Charles Krauthammer: The Palestinian election results force tough choices

townhall.com ^ | February 3, 2006 | Charles Krauthammer

[Tolik]

Amid much gnashing of teeth, the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections is being called a disaster. On the contrary. It is deeply clarifying and ultimately cleansing. If the world responds correctly, it will mark a turning point for the better.

The Palestinian people have spoken. According to their apologists, sure, Hamas wants to destroy Israel, wage permanent war and send suicide bombers into discotheques to drive nails into the skulls of young Israelis, but what the Palestinians were really voting for was efficient garbage collection.

It is time to stop infantilizing the Palestinians. As Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said in a news conference four days after the election, ``The Palestinian people have chosen Hamas with its known stances.'' By a landslide, the Palestinian people have chosen these known stances: rejectionism, Islamism, terrorism, rank anti-Semitism, and the destruction of Israel in a romance of blood, death and revolution. Garbage collection on Wednesdays.

Everyone is lamenting the fall of Fatah and the marginalization of its leader Mahmoud Abbas. This is ridiculous. The election exposed what everyone knew and would not admit: Abbas has no constituency. Would it have been better to keep funneling billions of dollars from the EU and a gullible U.S. to the thoroughly corrupt administration of a hapless figurehead? Billions that either end up in Swiss bank accounts or subsidize countless gangs of young men carrying guns?

The current nostalgia for Fatah moderation is absurd. What moderation? Yasser Arafat's 1993 paper recognition of Israel's right to exist was as fraudulent as his famous Oslo side letter renouncing terrorism. He spent the next seven years clandestinely sponsoring terror, then openly launched a four-year terror war, the most vicious in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

With this election, we can no longer hide from the truth: After 60 years, the Palestinian people continue to reject the right of a Jewish state to exist side-by-side with them. Fatah -- secular, worldly and wise -- learned to lie to the West and pretend otherwise. Hamas -- less sophisticated, more literal and more bound by religious obligation to expel the Jews -- is simply more honest.

This election was truth in advertising. Now we know. What to do?

The world must impress upon the Palestinians that there are consequences for their choices. And so long as they choose rejectionism -- the source of a 60-year conflict the Israelis have long been ready to resolve -- the world will not continue to support and subsidize them.

And that means cutting off Hamas completely: no recognition, no negotiation, no aid, nothing. And not just assistance to a Hamas government, but all assistance. The Bush administration suggests continuing financial support for ``humanitarian'' services. This is a serious mistake.

First, because money is fungible. Every dollar we spend for Palestinian social services is a dollar freed up for a Hamas government to purchase rockets, guns and suicide belts for the ``Palestinian army'' that Meshal has already declared he intends to build.

Second, because it sends the Palestinians precisely the wrong message. If they were under a dictatorship that imposed rejectionism upon them, there would be a case for helping a disenfranchised Palestinian people. But they just held the most open and honest exercise of democracy in Palestinian history. The Palestinian people chose. However much they love victimhood, they are not victims here. They are actors. And historical actors have to take responsibility.

They want blood and death and romance? They will get nothing. They choose peace and coexistence? Then, as President Bush pledged in June 2002, they will get everything: world recognition, financial assistance, their own state with independence and dignity.

In August 2001, Hamas sent a suicide bomber into a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. He killed 15 innocent Israelis, mutilating many dozens more. A month later, Hamas student activists at al-Najah University in Nablus celebrated the attack with an exhibit, a mockup of the smashed Sbarro shop strewn with blood and fake body parts -- a severed leg, still dressed in jeans; a human hand dangling from the ceiling. The inscription (with a reference to the Qassam military wing of Hamas) read: ``Qassami Pizza is more delicious.''

The correct term for such a mentality is not militance, not extremism, but moral depravity. The world must advise the Palestinian people that if their national will is to embrace Hamas -- its methods and its madness -- then their national will is simply too murderous and, yes, too depraved for the world to countenance, let alone subsidize.

The essential first lesson of any newborn democracy is that national choices have national consequences. A Hamas-led Palestine, cut off entirely, will be forced to entertain second thoughts.

Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.

[Tolik]

Nailed It!
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[Tolik]

The current nostalgia for Fatah moderation is absurd. What moderation? Yasser Arafat's 1993 paper recognition of Israel's right to exist was as fraudulent as his famous Oslo side letter renouncing terrorism. He spent the next seven years clandestinely sponsoring terror, then openly launched a four-year terror war, the most vicious in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

With this election, we can no longer hide from the truth: After 60 years, the Palestinian people continue to reject the right of a Jewish state to exist side-by-side with them. Fatah -- secular, worldly and wise -- learned to lie to the West and pretend otherwise. Hamas -- less sophisticated, more literal and more bound by religious obligation to expel the Jews -- is simply more honest.

This election was truth in advertising. Now we know. What to do?

The world must impress upon the Palestinians that there are consequences for their choices. And so long as they choose rejectionism -- the source of a 60-year conflict the Israelis have long been ready to resolve -- the world will not continue to support and subsidize them.

And that means cutting off Hamas completely: no recognition, no negotiation, no aid, nothing. And not just assistance to a Hamas government, but all assistance. The Bush administration suggests continuing financial support for ``humanitarian'' services. This is a serious mistake.

