Sunday, August 29, 2010
At NRO, Andrew McCarthy has a good piece on Hamas, and the inability of so many so-called moderate leaders to condemn it:
Hamas is a shibboleth. If you want to know whether an ostensible Muslim "moderate" is really moderate, ask him if Hamas is a terrorist organization.
It is really not a hard question, even if Feisal Rauf can't -- or won't -- answer it. Rauf, the would-be imam of the controversial Ground Zero mosque, is also a stud in the State Department's stable of ready-to-travel-on-your-dime "moderates." That same State Department has branded Hamas a terrorist organization, and we can't even get it to say that about the Taliban, the guys we're fighting in the overseas contingency operation formerly known as the War on Terror.
During a WABC radio interview, Aaron Klein three times pressed Rauf to admit that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Rauf bobbed and weaved in classic Islamist style. "I'm not a politician," he replied, as if only politicians trouble themselves over whether terrorists are terrorists. "I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question." Avoid the issues? You don't say!
But it is not a complex question, no more complex than "Does Derek Jeter play for the Yankees?" It is a straightforward question that Islamists complicate with clever casuistry, carefully designed to ring all the right chimes for our opinion elites and their media pitchmen...
Read the rest. If we hope to incubate a tolerant form of American Islam, inculcated with the values of American pluralism that will grow here and then go forth and multiply throughout the world, then Muslim leaders who, in word or in their hearts, cannot without any equivocation or hesitation condemn the likes of Hamas are worse than useless for this effort. It is a stage 1 litmus test. Pass it, or do not pass Go.
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Speaking of Hamas...the New York Times printed yesterday an op-ed by professional anti-Israel activist and founder of the "Electronic Intifada," Ali Abunimah, purveying the rather hackneyed and repeatedly discredited comparison of the Middle East peace... Read More
The questions I always want to ask so called 'moderate' people when discussing these issues and who complain about Hamas being labeled a terrorist organization.
1) Do you agree or disagree with Hamas' actions, namely attacks on civilian targets and oppression of the Palestinian people?
2) If you don't agree with their actions, do you actively support them, and if so why?
3) If you don't agree with their actions, and you don't support them actively, then why do you CARE whether or not they are labeled "terrorists" or not? What's it to you?
Yes! Your #3 is a very good point. Whose interests are they representing?
But all too many, it seems to me, will contest point #1. Hamas doesn't attack civilian targets, they say; Hamas is an organization that does lots of useful social work in schools and hospitals.
Some of these people can be taught. Others will deny the brutality of Hamas, no matter how many facts you shove in their faces.
We might want to make a distinction between political Muslim 'moderates' and their non-Muslim supporters. (I used scare quotes because, while it's not impossible for a Muslim in politics to be moderate, they're rare indeed.) The latter should definitely be asked Zach's questions; it might open a few eyes.
As for the former, well -- a good question to ask is "does the State of Israel have a right to exist?" The self-declared 'moderates' are the ones who will refuse to answer; the Islamists will say "no", clearly and proudly.
(I once heard the head of CAIR asked that question on the Mike Gallagher radio show. Mike repeated the question a few times, and was told, in different words each time, that this was a complicated question. After the interview, Mike said into the microphone: "My blood just ran cold.")
Raul Hilberg wrote that there is a direct line from "You have no right to live among us as Jews" to "You have no right to live among us" to "You have no right to live". A person who believes that Israel has no right to exist is somewhere between the first two points.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline