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If you get through the moving, if not touching, graphic HAMAS provides below, go on to read the statement from the Canadian prime minister. And in pursuit of fairness, more from HAMAS. And to be really extra extra fair, we'll conclude with a Canadian newspaper columnist who represents the largest newspaper in the largest city in Canada. Yes, he's on about HAMAS. He thinks their not extra extra nice, but hey, boys will be boys, eh?Here's a link to Hamas' website, where they are featuring a moving graphic which depicts a nuclear weapon destroying Israel .
Picked this link up from Patorius at http://cuanas.blogspot.com/
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Harper speaks on Hamas:
Statement by the Prime Minister on the situation in the Palestinian Authority
February 14, 2006
Ottawa, Ontario
Prime Minister Stephen Harper today issued the following statement :
"Canada remains committed to the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, and the creation of a sovereign and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel.
The Government of Canada fully supports the Quartet's statement of January 30, 2006. Future assistance to any new Palestinian government will be reviewed against that government's commitment to the principles of non-violence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap.
We commend President Abbas for his leadership and commitment to the peace process in the Middle East. During this interim period, President Abbas has Canada's full support, although our government will continue to review the situation on an ongoing basis."
The government's position was communicated to President Mahmoud Abbas in a telephone conversation today.
http://anonalogue.blogspot.com
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Hamas calls for the nuclear destruction of Israel
Margot Dudkevitch, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 21, 2006
Details released by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) on Tuesday revealed that graphics appearing on the Hamas website call for the destruction of Israel in a nuclear holocaust.
On the website, a red Star of David is encased in a black rectangle which is then obliterated in a nuclear explosion.
Arabic words then appear saying "The Az A-Din Al Qassam website exclusively tells the whole story of the most elusive squad [to be uncovered] in the history of the Entity [Israel], in the city of Ramallah." Every few seconds there are repeated images of a nuclear explosion destroying the Star of David.
In an undated interview on the website posted after the recent Palestinian legislative elections, the Hamas military wing vows to continue its resistance. "As long as there is occupation, there will be resistance," the statement says.
http://www.jpost.com/
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We should not cut aid to Palestinians
Feb. 17, 2006. 01:00 AM
RICHARD GWYN
For how long is it likely that Canadians will be content to watch Palestinians starve? A couple of nanoseconds, at a guess. For even shorter than that, at a further guess, once the Palestinian leader whom we like, as do all in the West, namely President Mahmoud Abbas, appeals for food and money to be sent in to keep his people from starving. Early this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared that all future Canadian aid to Palestine would be "reviewed" in the light of whether the incoming Palestinian government, which will be dominated by the extremist Hamas party, is prepared to renounce violence and recognize the state of Israel.Harper's statement echoed those made by the U.S. and Britain, and a number of other major donor countries who together dispatch some $1 billion U.S. a year to Palestine.Not of all donors, though. Not, of course, Arab ones such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Not Russia, which has invited Hamas to send a delegation to Moscow for talks.Nevertheless, Canada is walking along safely in the midst of the majority. And quite properly so, since we cannot and ought not to give assistance to a terrorist organization like Hamas. Except that we would be hurting ordinary Palestinians, not Hamas. Indeed, Hamas might benefit since any of its own future administrative failures can be blamed on the punitive actions of countries like Canada. Even more difficult, we would be punishing Palestinians for having exercised their democratic rights in exactly the manner we wanted them to. They did so by defeating a corrupt and incompetent government in an election that was fair and open.The reality, therefore, is that we cannot and should not cut off aid to the Palestinians. Nor, in actual fact, is there any way we are going to do this.There's simply no way we can resist appeals such as that just made by UN official Ehab Shanti: "It's really essential that at this critical juncture the world does not abandon the needy." Even less could we resist the pictures of emaciated Palestinian children that might soon fill our television screens.Nor will most of the other donors be able to resist this reality.Instead, a convoluted diplomatic dance is about to begin. Canada, the U.S. and Britain and the others will refuse to support a Hamas government, except in the improbable event it totally changes its policies toward Israel (although it may well tone these down).Instead, we will support Abbas. We will do this by agreeing to continue aid programs administered by those non-Hamas members that Abbas appoints to the new Palestinian government.There is a deep irony here. The U.S., and even more so Israel, have until now failed conspicuously to give Abbas any practical help at all. That Israeli settlements in the West Bank have continued to expand without any restraint and that the Israeli occupation practices have continued to quite deliberately humiliate the Palestinians, is a major reason why Abbas's Fatah party lost the election to Hamas.And while all this has been going on, Canada has said not a peep to help Abbas.We said we wanted the Arabs to become democratic. They are becoming that, if still in a very rough way. Now we're going to have to practise what we've been preaching. Palestine is going to be difficult enough. Wait until the same thing happens in Egypt when most of its 70 million people choose, freely and democratically, to elect the Muslim Brotherhood. The Middle East is now scary and unpredictable. But, for the first time ever in its political history, it actually is changing itself.
