(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - The Palestinian people have spoken. According to their apologists, sure, Hamas wants to destroy Israel, wage permanent war, and send suicide bombers into discotheques to drive nails into the skulls of young Israelis, but what the Palestinians were really voting for was efficient garbage collection. It is time to stop infantilizing the Palestinians. As Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said in a news conference four days after the election, "The Palestinian people have chosen Hamas with its known stances.'' By a landslide, the Palestinian people have chosen these known stances: rejectionism, Islamism, terrorism, rank anti-Semitism, and the destruction of Israel in a romance of blood, death, and revolution. Garbage collection on Wednesdays. After 60 years, the Palestinian people continue to reject the right of a Jewish state to exist side-by-side with them. Fatah - secular, worldly, and wise - learned to lie to the West and pretend otherwise. Hamas - less sophisticated, more literal, and more bound by religious obligation to expel the Jews - is simply more honest. This election was truth in advertising. The world must advise the Palestinian people that if their national will is to embrace Hamas - its methods and its madness - then their national will is simply too murderous and, yes, too depraved for the world to countenance, let alone subsidize.
2006-02-03 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive