Talking with Israel-bashers

Every time a newspaper publishes an article that involves Israel--even tangentially--comments pour in from Americans, denouncing Israel, comparing it with Nazi Germany, yada yada. My comment:

Here's a question for all the frenzied commentors on this thread:

Where would you rank Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians on this list of government-sponsored/ordered/tolerated abuses, in no particular order:

* Sudan's Muslim dictatorship's treatment of its Christian blacks in the Darfur region

* Burma's dictatorship's treatment of that country's ethnic minorities--well, and just about everyone outside the junta's family and the military

* Iraq's Muslims' treatment of Iraq's indigenous 750,000 Christians since its "liberation" in 2003

* The Arab world's refusal to grant right of return to the indigenous Jewish populations (around 850,000) whose properties and businesses they expropriated and then expelled in and around 1948--along with their descendants of course

* Turkey's Muslim government's treatment of its indigenous Kurdish population

* Hamas' treatment of Fatah members in the Gaza strip, abuse of women, training of children as suicide bombers, and use of civilians as human shields in military engagements

* Communist China's treatment of Tibet

* Communist China's treatment of all its citizens apart from the 200 million or so urban middle class

* Communist China's treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority

* North Korea's treatment of all its population outside the ruling clique and the military

* Japan's treatment of cetaceans

* Brazil's treatment of its Indian tribes in areas ranchers, miners, or oil drillers want

* Zimbabwe's treatment of all its citizens outside the ruling clique and the military

* Iran's trreatment of half the country by its Islamofascist ruling clique

* Saudi Arabia's treatment of women and minorities (such as its Shiite minority) and anyone who doesn't obey its 7th century social dictates (case in point: a dozen or more girls at a boarding school that caught fire; they died because the religious police forbade the firefighters from rescuing them)

* The treatment of women and dissenters wherever the Taliban rule (today mainly in the Pashtun regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan)

* The torture of most girls throughout the Muslim-dominated regions of sub-Saharan Africa via FGM

* The systematic murder, rape, and mutilation by various militias and governments in mineral-rich territories of Subsaharan Africa (hence the term "blood diamonds")

* The treatment of Chechnya, Georgia and other territories in and adjacent to Russia by its "democratic dictatorship"

* The substantial contribution to the world overpopulation crisis by the Catholic Church, along with the traumatization of countless thousands of boys and girls by pedopriests worldwide

* The brutal treatment of Somalis in the areas controlled by the country's homegrown Islamofascist organization

I could go on. The point is that even if the Israelis mistreat the Palestinians as badly as most of you say--they're small potatoes on this list of horrors, both in sheer numbers and in intensity of mistreatment.

Yet an editorial on any of these topics would garner only a smattering of comments--and probably none from the zealots on this thread.

So--why do so many Americans who are neither Palestinians nor Israelis kick Israel to the top of this list, when by any rational standards they'd be at or near the bottom?

Australian reader "One Salient Oversight" says the fact that Israel is a client state of America moves it to the top.

Israel is certainly an ally. But if it were truly a client state they'd do what we ask, and they often don't. relying on their powerful lobby here to sometimes thumb their collective noses at us. We also shower billions of dollars on Egypt, with comparably mixed results. Though Egyptian lobbying is far less effective--perhaps because there far fewer educated, politically active Arab-Americans compared to Jewish Americans.

So here's my challenge: assume for the sake of argument that I'm correct as far as the actual government-sanction abuse goes, apart from the question of who gave who money or supports such policies from abroad (relative to the abusing country). So we have the Israelis at or near the bottom of the stack I provided here.

Now--should Americans focus obsessively on the lesser abuses of our ally, or on the vastly worse-and vastly larger-scale abuses of countries that aren't allies, or which are, like China, "frenemies?"

And should we overlook the fact that many of the enemies of Israel (Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah especially) are our dedicated enemies as well?

And not just enemies because of our alliance with Israel. If you read Qutb's writings (he was the Moslem Brotherhood's chief thinker), you'll see that on his travels in America before Israel even existed he loathed us in every way. The freedoms of women upset him particularly.

And on that topic, why do those so passionately devoted to the Palestinians' well-being completely overlook Hamas' Taliban-lite treatment of Gazans?

Not to mention the fact that while Israelis have treated many Palestinians harshly and don't accord Arab-Israelis full equality (albeit more freedom that Arab-anything elses in the Arab world), calling Israelis Nazis and their treatment of Palestinians genocide leaves us without any language to describe the other situations on the list of abusive nations included here (see Amesty International for their list as well).

Client state or not, the Palestinians have it good compared to at least one billion other people on Earth--probably a lot more than that, but at least one billion.

And all the arguments given to justify singling out Israel above all these other nations holds water in my book.

I'm not letting Israel off the hook. But the frenzied denunciations I read constantly from American leftists are counterproductive. Calling a pickpocket a rapist insults both the pickpocket and actual rape victims. Calling Israelis Nazis so offends most Americans that it obscures whatever abuses Israelis might actually do.

How did Western leftists wind up in bed with Arab dictators?

Yesterday's Washington Post editorial "Managing the Blockade" recommended some sensible, politically centrist reforms of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

It garnered the usual raft of responses: Israeliphiles denouncing it for not supporting anything Israel's government chooses to do 100%; Israeliphobes denouncing it for not calling Israel the reincarnation of the Third Reich (the accompanying image conveys their attitude, not mine); Tea Party types denouncing Obama; and a few who, like me, endorsed the editorial.

Here's my comment:

Pretty ironic to see all these American leftists shilling for Islamist dictatorships--especially considering what thsoe dictatorships would do to these leftists if they moved to, say, Gaza and denounced the local government as freely as they speak here.

--while if they did likewise in Israel, nothing would happen to them.

I'm not saying this as a way of defending anything Israel does. In particular I regard the attack on the USS Liberty as a war crime, whose perpetrators we should be trying to extradite today.

And the WaPo recommendations made here seem eminently sensible to me--while I'm sure Israel's ruling party would object strenuously.

That said, no patriotic American will forget the Palestinian response to 9/11. These are not our friends. Israel is the closest thing to a friendly state that we've got there. Why should we help countries that loathe us against one that like us?

Especially when the arguments in favor of doing so describe Israel in a manner most Americans would find both ridiculous and despicable.

The blacks of Darfur would think they'd died and gone to heaven if they could be treated like the Israelis do the Gazans and West Bankers. Ditto the ethnic minorities of Burma. And the Tibetans, whom the Han Chinese are slowly erasing.

I could go on. The point is that there are dozens of situations around the world where governments treat their minorities or occupy-ees vastly worse than the Israelis treat the Palestinians.

But I never read dozens of frenzied denunciations of Burma, Sudan, China, and others. Not to mention how the dictators of Iran, Egypt etc. treat their majorities, much less their minorities.

So--why does Israel, a minor player in the mistreatment-of-peoples roster, get the star treatment?

I have never heard a Western leftist explain that satisfactorily.

Feel free to try. Absent that, it just looks like y'all act one way when a Jew does X than when a Muslim does X.

There's a name for that, isn't there?

BTW, note to leftists: when you equate Israel with Nazi Germany--as you do constantly--you're just pleasuring yourselves, because that's when everyone who doesn't already agree with you stops listening to you.

Though to be fair most Americans react the same way to the Tea Party wing nuts who fill newspaper comment threads with frenzied denunciations of Obama and the the Democratic Congress, regardless of the topic of article they're supposedly commenting on.

Just goes to show--wingnuts of the left and right are identical on the process level: Manichean* worldview, inability to communicate with anyone outside their tribe.

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* Named after a 3rd century Persian sect preaching black & white religious dualism--i.e. there's only good and evil--nothing in between.

I know, I could have just said "black & white worldview."

But it's such a cool word...

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And speaking of cool words, guess where "Palestine" comes from?

The name dates from before the 5th century BC, and means "Land of the Philistines." The Philistines were neither Jews nor Arabs, as it happens. A variety of peoples lived there. The Arabs conquered the land by force of arms in 638AD, becoming an occupier with the Jews and Christians and others there living as subject peoples under a different set of laws than the Arabs.

Read Tom Friedman's column on the Turkish-Israeli impasse

Tom Friedman wrote the most insightful column about this situation that I've seen so far. Because I'm on the West Coast, and given the way the NYtimes moderates comment threads, I usually have to post a comment before seeing any others. Hence this response:


I'm writing this before any comments have been posted. But I can tell you what you're going to see: hundreds of foaming-at-the-mouth denunciations of Israel as the reincarnated Third Reich, along with dozens of posts denouncing the spawn-o'-Satan Palestinians--and which staunchly defend anything Israel does.

What most of these posts will share is a failure to read Mr. Friedman's both knowledgeable and sensible assessment and recommendation: that both Israel and Turkey have painted themselves into a corner, and probably only America has a prayer of un-painting them.

After all, while Turkey falls far short of Western democratic standards, compared to the Muslim governments from Morocco to Pakistan, well, Turkey is Sweden.

Likewise, while Israel can act like a pit bull, it too is a democracy, and those are few and far between in that neighborhood.

And I'll add that anyone--anyone--who sees this as a black and white situation between Good guys and Bad guys is delusional. Such zealots have nothing to contribute to solving this extraordinarily difficult situation. They're the kind of "friend" of their side who's worse than an enemy.

Because face it: neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are about to fold their tents and steal away into the night. Moreover, no solution will avoid real, heartwrenching pain for both sides.

It would help if everyone involved could have their memories wiped. History is not our friend in this situation. Historical claims and historical grievances are piled so high on both sides that it's nearly impossible to see over them.

And don't accuse me of moral equivalence. I don't claim that the opposing claims are equal--doing so is like trying to slice a pie for warring children--you'll never make the cut such that someone won't cry foul. I only claim that both sides have "grievance narratives" that are routinely invoked in every situation, and which preclude any actual solution.

It's like all those Balkan nations still obsessing over the Battle of Lepanto, or the Fall of Byzantium, or...

Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors (Egypt's forbearance is mainly purchased by us). That's not a justification for all of Israel's actions. It is, however, a guarantee of Israel's intransigence unless America continues to have Israel's back.

At the same time if America rolls over for Israel like Bush II did, that's a guarantee that the Arab states won't see America as an honest broker (or as close to that as we can be without sacrificing Israel).

So as I'm certain Mr. Friedman would agree, the most adroit diplomacy is called for on our part.

In this particular event, the following things are already clear:

1. No one posting a comment here really knows what happened on that ferry, unless they were physically on the ferry's deck AND can be trusted not to lie on behalf of their side.

Yet many will write narratives about what happened as if they had been there and were objective observers. This is the confidence of the zealot, who derives reality from his preconceived ideas, instead of vice-versa.

2. Israel had nothing to gain from killing people on the ferry. If the Israeli forces had had an inkling of what awaited them on the ferry, they would have gone to some kind of Plan B (using frogmen to destroy the ferry's propeller?), not through humanitarianism, but through simply understanding what was best for Israel. In my book, therefore, Israel is probably guilty of bad military planning, but not of murderous intent.

3. Hamas had a great deal to gain from people on their side dying on the ship at the hands of Israelis--one dead pregnant Turkish woman would be more valuable to their cause than a thousand poster-waving protesters.

Points 2 and 3 are instantiations of the principles of assymetrical warfare; they aren't unique to this situation. They're standard operating procedure.

4. It's in both Turkey's and Israel's best interests to defuse this situation, such as by both agreeing on humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza, with Turkey agreeing not to include proscribed items and to allow Israels to inspect the cargo and ship it by truck via an Israeli port, with Israel agreeing to let Turkish inspectors accompany the cargo into Gaza, to guarantee that the cargo reaches its intended recipients.

5. Hard liners in both Turkey and Israel want to keep this from happening, even at the cost of armed conflict.

I don't need to know exactly what happened on the ferry to know these things, and you don't either.

All I ask others is that they actually read Friedman's article before posting their own comment--and realize that the best interests of most Turks and Israelis dovetail in this situation, just as the interests of both Turkish and Israeli hardliners dovetail.

So the "enemy" is hardliners on both sides, and the "friend" is reasonable people on both sides.

Right?

Of ferry ships and evil Israeli acts, oh my

I was just reading the lengthy comment thread for a NYTimes account of the Israeli boarding of a Turkish ferry ship and the ensuing hoo-rah. It included hundreds of fiery blanket denunciations of Israel. I said this:

For the sake of argument, assume that the most foaming-at-the-mouth accusations of the Israeli attack on the relief ship are true.

How does that compare to the routine, daily mass murders and rapes by the thousands going on in the eastern Congo and northern Uganda and all over the west and south of Sudan?

Or the war of oppression being carried out by the Burmese junta against its own citizens daily--especially against a number of ethnic minorities?

Or the mass murders by Iran's theocratic dictatorship against its own citizens who dared protest the recent rigged election?

Or China's progressive ethnicide being carried out against the Tibetan people as well as against China's non-Han Muslim minority in western China (the Uighurs)?

How about the ethnic cleansing of Christians from Iraq who have been there close to several thousand years, including murdering most of the men, with the tacit approval of Iraq's Islamist government?

These ongoing state-sponsored atrocities, taking place around the world, utterly dwarf what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians, even if you take the Hamas version of reality at face value. Yet none of these things inspire the outpouring of passionate denunciation that the letters in this comment thread exemplify.

Why?

How did Israel come to be treated by so many Americans and Europeans as the Worst Country on Earth? The responses I've read here are wildly, extravagantly disproportionate to the crimes alleged to have occurred, compared to what else is going on around the globe.

I'm not trying to exculpate Israel. I assume that most of the commentors on this thread were on board the Turkish ferry and personally witnessed what took place there--otherwise their total certainly about the events means they believe Hamas and its allies always tell the exact truth, and Israel and its allies always lie.

But since I wasn't on board and I'm not clairvoyant, it's going to take time for me to figure out what happened, so I'm at a disadvantage arguing the facts on the ship.

So since these other people had to have been on the ship to achieve such certainly, I'd like to know how they evaded Israeli custody. If not, then they are jumping to conclusions, which betrays an irrational hatred of Israel--regardless of what actually happened.

And if that's so, I'd love to have someone honestly tell me why they hate Israel so much--given that by any objective measure of state-sponsored oppression and murder, they're the smallest of small potatoes...especially compared to the Islamic dictatorships around them (has anyone looked at what Hamas did to all the Fatah supporters it could find when it took over Gaza, BTW?).

I don't want America to be Israel's sock puppet. I didn't like Bush II's automatic support for anything Israel did. But I don't want to be the Arab League's sock puppet either.

And if you think you know exactly what happened on that ship at this point, and that it means Israel=evil; Islamists=good...that's what you are.

The Most Important Problem on Earth

The Palestinian Problem appears to be the most important issue on Earth to Arab Muslems, Wahhabists and Salafists everywhere, Jews everywhere, and partisan zealots--left and right--in Europe and America.

But in the hierarchy of the world's problems it's a blip, folks.

Even if all the claims of Jewish mistreatment of Palestinians were true, those crimes are dwarfed by what people in power are doing in the eastern Congo, Darfur, Burma, Uganda and many other places. They're also dwarfed by how Muslim parents sexually mutilate their daughters in the millions--literally--across Africa.

Or if you consider sheer suffering, we'd alleviate more by supplying mosquito nets to the regions suffering from malaria and dengue fever than by any sort of settlement in Palestine/Israel.

And if you consider long-term, large-scale dangers to civilization, we should focus on the carbonation of the world's oceans (caused by CO2 dissolving into the water, altering its acidity), which will almost certainly kill off all the world's coral reefs and shellfish within a few decades, an ecocidal catastrophe that will cause immense suffering to vast portions of humanity that depend on those ecosystems for most of their protein.

Throughout the blogosphere partisans fulminate about those wicked Zionists. Those barbaric Palestinians. When the one billion humans who go to sleep every night desperately hungry would think they'd died and gone to heaven if they could live like Palestinians or Israelis.

Above all else, the world contains roughly FIVE BILLION more people than it can actually sustain, and because of this and the unspeakably selfish and shortisighted practices of powerful individuals around the world, Earth is experiencing the largest mass extinction of species since the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. And if you think that isn't coming back to bite us--even if you only care about humans--you're as shortsighted as the Indonesian and Brazilian agribosses burning down their countries' forests on a vast scale.

So yes, everyone in Israel/Palestine--about the size and population of the San Francisco Bay Area--should learn to get along with each other. But it should be around #100 on everyone's list of 100 Big Problems.

But since so many Arabs believe this is the biggest world problem ever, here's a solution: have the Jews they drove from all the Arab countries with just the clothes on their backs give up their Right of Return to those countries--along with their descendants--in exchange for the Palestinians who were driven from Palestine/Israel giving up their Right of Return. A few more Israelis were dispossessed, but it was roughly 800,000 each way. Then let the Palestinians emigrate en masse to those countries (along with their descendants).

