Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Gaza Goes Up
Well, things are going to hell in Gaza - at least more than usual. Hamas and Fatah are fighting. This has been going on for a little while now, but it's getting bloodier and bloodier For those of you not paying attention, Fatah is the group that Yasir Arafat belonged to. When the Palestinians had democratic elections last year, Hamas won. That wasn't good enough for Bush. He felt that Hamas was/is a terrorist organization. Apparently I am the only one who remembers when Yasir Arafat and Fatah were terrorists. The main reason Hamas won the election was not because the Palestinians were getting more religious and conservative, but because Fatah is corrupt. It may seem obvious that politicians are corrupt, but Fatah has a bad reputation for it. And Hamas won because they were going to get rid of the corruption. You may not like strong religious types, but when they're true believers, and they say they're getting rid of corruption, people tend to believe them. However, the US has decided that Hamas is a terrorist group. Israel goes along with that (which makes sense since Hamas wants Israel destroyed) but they refused to pay Hamas - the legally, democratically elected Palestinian government, the tax money it was owed.
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3 comments:
Stopping in from the Soup to Nuts Progressive Dinner.
Hope you stop by the first course and check it out.
Hamas--as you say--intends the destruction of Israel. It's members and its allies lob rockets into southern Israel indiscriminately. (Undoubtedly, they would lob them further, if they could.) Do you expect Israel to turn over tax revenue that would be used to attack it's people and its existence? I do not think so.
The tax money goes to the government, which is run by Hamas in that area. The money isn't necessarily going to end up as rockets - it goes to pay people like civil service workers. I think they should get their paychecks so they can feed their families. Starving them only makes them more anti-Israel.
Israel didn't mind paying the money to Fatah, which is also a terrorist organization, with a bad reputation for skimming the money instead of using it where it's supposed to be used. That's one reason Hamas was elected, because the people were tired of Fatah's corruption.
(There's a joke about this: no one was more surprised by Hamas winning the election, than Hamas.)
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