(Boston Globe) Jeff Jacoby - Hamas's lopsided win is an unambiguous reality check into the nature of Palestinian society. If there is one thing that the West badly needs, it is more realism and less delusion about the Palestinians. Palestinians are not stupid, and it insults their intelligence to pretend that when they vote to empower a genocidal organization with a platform straight out of Mein Kampf, what they're really after is better healthcare. The notion that Hamas now has ''a choice to make" is just another example of the delusional thinking that is so pervasive when it comes to the PA. Hamas's new duties are not going to turn it into a moderate group of diligent civil servants. When violent Islamists win political power, their brutality and zealotry do not diminish. (See Khomeini, Ayatollah and Taliban, Afghan). Like Hamas, Fatah - the PLO faction Abbas and Arafat co-founded 45 years ago - advocates Israel's destruction in its basic charter. Like Hamas, Fatah has an ''armed wing" - the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - that is guilty of horrific terror attacks. Fatah's emblem shows crossed rifles against a map of ''Palestine" that depicts all of Israel; on the Hamas emblem, the map is the same, but the crossed weapons are swords.
2006-01-30 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive