Many years ago, when I was still a mother's milk Democrat and card-carrying member of the ACLU, I actually voted Republican...once. Back then, seven-term incumbent Democrat Congressman Nicky "Pockets" Mavroules was running against an unknown upstart named Peter Torkildson.

Now, at the time, I'd have rather lost an appendage than vote "R," but sometimes you just have to send a message. Mavroules was mired in a corruption scandal that would eventually send him to the cooler, and I remember being quite outraged that the entrenched insiders would put this guy up for re-election once again. Didn't they know when it was time to quite?

Well, Congressmen are only in for two years, so I figured this was a perfect opportunity to hold my nose and send an anti-corruption message. After all, I could always vote him out again next time around. I could NOT vote for someone I knew to be corrupt.

And that's just what happened. Mavroules lost and Torkildson managed only to hold on to the seat for a term or two.

People vote to send messages all the time. People also have certain key issues that, almost no matter how much they agree with a particular candidate on everything else, if that person is pro/anti choice, pro/anti affirmative action, for or against welfare reform, immigration, higher or lower taxes...you get the picture...they won't, they can't, vote for them.

There is no question that Fatah was corrupt. To the core corrupt. Palestinians themselves are aware, though it was under-reported in the Western press, that the guys at the top were directing their corrupt fire-hoses filled with international money into their own deep pockets and, for instance, building what you never saw photos of -- neighborhoods full of what Stephanie Gutmann calls "McMansions," all the while complaining to the outside world about the horrors of grinding Palestinian poverty.

They, Fatah, deserved to get a message sent. They deserved to lose.

But one cannot help but be struck by what an overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs did NOT feel disqualied a person from receiving their vote.

A charter that calls for war with a neighbor, an ideology that turns their children into human bombs, that infects them with hate and holds events for dipping hands into red paint and calling it blood to recall a lynching, that elevates Jew hatred to a moral imperitive -- none of that disqualified Hamas from receiving a vote from a large number of Palestinian Arabs.

OK, so maybe this is just a message vote. Maybe large numbers of otherwise well meaning folks just couldn't bring themselves to vote for their corrupt overlords. But look at who they felt they could vote for. Barring any other option, I'm not sure it's possible to gild a choice of death over decadence.

Who knows? Perhaps between now and next time (if there is a next time), Palestinian society will shift sufficiently from Fear to Free such that viable alternatives are enabled to emerge and Hamas will be a one-term wonder as Fatah itself also fades into the sunset.

But that's a long time from now, and will only follow if we on the outside hold Palestinian Arabs responsible for their own choices. It's time to kick baby out of the nest, close up mom and dad's purse strings, and leave them responsible for their own choices.