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Here are the people who pay the price

Sun, 01/11/2009 - 11:23pm — lambert

Via Glenn, this. Bill Moyers:

We are in a terrible bind — Israel, the Palestinians, the United States. Each greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression. Is it possible to turn this mindless tragedy toward peace? For starters, read Aaron David Miller's article in the current "Newsweek". Get his book, "The Much Too Promised Land". And pay no attention to those Washington pundits cheering the fighting in Gaza as they did the bloodletting in Iraq. Killing is cheap and war is a sport in a city where life and death become abstractions of policy. Here are the people who pay the price.

The price is everywhere -- the homeless guy at :39 is paying it, too.

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"these are people who should still be alive"

By hipparchia on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 1:19am

i notice moyers says that "hamas would like to see every jew in israel dead" which is a bit on the inflammatory side. i'd always trusted bill moyers to be more even-handed than that.

true, parts of hamas' charter are chilling when read as the equivalent of sound bites, this analysis for instance:

One of the most ominous aspects of the Charter however, is this Hadith:

Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).

The implication is clear: Allah promised that the Jews will be murdered, and the Hamas "aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take."

but if you read through the entire charter [yes, i did] and allow for translation and rhetorical style, it's abundantly clear that hamas wants israel the jewish state to disappear, but not so clear that they also want the deaths of all jewish people:

Article Thirty-One:

The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement. It takes care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions. It does not antagonize anyone of them except if it is antagonized by it or stands in its way to hamper its moves and waste its efforts.

Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are the best witness to that.

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That line

By Damon on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 2:32am

Yes, that line in the piece is what I bristled at because it's an oft-perpetuated surface reading of rhetoric. One has to cut to the point of what I see as a more complicated question of actual intent, wherewithal and realistic expectations, and about inflammatory rhetoric for rhetoric's sake. At the end of the day, Hamas' realistic intent and purpose has been to argue for less oppressive border crossings, and the opening of the sea.

But, even if one is to cherry pick that peace of genocidal rhetoric from the charter, it doesn't change the fact that the Israeli government negotiated with the PLO, which also originally called for the prohibition of the Jewish state of Israel, and didn't just call for it, but used violent resistance to bring their goal to fruition. The same goes for the immediate neighbors who also all started at that point of horrible rhetoric. If you ask me, the PLO was far more capable and dangerous an organization than anything Hamas can ever muster.

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But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...

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