Hamas' useful idiots

<snip>

Most perverse has been the attempt by the unity agreement's Western backers to conflate it with the democratic movements sweeping the Arab world. As soon as rumor of the agreement broke, the Guardian editorialized that, "The Arab spring has finally had an impact on the core issue of the region, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Carter deemed the agreement the "Palestinian contribution to the "Arab awakening.'" Earlier this year, on the sidelines of the Al Jazeera Forum, Levy told an interviewer that, "Islamists are going to be part of this democratic tapestry. Deal with it. Put aside your prejudices."

Note that these are the very same people who consider Israel-supporting evangelical Christians apocalyptic extremists, yet applaud the empowerment and legitimization of actual, not imagined, religious fascists.

Hamas is everything that self-professed liberals should be "prejudiced" toward: obscurantist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, warlike and rejectionist. It calls for the death of homosexuals and bans dancing. Its charter beckons Muslims to hunt down Jews from "behind rocks and trees," claims that Muslims "have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad" and, in a prescient use of the rhetoric that has since united the radical Western left and the reactionary Islamic right, accused Jews of "Nazism." It picks fights with Israel that result in the needless deaths of Palestinian civilians. It could end the blockade in Gaza tomorrow if it wanted to, simply by laying down arms, renouncing terrorism and accepting Israel's right to exist - but no amount of Palestinian suffering will ever cause it to do so.

This unity deal breathes new life not only into Palestinian rejectionists but Israeli ones as well. A gift to the Israeli right, a unity government with Hamas will only strengthen the claims of Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas that there is no Palestinian partner for peace and thus no reason for making further concessions. Palestinian unity is indeed a prerequisite for a two-state solution, but it's fair to ask at what price that unity should come. Israelis, the majority of whom have long supported a two-state solution, cannot be expected to make deals with an organization constitutionally bound to the genocide of Jews.

more...
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/hamas-useful-idiots-1.360124

Some folks have seemed to be confused on that score as well.

any position that isn't explicitly pro-Israel is defacto pro-terrorism.

...applauding their empowerment and influence, inciting hatred against Jews, etc.

Like Israel has done to pretty much all of Palestine.

Not state-owned?

Here's a more thorough refutation of those maps...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=331358&mesg_id=331503

Those maps are very misleading.

Answer honestly this question:
The Manifest Destiny, do you approve of it?

Israel has only annexed E.Jerusalem, not the W.Bank or Gaza.

And I'm for Israel trading the 100% equivalent of Gaza/W.Bank land from 1949-1967 for peace.

Do you support the idea of the Manifest Destiny.

What in the world does that have to do with anything?

Oh wait, let me guess... since we now disapprove of ethnocentric philosophies like MD (which were only just excuses for western expansionism anyway), your plan is to try and draw parallels between that and Zionism thereby exposing Zionism as an outdated, xenophobic excuse used to disenfranchise/ethnically cleanse non-white natives for the benefit of white Western colonialists.

So either we have to reject Zionism or admit that we are embracing a modern day version of MD... thereby trapping us in an iron-clad paradox based on overly-simplistic reductionism and intellectually dishonest equivalencies.

How'm I doing?

Well-reasoned.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I always seem to miss the deleted posts before they get deleted!

Unless this was me who got deleted and I don't remember posting.
Which is entirely possible. I could see myself making fun of the poster I originally replied to. (More than I already did, I mean.)

Do you agree with the OP about this...