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**http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1138622536769&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Feb. 2, 2006 21:33 | Updated Feb. 3, 2006 1:34
Column One: The lies we tell ourselves
By CAROLINE GLICK
On Thursday, for the second time this week, a group of Palestinian terrorists
took over the European Union's offices in Gaza. Armed with rifles, the
terrorists demanded an official apology from the Danish government for
caricatures of Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September. At the
same time as the EU offices were commandeered, another group of terrorists in
Gaza issued an ultimatum: Either Denmark and the EU issue formal apologies for
the publication of the cartoons by nightfall, or the terrorists will begin
kidnapping Europeans in Gaza.
It is notable that in the wake of Hamas's electoral victory last week, the
Palestinians have placed themselves alongside al-Qaida as the "guardians" of
Islamic honor. It says a great deal both about who the Palestinians are and
what it is that Israel and the Western world are up against.
At its base, the Muslim furor over the cartoons is part and parcel of their
culture war against the West. The Muslims pushing the issue believe that
non-Muslims ought to behave obsequiously towards all things Islamic, while the
Muslims are free to demonize Jews as monkeys and pigs and accuse Christians of
being idolaters. According to the rules of their culture war, if Western
societies refuse to behave in accordance with their dictates, the Muslims have
the right and duty to attack them.
That is, the culture war that is being waged by the Arabs and Muslims in
response to the Danish cartoons is an assault on the West's right to live and
govern in accordance with its values. It is an assault on the notions of
freedom and self-determination themselves. That the Palestinians should now be
placing themselves at the head of the charge against freedom and
self-determination should serve as an indicator of who they are and what they
stand for. But alas, it is not.
While, under US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's incompetent gaze, the
Iranians quickly assemble the capability to build nuclear bombs at will, Hamas
is directing its efforts towards building an Iranian enclave in Judea and
Samaria. Due to Rice's insistence on reenacting her predecessor Colin Powell's
failed policy of seeking UN backing for American actions in the Middle East,
Iran is being allowed to achieve independent nuclear capabilities. At the same
time, over the long term, Hamas's Iranian enclave in Judea and Samaria could
well cause Israel's collapse and thus mitigate the ayatollahs' need to destroy
Israel with nuclear warheads.
Hamas's victory at the polls last week was just the beginning of the jihadist
group's takeover of Judea and Samaria. In the coming weeks and months, as
Western aid continues to flow into the Palestinian Authority's coffers,
together with supplemental aid from Iran, Hamas will have the means to gain
control of the Western trained and heavily armed Palestinian security forces.
The forces' loyalty will be bought simply: with the payment of their salaries.
As it secures its control over Judea and Samaria, Hamas will adopt modes of
operation similar to those adopted by their terrorist colleagues in Fatah,
although it will be far more popular than Fatah ever was.
The main truth that Hamas's rise to power has exposed is not that Palestinian
society is perhaps the most genocidal society on the face of the planet. That
has been clear for all to see for the past five and a half years of the
enormously popular Palestinian terror war against Israel. What Hamas's ascent
to power has uncovered is that in everything related to the Palestinian
conflict with Israel, the policies of the US-led international community, like
the policies of the current Israeli government, are predicated on myths rather
than facts.
Hamas's election last week should have put paid to the US plan to resolve the
Palestinian conflict with Israel by establishing a Palestinian state in Judea,
Samaria and Gaza. After all, in a public relations blitz, Hamas leaders in
Damascus, Khaled Mashal and Musa Abu Marzook, explained in op-eds in the
Guardian and Washington Post newspapers that their goal remains the destruction
of Israel. And yet, the US has just agreed with the EU, Russia and the UN that
they will continue to transfer funds to the Palestinian Authority. Moreover,
Rice is now pressuring Israel to continue its tax revenue transfers to the PA.
Indeed, rather than simply cut off all support for the Palestinians, who daily
humiliate them, attack Israel and just voted al-Qaida's sister organization
into power, the US is negotiating with Hamas. In his State of the Union address
this week, US President George W. Bush laid out conditions for Hamas to be
accepted by America. Bush's decision to set out conditions for Hamas to
fulfill, rather than simply identifying it as the jihadist terror group it is,
makes clear that far from isolating al-Qaida's ally, Bush is bargaining with
it.
Essentially, what Bush and his European counterparts are saying is that they
expect Hamas to behave like Fatah - that is with duplicity. For its part, Hamas
has been a willing negotiating partner. While giving no ground to the Americans
and the Europeans on the substance of its aim to destroy Israel, Hamas leaders
are offering "long-term cease-fires" and have adopted Fatah's platform of
destroying Israel in stages.
