Israel Matzav

Embracing Islamo-Fascists

The Jewish left is so hung up on being 'liberal' that they are even embracing Hamas rather than rejecting the 'Palestinians.' This apparently cuts across the Jewish left worldwide - both inside and outside of Israel.

The Jewish Left is failing the Hamas test. Seemingly, the election of the fanatically-religious Hamas would have enabled the Jewish Left to join most other Jews in solidarity behind Israel as a country facing a threat. The Left tends to view religion as irrational and destructive, and secularism as rational. During the early period of Oslo terrorism ca. 1993-1996, the Jewish Left constantly assured us that the terror came from fundamentalist “enemies of peace”—Hamas and Islamic Jihad—whereas the ostensibly-secular Arafat and his PLO remained committed to conciliation.

But the empowerment of Hamas—now promoting suicide terrorism for children on its children’s website—has caused no change in the Jewish Left’s mindset. True, for Israeli leftist author Amos Oz, who has steadily vilified “fundamentalist” Jewish settlers, it is still not Hamas itself that is yearning to make peace with Israel.

But in an op-ed called “Someone to Talk To” on the ynet news site, Oz complains that both “Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu . . . claim there is no one to talk with on the Palestinian side” and want to take unilateral measures. Instead, Oz suggests that Israel “try to strengthen the moderate elements amongst the Palestinians, the ones concentrated around [President Abbas’s] office, to negotiate with them and to sign agreements with them. . . . Were negotiations with the presidential establishment to produce even a draft agreement, it could signify a breakthrough for a ‘bypass road’ to avoid Hamas and could lead to victory for the moderate Palestinian camp.”

Apart from the fact that Oz predictably upholds Abbas’s wholly undeserved reputation for moderacy—not to mention efficacy, even after over a year of rule in which Abbas never lifted a finger against the Palestinian terror organizations—this may also be the first time anyone has suggested simply “bypassing” a serving totalitarian government and “negotiating agreements” with selected elements in the regime.

And should that fail to work, “Israel,” Oz assures us, “has got one other way to bypass Hamas: to negotiate with Arab governments for a general resolution to all elements of the conflict on the basis of the 2003 Arab League proposal (the so-called ‘Saudi Proposal’).” In other words, skip over the PA regime altogether and do it all in one shot—with the whole Arab world, with its great fondness for Israel. For Oz, it is better to engage publicly in ludicrous mental contortions than to join the rest of us folks who just think we’re going to have to fight Hamas.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:20 AM