Sure, it isn't fair. They want their ancestral homes. And I don't deny their claim. I just deny the realistic possibility of the Israelis packing up and moving to...where? At least the Palestinians would be moving to countries whose militias wouldn't murder them on sight, as would happen if the Israelis tried to return to their homes in Morocco/Libya/Tunisia/Egypt/Lebanon/Syria/Jordan/Iraq/Yemen etc.

And it's not as if lobbing tin cans full of nails and gunpowder at the Israelis is going to make them leave. Get real. Palestine is jam-packed and the average huge family size of Palestinians is making Palestine packed-er and packed-er. But there's plenty of room elsewhere in the Arab world. We just need to overlook the civil wars instigated by Palestinian migrants in Jordan and Lebanon.

Bottom line: the quest for justice and the nursing of historical wrongs is a luxury this suffering planet just can't afford. While we're squabbling the Earth is about to rise up and smite us. Then there won't be a place for anyone to live. Get your priorities straight.

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I originally wrote this entry as a comment on a NewYorkTimes column.
Someone who read that navigated to my blog and sent a comment. However, it contains an obscenity so I won't include it using Google's "publish" option, which doesn't let me edit comments. Here's what the guy said with the naughty word excised:

My tax dollars do not pay for the other stuff you mention. The other stuff you mention does not make a billion people hate my country. The other stuff you mention is all straw.

I bet you are a jew. Jews seem to love straw arguments when it comes to anything addressing their crimes. Why defend the undefendable when you can just reel off a litany of others [censored word] behavior. Do two wrongs suddenly make a right? If you are a jew the answer appers to be a resounding YES.

I could care less who kills anyone elsewhere on the planet. As long as they don't do it on my dime.

Was it an accident that you never mentioned that Israel's crimes might matter to people in the USA because we pay for them? I don't think so.

I think you left that out because you are a fraud.

BTW. Cutting and pasting your blog entry into the comments section of the NYT's is weak.


What's interesting to me about this comment is the underlying idea that individual Americans should get to tell the government how to spend their tax dollars. Well, we do. They're called elections. However, when a majority elect representatives who'd promised to spend our tax dollars in ways we don't like, we have to live with that. It's called living in a democracy, for which the key is abiding by the results of elections when the other side wins. And if our representatives spend our taxes in ways different than what they promised, we can impeach them if enough people object, or turn them out in the next election.

It seems like people should understand this, but both right wing and left wing zealots constantly harp about "their" tax dollars. But they aren't ours--not individually. The taxable part of our income belongs to the People through our representative constitutional government. We pay them in exchange for the benefits of being American citizens. I've traveled in many countries, and I'm constantly thankful that I'm an American citizen, and I'm glad to pay my fair share--even though, like every single other American, I would spend those tax dollars differently than the government does in some respects.

As for this person's interest in whether I'm a Jew or not--what bearing does that have on the validity of my arguments or the truthfulness of the facts I cite? Now if I'm parrotting the ideas of some Jewish organization, that could be relevant. But I don't know of one single Jewish organization that says what goes on in Israel is unimportant--as I say here. Nor have I ever read a letter to the editor or a forum entry by a self-identified Jew who said this. So it seems illogical for this person to claim I'm a Jew in some way that's relevant to the discussion.

It seems more logical to assume that this person doesn't like Jews for some reason. I don't get this either. Jews gave America its most patriotic music (such as Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man), and as the hero says in Spamalot, you can't put a play on Broadway without a Jew...American culture wouldn't be distinctly American were it not for the contributions of Blacks and Jews, and that's key to what distinguishes us from European culture. Have you seen Europeans try to dance to rock 'n roll? It's hard to look at without wincing.

He does allude to the fact that America supports Israel to the tune of about $3.5B a year. That's a lot of simoleans. However, we spend a comparable amount on surrounding Arab countries. Does he propose that we cut out all foreign aid everywhere, or just to Israel? The latter seems to be the implication. But if so, why single out Israel? Why not at least mention Egypt/Jordan etc.? It's not as if they aren't police states that commit crimes against humanity on their own people every day (including Egypt's current economic destabilization of its Coptic Christians).

And look what we spend on Iraq. Does he realize that one thing the Iraqis have done with their new-found freedom, courtesy of us spending a gazillion bucks to liberate them, is to kill or drive out Iraq's nearly one million Christians, most of whose families had lived there for millennia. How's that for a use of our tax dollars? That strikes me as far more significant than Israel's treatment of Palestinians, even if you agree with the Arab League's claims re: Israel.

