanagement. Fatah and the west shut HAMAS out. HAMAS seethes for the better part of a year and then, responding to provocation, takes over. Now they, and not the equally murderous and far more uncontrollable Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade of Fatah, are the “murderous terrorists”. And now Abbas, safe in his West Bank isolation, can play the satrap of the West with the whole of the Palestinian Authority living on his till and the whole of the West casting him as the great white hope.

Meanwhile, a similar slugfest is spiraling around the American airwaves. Yesterday Elizabeth Edwards called into Hardball with Chris Matthews to rake Ann Coulter over the coals for saying:

“If I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot,”

A stiff glance at that quote will detect the inference that it requires a larger context. In fact, Coulter was talking about how her earlier comment about Edwards - the notorious “faggot” remark - was itself taken out of context. When she voiced the nasty jab at Edwards, it was in discussing how certain terms were unallowable under the social standards of political correctness. Well, she certainly proved her own point. It is unallowable. Except if, like Ann Coulter, your livelihood thrives on that kind of scandal and divisiveness. “Commentators” - and I use the term very lightly - like Coulter depend on attacks on her to get the media buzzing, get the blog posts up - yes, like this one - and get the TV appearances rolling in.

Her point about Edwards being killed was, in fact, a criticism of the media finding Bill Maher’s comment allowable whereas her remark employing ‘faggot’ was not. In that criticism, she cited Maher as wishing Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. Thus, she reasoned to Good Morning America’s viewership, she would in the future refrain from using the term ‘faggot’ against an adversary, and simply wish they were killed in a terrorist attack.

But Maher did not say that at all. His discussion was, like Coulter’s, about what kind of political speech was allowable. Though pressed into a certain sympathy for the opinion that Cheney’s demise would bring about an end to the military adventurism for which the Vice-President is credited, he was ultimately asking whether or not people posting on the internet - not commentators, nor politicians, nor even bloggers, but respondents to blogs - had the right to say they wished Cheney dead.

All of this is lost in the discourse. And Elizabeth Edwards’ remarks of censure against Coulter, urging her to tone down the rhetoric, were not the end of the pot-stirring either. As is always the case, it cast more attention on Coulter’s inflammatory comments, thus giving her more incentive to voice them. And as for the Edwards side, they immediately posted the comments on their campaign website, got to talking to the press about it, and are profitting vastly as well.

Here we see another chain of spin’s links strangling us: Radical opinions on a website are discussed by Bill Maher. Maher is pressed into stating a position, which is then radicalized by his opponents. Coulter plays off of Maher’s comment, making it sound radical and using it as an excuse to make herself seem more radical. And finally, Elizabeth Edwards and the ailing Edwards campaign raises a loud cry against radicalism that they have exploited to leap to the fore of the election coverage.

Compare us with the Palestinians. Are the stakes as high? Is it, because we have a functioning system of government and they do not, just entertainment? Is it life and death for them, but just good prime time and watercooler talk for us?

It is life and death for everyone.

This kind of twisting of fact, exploitation of distortion and relentless divisiveness is not just throttling the desperate Occupied Territories. Our own government suffers. Budget battles loom, our Iraq legislation is as much a quagmire as that of the Iraqi parliament itself, and domestic initiatives bog down. And this is not only important because it is our country that suffers - it is important because when the world’s superpower languishes, order in the world languishes. Global credibility of America’s leadership is at an all time low. Aid is dysfunctional. Strategic power is diluted and fettered.

Not all this is the problem of George Bush. Remember who voted to give him his war powers and what powers were voted for. In the case of so many of the Executive’s blunders, we now hear his deriders claiming, “We supported him because we did not know”. That is nonsense. The information was out there. The reason we did not hear it then is the same reason as we do not hear now:

The clamor is deafening.

At the core of America’s global woes, we have its ventures in the Middle East. At the core of the Middle East conflict, inspiring and uniting generations of Islamist radicals and anti-American nationalists, we have the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. And at the core of that crisis, the complexities we need to unravel to solve it are being drown by a power elite exploiting the spin. To defeat the disease known as The War On Terror, the cancer of the Palestine crisis must be conquered.

And where is America’s political will - its voting public - in this?

Too busy debating what their favorite soapbox crier - Coulter or Maher - did or did not say.

——————–

Care to see what they did say? See here:

Coulter

Maher

Edwards

But for an even better read, check out how the HAMAS/Fatah feud is already deepening the battle lines of The War On Terror:

Helping Abbas Hurts Real Peace Negotiations

It Also Foments Further Division In The Arab World, Making Them Either Martyrs For Islam Or Traitors

There’s not much to look at this morning.

Much of it is irrelevant. Some of it is vile. And all of it is a continuation of the same.

Some cases in point:

The Dutch are confusedly liberal:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch smoking ban will come into force in July next year for all restaurants and cafes — including coffee shops where cannabis is the top attraction, the government decided on Friday. “Coffee shops will be treated in the same manner as other catering businesses. They will be smoke-free,” Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told NOS television

Christian world leaders are polite to one another:

Bush said his meeting with the pope, in which the president stressed his record in fighting AIDS and supporting other humanitarian causes, was a “moving experience.”

And the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade is still as uncontrollable and senseless as ever:

Saturday’s daytime attack was carried out jointly by Islamic Jihad and a unit of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction.

This raid was huge, involving action-movie tactics with disguised trucks and mechanized assaults and artillery. It was done in the day time, presumably so that the Israeli troops wouldn’t have the advantage of their night-vision, or so that al-Aqsa could have the proper lighting to record videos for their website. It achieved exactly nothing.

And my favorite part:

“The attack comes as a natural reaction to the Zionist crimes and assassinations against fighters in Gaza and the West Bank,” Abu Ali said.

Those “Zionist crimes” of late being /what/, Abu? Attacking your enemies, HAMAS, so that they didn’t annihilate you in the civil war in Gaza?

Or HAMAS thinking of cutting a ceasefire? Is that what’s got you in high dudgeon? No worries, Abu! That ceasefire won’t hold! Israel will break it whenever it feels like it, or some militant lone-wolf like you will give them an excuse to!

As if to underscore this, more of the same happened in Baghdad as well.

But to be sure to note where these attacks are taking place. They hit the fringes of Baghdad, and into Diyala province. Militarily, the surge is doing what is expected in this first stage - pushing the enemy out of the suburbs and into the exurbs. That is not ‘more of the same’ in the grand scheme of the tactical debacle of Iraq.

Yet all of this means very little if the political debacle doesn’t show change as well. Giving Baghdad’s outlying areas more security will not save the nation if Baghdad’s core is rotten. And with Turkish troops pressuring the government, the Kurds pressuring the government, and the government unwilling or unable to do anything about accomodating the increasingly isolated and radical Sunni, that rot does not stand to regenerate with outside help.

What value is there in a new day for Iraq if every day starts off with its heart poisoned?

Tactical problems have been engaged. Iran has been engaged. Now the USA must engage the real object of our military adventure, the Iraqi government, and show it through direct action that whatever our expressed purpose, we came to Iraq for change, not just more of the same.