Electing terrorists...

[nicky g]

... who refuse to recognise a people's national rights:

In the light of the recent victory of Hamas, whose record of deliberately murdering innocent civilians I forcefully condemn, in Wednesday’s elections for the Palestinian Garbage-Collecting Authority of the Palestinian occupied (by Israel) territories, let us reflect on just a few precedents for the election of civilian-murdering terrorists who refuse to recognise people's rights to national sovereignty and to live peacefully in their homes.

In May 1977 Menachem Begin was elected the 6th President of Israel. In the 1940s Begin led the terrorist organisation the Irgun which was amongst other things responsible for blowing up the King David Hotel, throwing bombs into Arab markets and, in conjunction with the Lehi, the massacre of civilians at Deir Yassine, of which he said

[ QUOTE ]
"Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack ... Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue this until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest".

[/ QUOTE ]

Begin consistently demanded a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan, refusing to recognise not only Palestinian national rights but those of the established state of Jordan either. As Prime Minister he illegally invaded Lebanon, which led to the deaths of thousands of Lebanese civilians, the murderous siege and indiscriminate shelling of Beirut and the Sabra and Chatila massacre, overseen by his defence Minister Ariel Sharon.



In 1983 and again in 1986, Yitzhak Shamir was elected Prime Minister of Israel. In the 1940s Shamir headed the Lehi, otherwise known as the Stern Gang, an even more extremist terrorist group that had split off from the Irgun and that boasted amongst its magnificent deeds two attempts to negotiate with an alliance with Nazi Germany against Britain during the Second World War (and the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews), the joint perpetration of Deir Yassine with the Irgun, and the assassination of numerous political figures including UN peace negotiator and rescuer of thousands of Jews from Nazi concentration camps Count Bernadotte. Shamir consistently demanded the establishment of Israel on the territories of all of mandate Palestine and the expulsion of its Arab residents, even after leaving office (where he had been prevented by international political constraints from doing so, but instead as he openly boasted expanded settlement activity to ensure that the Palestinians could never have any kind of sovereignty).

In 2001 Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister of Israel. Although not boasting the openly non-state terrorist credentials of Begin or Shamir, preferring (probably mainly because of having come of age after the establishment of the Israeli state) like many other Israeli leaders to perpetrate his atrocities through state organs such as the military, Sharon was nonetheless responsible for some uniquely reprehensible attacks that bore all other hallmarks of civilian-targetting terrorism, such as the revenge attack on the Jordanian village of Qibya in the 1950s that saw 69 civilians shot in cold blood (to be fair this was under the orders of great Israeli statesmen David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan), and the breaking through of Arab lines into West Beirut to arrange the delivery of neo-fascist Falangist troops to the gates of the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps. Once there, Sharon’s troops barred the escape of any civilians from the camp for three days while the Phalangists, who had previously perpetrated similar massacres at other refugee camps, went about raping and killing the people left inside. Long a proponent creating "facts on the ground" to ensure that Palestinians, if they could not be expelled, would always be stuck in a non-sovereign entity and of the idea that Jordan, by virtue of having taken in thousands of Palestinian refugees expelled from their home during the creation of the state of Israel, “is Palestine”, Sharon believed that Palestinians should leave their homes for Jordan until towards the end of his career when he made noises in favour of a Palestinian state, even while, like all post-1967 Israeli leaders, not only denying the right of a Palestinian state to exist but actively preventing such a state from emerging, maintaining the nearly 40 year Israeli denial of any form of sovereign or national rights, whether Israeli, Jordanian or independent Palestinian, to the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, all the while reserving for his own governments the right to decide their futures without talking any responsibility for them.

[Chris Alger]

Excellent post. We should also remember that the mass use of terrorism in what is now Israel, such as the placing of bombs in crowded marketplaces for the purpose of killing as many as possible, was pioneered by Begin's Irgun. Prior to October 1937, Palestinian Arabs "had sniped at cars and pedestrians and occasionally lobbed a grenade, often killing or injuring a few bystanders or passengers," but thanks to Irgun "for the first time, massive bombs were placed in croweded Arab centers, and dozens of people were indiscriminately murdered and maimed" (Benny Morris).

And we shouldn't forget that Israel continues the terrorist tradition, although saying this obvious fact to large numbers of people is basically forbidden in the U.S. A recent example were the rockets Israel fired last year at a legal demonstration protesting Israel's illegal house demolitions in Gaza, killing half a dozen children. The express purpose, according to Israel, was to induce the demonstrators to stop marching, to "terrorize" them to change their lawful behavior.

But of course no one can call that terrorism here because, as we so often hear, Israel is a "democracy."

[Zeno]

The election of Hamas was not 'shocking' or a surprise. In fact, it is an interesting study in Democracy.

I will not debate the historical accuracy of your post; in fact, I presume it to be correct in all essential facts.

But there is one important issue that needs airing out. It appears, to me at least, that people get caught in History, and become blinded by the past. So much so that an ever escalating stairway is build in the mind, complete with heavy guardrails, and there is no place to go but up. This is self-defeating and just feeds on into a continuing cycle. Not until a moment is reach when ‘someone’ or ‘some group’ renounces this self-defeating cycle and makes the ‘altruist commitment’ to break it, will any progress be made.

It appears no one seems able to make that sacrifice.

Continuously dredging up a violent past to justify current violent actions simply mucks up the future and enhances the violent cycle even more - A perennial human enterprise by the way.

Are you caught?

-Zeno