BLACK JANUARY, part 1 : HAMAS

Hamas got in the day “Munich”, which tells the tale of their fathers Black September, came out in Israel. I would like to dedicate this entry to my friend Waldo, who lives in a place where getting on a bus is a big adventure and sitting in the sun drinking your beer is not far from showing suicidal tendencies.

Hamas is in, and on its way to respectability. And Sharon’s end comes at a very bad moment. He had the intelligence and the right mixture of flexibility and inflexibility to handle the influence and the temptations that would seep from an elected form of Hamas.

No cause for rejoicing. The parliamentarization of a terrorist pack doesn’t equate to the legalization of pot IMO. It’s an institutionalization, not a permission. The consent to “Hamas way of life” pre-existed to any form of access to official structures, if only because Arafat had already walked that path from the PLO. Terrorism is at the heart of the Palestinian policies, it is not a taboo. Therefore I don’t think that the wolf in the sheepfold will suddenly become “tame”, as if all they needed was a mike to speak their minds and chill. Hamas don’t want peace, their voters don’t want peace either (one of them said on British TV that he wanted “purity”, I’m sure that’s what Rabin’s murderer wanted as well). They may want more land, more power, more respectability…. But peace to go forward ?

How many far right parties became “tame” in history once elected ? No sham. Sincere question.

There’s a brand of leftists who like to say that Hamas's violence is justified as a response to Western / Zionist colonialism. I'd rather ask about how can anyone in his right mind endorse Hamas.

Hamas is a far-right organization. It advocates genocide (its stated goal is the same as Ahmadinejab's - to remove Israel from the map), promotes fundie bigotry (its stated goal is to unite Palestine under an Islamic State) and practices totalitarianism (it does not distinguish between Israeli civilian and military targets, nor between combatants and non-combatants, to them a good Israeli is a dead Israeli, period). What on earth do they like about it ? Its objective being to support the oppressed and wronged ? Cry me a river. I can think of other ways to support the oppressed and wronged.

Sociologically, Hamas is the expression of Palestine's anger against despoliation, but much the same way that the Nazi party was the expression of Germany's anger against the diktats from the previous war. I have no respect for far right anger. I despise the stupidity that leads to death wish instead of hope and life as embodied by socialism. I have no respect for Hamas, no sympathy for their struggle, and I regard their left-wing Western supporters (if any) as morons. They are loons and fascists.

I don't regard Zionism as a form of colonialism either. I think that oppressed Jihadists are colonialists who failed more than democrats forced to defend their existence. If I were a Jew I would be a Zionist, completely, and how. When you're the scapegoat of the world, the least you need is your own country.

As for the use of violence, I have no problem with it as a last resort, even if the nature of what a "last resort" is remains debatable. One thing I'm sure of is that promoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and describing it as "the embodiment of the Zionist plan to usurp Palestine" isn't part of what I call a "last resort".

This victory I regard as the worst disaster to have affected the Middle East since Rabin's assassination. But the situation is still open in spite of all.

An op-ed piece about the event says in conclusion : "Political Islam, once the preserve of fanatics, could be on the verge of becoming mainstream, perhaps one day even respectable." Yeah… Sure enough, mainstream = respected, respected = respectable in a world where might is all and right is nothing. But WHAT will become respectable ? Hamas's worldview, or their name castrated of its political load ?

This is entirely up to the international community - and to Israel.

For if Hamas became such a monster, it's of course because of the Palestinians' immoderate taste for martyrdom... BUT NOT ONLY.

It's also because of Sharon and the way he humiliated Fatah and made it ridiculous and helpless by stating repeatedly that they were clowns unable to bring their terrorists under control, instead of valuing them as allies in the process of peace.

It's also because of Bush and his Crusade toting contempt of the Muslim world, his all-Amerikkkan way to bring democracy to savages who can't understand it, and the interpretation he will make of these results as more evidence that the Palestinians are ontologically wrong and hateful.

And that's why I think it's a shame that Sharon can't get on with the clever move toward the center he had begun. He had the credibility to do it in a consistent way and what he was doing was simply changing the image of Israel, for he seemed to be aware of how obsolete and dangerous a "ballsy", Bush-henpecked Israel had become.

Without him, his new party means nothing, and I dread chaos.