Hamas and I.R.A.

A few weeks ago I made some comments about how the IRA bombings did not make everyone hate the Irish. I must be prescient. There was an op-ed in the NY Times and International Herald Tribune about that same scenario. Ali Abunimah explains how the US Middle East mediator is the former mediator for Ireland's woes, and how differently the situation has been treated by the US. The British wanted to shut out Sinn Fein, the political branch of the IRA, but the US wouldn't do that. However, in Palestine, the US has no trouble shutting out Hamas.

There will never be peace in Palestine/Israel until ALL sides agree upon it. That means everyone: the governments, the terrorists, the army, the extremists on both sides. If the Israeli religious far-right continues to insist upon "colonizing" Palestinian land with illegal settlements, even when their own government says not to, how can you expect the Palestinians to believe anything Israel says? When the US and Israel insist that the Palestinians must give up their arms before peace talks can truly take place, how can you expect them to intentionally leave themselves defenseless when Israel has a well-trained army that could strike at any time, and has in the past?

My opinion: There will never be peace in Palestine/Israel until one side is dead. And it looks like it will probably be the Palestinians who die. There will always be a group of Palestinians who want their land back and want Israel gone. There will always be Israelis who believe that biblically, the entire region belongs to the Jews. Neither of those groups will agree to a lasting peace, and if one is forced upon them, they will still continue to fight, physically, for what they believe. The United States does not understand the situation, and most Americans never will. There will never be peace.

More Flotilla News

Here's Juan Cole's post on the Libyan ship that changed course to Gaza, and a post about how Turkey is still upset about the original flotilla attack.

A French judge, currently working on the financial side of counter-terrorism says that he found out the IHH was a terrorist organization in 1996 (IHH is the Turkish group that sponsored the flotilla that was attacked). The same judge says he has investigated and Hamas has no ties to al-Qa'eda.

So far, there really hasn't been much going on with the flotillas. I haven't been able to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, nobody has been hurt. But on the other hand, this entire thing could die down and everybody may forget about Gaza (again).

One more thing on Sderot

Former President Jimmy Carter was in Sderot recently, and he condemned the rocket attacks by Palestinian militants. He also met with Hamas, which has gotten him a lot of flack. I would like to point out a few things though: First of all, the US and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist organization, not everyone does. Secondly, Fatah was also a terrorist organization and the US worked with them and Arafat. Thirdly, the entire world led freaking Milosevic stay in power for years! But we can't try and deal with Hamas.