We should not cut aid to Palestinians
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I am now accepting plane tickets to Iceland. Yes, I'll go to Borneo. I'll go anywhere that doesn't have creatures like this in positions of public responsibility. Come to think of it, I'd rather go to Hell than stay with this lot. But Hell must be full of Presbyterians, so nix that. How about Bermuda?
2 comments:
We need you Dag. So look on the brightside: I know Hamas is supposed to be so full of hatred for anything in this world that they are beyond corruption by simple worldly desires. But in reality, don't you think western money will buy the leaders a few nice cars, cellphones, foreign escorts, all the easier to make them targets for the Israeli missiles that will be retaliating for every act of Hamas aggression? Rick B. even suggests that the old Abbas guard will be sending rockets over the wall, just to watch Hamas catch the return fire.
Dag, your fight is with us, with the "we" that needs to come into being before we can do anything serious to defend the west against these assaults. We need you and i know you're not seriously thinking of leaving us. Richard Gwynn has always been a pretentious old fool. But now he's really an old man. Truth's time will come. But first all the old lies have to be revealed in full light. And the revealing is an art that sometimes requires a little dissimulation.
It's odd that France and Canada are the grounds of resistence in the greater Western world's struggle for a restored sanity in public affairs and civil society.I feel both obliged and privilged to be in the thick of things.
Regarding HAMAS, I've lived with them as private people for long stretches, and I have some idea of how they think, if one can call it that. And theres the problem: it isn't thinking in a rational sense, not even logical feeling in the sense one would encouter in some pot-smoking hippy. There isn't even a coherent hatred following a single line of reasoning. Its a mystical expression f reality that is, in my opinion, psychotic. The clearest explanation of the mind in question that I'm familiar with is Julien Jaynes' analysis of the bicameral mind. We're talkin' nutters. Upon a moment's reflection, one might legitimately describe them as a variant of classical gnostics.
I think I should wait to go into this in more detail, until I have a day to write fully. The problem is that in the West we have people in positions of pubic responsibility who have really not the faintest idea what they encounter in the likes of HAMAS. I'm going to have to take the time to explain my view in sufficeint detail to overcome the disbelief I know this will raise in the average Western reader. It is, on the face of it, unbelievable.
The PA is Machiavellian enough to do nearly anything one might think up. Theirs is a different kind of madness. Our problem is that we mostly assume that our enemies are like us but different. We will continue to lose our battles till we come to understand our own lack of understanding of our enemies.
So long as we rely on the likes of Richard Gwyn for our public information regarding our private opinions of the Muslim world and our relationship with it then we are in serious trouble. We must rid ourselves of fools such as he, and we must find aware and honest people who will and can expain our situation to us as a community under threat. We cannot allow such ignorant fools to continue to inform our public debates. We need people to show up at McDonald's on Thursday nights to talk openly about the failure of our public intellectuals and to find ways to articulate our concerns so we can mobilise for our own defense.
Our intellectuals are failures. We must find new thinkers with real ideas that apply to this new conditon we face. Our intellectuals will come from our meetings. That's democracy in action. That alone will save us. And it begins in places such as France and Canada. Yeah, I'm proud to be a member of this charge.
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