Monday, January 30, 2006
New Mid-East Media Memes Developing Apace
With the victory of Hamas, certain old media tropes have to be retired. The tried and true "We in the PA are too weak to stop ourselves" excuse for not fighting terror just doesn't cut it anymore. Out with the old, in with the new. MSNBC carries the AP version of the first of the slowly developing new Mid-East media memes:
Not mentioned is that Israel's hardline position is that it refuses to help the party that openly announces its intentions to destroy her, but I digress.
You see, in war time, you negotiate with your E-N-E-M-Y. Isn't that the revealed wisdom here? And isn't Hamas the enemy? So why isn't hardline Israel negotiating with Hamas? How can there be peace when Israel so callously just sits there, cowering in its shell?
Never mind the fact that in war, the negotations are for an end to the conflict, not to discuss terms of how the stronger side should surrender any advantage so that the weaker side can slaughter it.
What should be expected from these negotiations? Haaretz has some specifics of the kind of peace the press helps Hamas push for:
And that makes me the warmonger who won't back down from his hardline position.
If you really, really liked this -- or even really, really hated it -- there's lots more:
This will continue more and more. No one but bloggers and their readers care that the genocidal positions of Hamas could, technically, be considered hard-line, and might -- if one wished to truly go out on a limb -- be worth politely asking they reconsider. No journalists with the noble goal of changing the world is ever going to make their mark asking the rock to change its shape, at least not without a hammer. So instead they focus on squeezing the sponge. It's easy.
JERUSALEM - Israel's acting prime minister on Sunday ruled out contacts with a Palestinian government led by Hamas unless the Islamic group renounces violence, and the defense minister threatened to 'liquidate' militants if they attack Israelis.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel will stop the monthly transfer of tens of millions of dollars in tax rebates and other funds to the Palestinian Authority if a Hamas government is installed.
With the latest comments, Israel showed no signs of backing down from the hard line it has taken since Hamas won a surprising landslide victory in Palestinian legislative elections last week.
Not mentioned is that Israel's hardline position is that it refuses to help the party that openly announces its intentions to destroy her, but I digress.
You see, in war time, you negotiate with your E-N-E-M-Y. Isn't that the revealed wisdom here? And isn't Hamas the enemy? So why isn't hardline Israel negotiating with Hamas? How can there be peace when Israel so callously just sits there, cowering in its shell?
Never mind the fact that in war, the negotations are for an end to the conflict, not to discuss terms of how the stronger side should surrender any advantage so that the weaker side can slaughter it.
What should be expected from these negotiations? Haaretz has some specifics of the kind of peace the press helps Hamas push for:
Hey, I pray for peace, I really do. But if that is peace: a couple years of quiet to allow the wolf to digest and decide which extremity to chew off next before finally ripping out the heart, then no thanks. I'll take war.
A long-term truce (hudna) with Israel is possible if Israel retreats to its pre-1967 borders and releases Palestinian prisoners [ie. if Israel concedes 100% of the territorial demands before negotiations even begin], Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told CNN on Monday.
"We can expect to establish our independent state on the area before '67 and we can give a long-term hudna," Zahar told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
Zahar laid out a series of conditions that he said could lead to years of co-existence alongside Israel. He said that if Israel "is ready to give us the national demand to withdraw from the occupied area [in] '67; to release our detainees; to stop their aggression; to make geographic link between Gaza Strip and West Bank, at that time, with assurance from other sides, we are going to accept to establish our independent state at that time, and give us one or two, 10, 15 years time in order to see what is the real intention of Israel after that. [only an amoral agency can present a sentence like that withough quotes if at all, a sentence where the would-be murderer proposes the intended victim's motives should be tested.]
Asked about Hamas' call for Israel's destruction, Zahar would not say whether that remains the goal. [and therefore a reasonable person would conclude?...anything?...] "We are not speaking about the future, we are speaking now," he said.
And that makes me the warmonger who won't back down from his hardline position.