As for "Israel's crimes"--well, as opposed to what other country? I haven't forgotten Israel attacking a U.S. Navy picket boat some decades ago, killing several American sailors. That was a crime covered over for political reasons. But I don't think this writer is referring to this incident. Treatment of Palestinians? That's Hitler's fault. He murdered all the gentle Jews of Europe. The Jews tough enough to survive his death camps emigrated to Israel, and the Arabs' War Without End against them hasn't made them softer. The Settlers include some murderous bullies, but they aren't representative of Israelis as a whole. And as my whole blog entry points out, their "crimes" are inconsequential in a world context--including a world context that's only concerned with the behavior of countries we send a lot of tax dollars to.


Lastly, I copy and paste (not cut and paste--think about it) many of my newspaper comment entries into my blog. How is that weak? I wanted a single place people (including me) could go to for my political writing. It's this. Here. There are numerous unique entries here as well, on most of the topics I write about. I think the whole thing is about the length of a novel at this point.

Israel butchers of Gaza--or vice-versa?

Comment posted to an Economist opinion piece on the war in the Gaza Strip. (The photo shows a map from a Palestinian textbook that omits Israel):

The Arab world reject's Israel's claims to its territory, based on prior claims of Palestinian Arabs to the territory Israel occupies.

But here's something not mentioned so far, I'll wager: the Kurds' ancient lands are claimed by the Arabs of Syria and Iraq and the Persians of Iran and the Turks of Turkey. In these Muslim countries the Arabs and Persians and Turks often treat the Kurds vastly worse than the Israelis have ever treated Arab Israelis or Palestinians in the occupied territories. It was Arabs who used nerve gas on Kurdish villages, remember.

So--when these countries volunteer to give the Kurds' lands back to them and thus grant Kurdistan "countryhood" I'll take their assertions about Palestine more seriously. Then there's the "right of return." It's a historical fact that when Israel declared its independence, all the Arab countries--every single one of them--expelled their Jews, many of whom had been living there for over a millenium. And took their lands and homes and businesses without compensation.

So--when the Arab world grants a "right of return" to all the Jews they'd expelled--and their descendents--and gives them back the lands, homes, businesses and money they stole from the Jews in their countries--then I'll take their chatter about a "right of return" seriously. As for the present situation: it's a big lose-lose for Israel.

Hamas has stated unambiguously that its goal is the conquest of all the land Israel occupies and the explusion or murder of every Israeli. I'm guessing this includes the Israeli Arabs, who Hamas' principles would require treating as collaborators. So how can Israel deal with Hamas?

To put it simply, Hamas has declared, in effect, total war on not just Israel but on every human being living in Israel.

What would you do if a hostile foreign state was regularly lobbing missles and mortar rounds into your community, not to mention suicide-murderers? What would you say if others said, well, they're not that many and they're not that accurate? (Actually they're exactly accurate, since they're intended to kill civilians and terrorize the civilian population.)

How many rounds would be lobbed into your community before you demanded that your government put a stop to it, by whatever means necessary? And what if your enemy used its own civilians as human shields? Would you then tell them they're welcome to kill you and your family rather than have your army hurt their civilians being used as human shields?

I pity your family if you do.

All this said, it's obvious that the Israelis have been conducting a stealth campaign to take and occupy a good deal of territory beyond what they had before the 1967 war. I don't have a dog in this fight. There are no angels here. The territory being fought over is miniscule by American geographical standards (I'm writing from Palo Alto, California).

Oh, and while Gazans voted in Hamas, that doesn't mean they're all fanatics. Fatah was and is monstrously corrupt, so the Palestinians faced a Hobson's choice. Plus they only get one-sided news, and moderates tend to be murdered as collaborators. So their consent to Hamas' rule was not informed consent in the Western sense.

I'm guessing that President Obama will try to broker a painful compromise that will involve Israel leaving territory it would really like to hang onto (though not everything it has occupied outside the 1967 borders) while demanding that the Palestinians formally recognize Israel and forswear violence--something along those lines.

But Hamas is fanatical. Regardless of Palestinians' material grievances, Hamas' theological position is absolute: that Allah demands that they always fight to expel every Israeli from "Arab lands." Period. You can't compromise with that. It just means that any truce = time to regroup/rearm.

So if I were running Israel I just might choose to take the P.R. hit and keep on grinding down Hamas.