[Tolik]

...The correct term for such a mentality is not militance, not extremism, but moral depravity. The world must advise the Palestinian people that if their national will is to embrace Hamas -- its methods and its madness -- then their national will is simply too murderous and, yes, too depraved for the world to countenance, let alone subsidize.

The essential first lesson of any newborn democracy is that national choices have national consequences. A Hamas-led Palestine, cut off entirely, will be forced to entertain second thoughts.

[sarasota]

So which countries have stopped all financing of this "state"?

[Taiwan Bocks]

Get ready for heartache, because this warming up media battle won't be fair by a long shot.

But after all the double standards and actual news of typical Hamas life getting spiked, the Hamastans should actually come out smelling as they do stink.

[A message]

The Bush administration suggests continuing financial support for ``humanitarian'' services. This is a serious mistake.

We sent the Soviets ship loads of trucks and other material which freed them to build tanks and aircraft instead of transportation.

From Historians.org; By the end of June 1944 the United States had sent to the Soviets under lend-lease more than 11,000 planes; over 6,000 tanks and tank destroyers; and 300,000 trucks and other military vehicles.

Humanitarian money will be diverted or used to free up resources to wage war against Isreal. No money for Hamas until they change. Not one dollar.

[GOPJ]

It is time to stop infantilizing the Palestinians.... Everyone is lamenting the fall of Fatah and the marginalization of its leader Mahmoud Abbas. This is ridiculous. The election exposed what everyone knew and would not admit: Abbas has no constituency. Would it have been better to keep funneling billions of dollars from the EU and a gullible U.S. to the thoroughly corrupt administration of a hapless figurehead? Billions that either end up in Swiss bank accounts or subsidize countless gangs of young men carrying guns?

Krauthammer's right. They made their bed, let them sleep in it. The advantage to us? Hamas, "in theory" can be everything to every Palestinian. Reality is different. If everyone does a "hands off", and the garbage isn't picked up, Hamas's clay feet will show... After our current commitment is met and we pull out our money - they'll get to live with the consequences of adult choices. Real world time... If the Iranians give them money, we'll ask young Iranians if they enjoy being unemployed for the sake of Palestinians... It'll be fun. The world is tired of treating them like the spoiled but rude teenagers of the world. They made their bed...

[Bahbah]

With this election, we can no longer hide from the truth

Oh but many will.

[Tolik]

I agree with what you are saying here: "Humanitarian money will be diverted or used to free up resources to wage war against Israel. No money for Hamas until they change. Not one dollar." Money are tangible and will be spent how they want.

At least Soviet Union during the WWII performed a valuable service: fighting the common enemy and giving USA time to get ready to fight too. Nothing good comes out of HAMAS.

[jec41]

Correct, nothing needs to be added.

[Jim Noble]

The election of Hamas also forces tough choices for Israel.

Israel has operated since 1948 in thrall to a fantasy - that there is some force, or entity, which can give Israel a mythical "right to exist".

Since Israel is surrounded by bloodthirsty barbarians who wish death on all the Jews, Israel has subsequently adopted a collateral fantasy that "peace is possible", that if only the right words or actions are taken, that the savages across the wall will desist from their endless quest to murder every Jewish man, woman, and child.

What the election of Hamas means is this: Israel must defend its borders and its people against a relentless onslaught of Muslim hatred - forever.

This is an ugly prospect, so ugly that most people and most Israelis don't want to face it.

But it's reality.

[nutmeg]

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[bordergal]

How is defunding a terrorist organization like Hamas a tough choice?

I'd refer to it as a "no brainer".

[William Terrell]

We need to note the effect of democracy on those who have no cultural referent for it.

[manwiththehands]

Why stop with the Palestinians? We can say the same things about anyone "Muslim".

[Restorer]

Uhh, we supplied the Soviets with trucks and other equipment, as well as weapons, for an excellent reasons: we were allies against Hitler.

Over 80% of the German soldiers who died in WWII were killed by the Red Army.

If Hitler had defeated the USSR and didn't have to fight on two fronts, it is highly unlikely any Allied invasion of Europe could have succeeded.

We would still have won, but only after nuking a few German cities.

[carmelanne]

I disagree that the conservative American populace has been deceived by Arafat. How difficult would it be to simply judge a situation/person/politician/country by their actions and not the words from the press or other pie holes.

Our visible political establishment,or whomever the phantoms are that control our political Establishment, have made the choices to create this Palestinian illusion for purpose that I know/feel has no benefit to you or I. We simply are not that naive not to realize that we can be put upon, stolen from, and generally be disrespected and dismissed by persons with evil intent.

I have friends and I have enemies. I do not have a natural instinct to love my enemies and put my family in harms way by being passive. I also am so base that I can not believe that God would permit a man as ugly and vile as Arafat to be born.

[ModelBreaker]

He's right. But it will never happen. The euros and the state dept. will figure out a way to keep subsidizing these maniacs.

[A message]

I should have been more clear on the point. The point was not against our supplying the Soviets but as an example that "lend -lease" or "humanitarian aid" however we want to call it allow financial resources to be used for item x vs item y.