THE QUESTION that arises from the US maneuvering with Hamas is why is the Bush
Administration acting as it is? The source of Washington's awkward posture
towards Hamas is that over the past three years, Bush has allowed his clear
strategy of winning the war on global terror by bringing freedom to the Arab
world to be subverted. In the case of the Palestinians, on June 24, 2002, the
president laid out what the Palestinians needed to do in order to receive US
support for statehood. Bush conditioned US support for the Palestinians on
their disavowal of terrorism and destruction of terror groups; their embrace of
liberal values; the conduct of a genuine campaign to root out corruption; and
above all, a genuine Palestinian acceptance of Israel's right to exist
accompanied by an end of the PA's indoctrination of their people to seek
Israel's destruction.
Over succeeding months, Bush's clear policy was denuded of its substance by the
State Department, the Israeli Left and the EU. In December 2002, Bush accepted
the road map plan for peace in spite of the fact that it flew in the face of
the policy he had laid out in June. Rather than officially break with his
democratization and liberalization policy towards the Palestinians, Bush
pretended that the road map advanced that policy.
Similarly, while during the initial phases of his post-September 11
policymaking, Bush was clear that democratization of the Arab world meant the
embrace of freedom by Arab societies, as the US became bogged down by the
terror war in Iraq, the president pretended that liberalization and the conduct
of open elections were the same thing. That is, he conflated elections with
democracy.
But the open elections that were just held in the Palestinian Authority proved
that the conduct of elections and the establishment of democracy are two
separate things. The Palestinian elections led to Islamization, not
democratization. There will be no freedom for the Palestinians at the end of
this process. And by dictating conditions for Hamas to fulfill, Bush now
ignores the fact that the Palestinians elected Hamas because it is what it is,
not because they want Hamas to be something it is not.
For their part, for 14 years successive Israeli governments have replaced
policymaking with myth-making. While the Americans do this to placate the
Europeans and the Arabs, Israel's governments build their policies on fantasies
to gain short-term political advantages on the home front.
Today, the Western world is more or less cognizant of the fact that the Muslim
and Arab worlds - or large swathes of them - are waging a war against the West.
It is true that to varying degrees Western societies all lie to themselves
about what the fact that this global jihad is being waged demands of them. And
yet, few leaders deny today that radical Islam is a threat to Western
civilization.
PERVERSELY, WHILE the rest of the West is awake to the threat of jihad,
Israel's government remains stubbornly asleep. Although all jihadist groups and
societies daily declare that the destruction of Israel is one of the first aims
of their war on the West, the Israeli government itself is largely in denial of
both the fact that Israel is a prime target in a larger Islamic jihad and of
the fact that the Palestinians see themselves as the flag bearers of global
jihad in their war against Israel.
Rather than accept the reality or Israel's predicament, the current Israeli
government, like its predecessors, insists that the real "root" of the global
jihad being waged against it is the presence of Israeli communities in Judea
and Samaria or the absence of Palestinian statehood in general. So it was that
in the shadow of the September 11 attacks, rather than declare Israel's key
role in thwarting the aims of the jihadists, Ariel Sharon sent his foreign
minister Shimon Peres to the UN where Peres told a befuddled world body that
the Palestinian jihad against Israel was completely unrelated to the global
jihad. Lecturing the world leaders, Peres waxed romantically over the need for
a Palestinian state to be established and for a new New World Order, based on
nanotechnology and the Internet to be formed.
Currently, Olmert is ignoring the threat that has crossed Israel's doorstep by
designing a diversionary campaign - not against Hamas, but against his fellow
Israelis. So it is that rather than contend with the fact that the
international community is moving towards welcoming Hamas as its newest member,
Olmert declared war on the religious Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria.
Olmert's decision to send a force of 6,000 policemen to the community of Amona
on Wednesday in order to destroy nine homes was an act of deliberate
provocation. His aim was to divert the attention of Israeli voters from the
Hamas state in Gaza and the Hamas state-in-the-making in Judea and Samaria by
providing them with pictures of settlers battling riot police. This was
necessary because Olmert's only policy regarding Hamas is to transfer Judea and
Samaria to their control.
In light of this, Olmert and his associates desperately strive for the Israeli
electorate to ignore the fact that the only real issue on the agenda today is
whether Hamas will rule over Judea and Samaria or the Israeli military will
rule over Judea and Samaria. As Israelis learned from 2000 to 2002, when the
IDF cedes control over Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, life for Israelis
becomes impossible. The security of Tel Aviv is dependent on Israel maintaining
control of Jenin, Nablus, Kalkilya and Tulkarm. The security of Jerusalem is
dependent on Israeli control of Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron.
Given the strategic threat that Hamas control of Judea and Samaria poses to
Israel, Olmert's fervent wish is for them to postpone their takeover until
after the elections, allowing him to continue his diversionary campaign against
his own people unfettered by the weight of reality.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia
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