Target Centermass

Category: Middle East

  • Another Mohammed Cartoon Link Dump

    Shameful appeasement

    The past several days of mayhem throughout the Muslim world — all thanks to a handful of mild cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed — have provided a clarifying moment for those still uncertain about what the West faces from radical disciples of the Islamic faith.

    What’s clear is that East and West are not just cultures apart, but centuries, and that certain elements of the Muslim world would like to drag us back into the Dark Ages.

    What is also clear is that the West’s own leaders, both in Europe and the USA, as well as many of our own journalists, have been weak-spined when it comes to defending the principles of free expression that the artists in Denmark were exploring.

    Instead of stepping up to passionately defend freedoms won through centuries of bloody sacrifice, most have bowed to ayatollahs of sensitivity, rebuking the higher calling of enlightenment and sending the cartoonists into hiding under threat of death.

    Many U.S. newspapers have declined to reproduce the cartoons out of respect for Muslims, setting up the absurd implication that an open airing of the debate’s content constitutes disrespect. Both the U.S. State Department and the Vatican have declared that Muslims were justified in being offended, while former president Bill Clinton, speaking in Qatar last month, called the cartoons “appalling.”

    Read the whole column. I particularly like the following portions:

    Thanks to this heritage of healthy irreverence, today self-deprecation and parody are favorite ingredients in the volatile, spicy stew we call freedom. That’s why we roast our most powerful in tribute — and why politicians collect, frame and display cartoons that lampoon them. The ability to laugh at oneself, or to shrug off insult, is a sign both of a mature ego and a mature society.

    Unfortunately, much of the Arab/Muslim world enjoys no such legacy, much to its cultural impoverishment and to our potential peril. It might help us to win this war of ideas if we properly understand our own.

    … and …

    Two common apologist arguments beg rebuttal. One of them compares printing inflammatory cartoons to crying “fire” in a crowded theater, implying that one shouldn’t express things certain to offend others. Never mind that all political commentary would cease by such a standard, but the reason crying “fire” is forbidden is practical. People panic and stampede when they hear it, and it is false. It is imperative to cry “fire” when there really is a fire. It is also imperative to cry foul when cartoonists face death threats for doodling.

    The other argument, also based on a logical fallacy, is that the Danish cartoons are comparable to racist caricatures of Jews in Nazi Germany and blacks in the segregationist South. The Boston Globe, which saw fit in the past to defend “Piss Christ” (a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine) as well as a depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in feces as worthy of government subsidy, made such a case recently.

    There are at least two reasons why The Globe’s comparison is bogus: gas chambers and lynchings. Both the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan were officially sanctioned enforcers of immoral social orders that used caricature to further degrade and dehumanize beleaguered minorities they ultimately murdered.

    There is no equivalence between organized murder on behalf of a malignant social system and a half-dozen nerdy artists, speaking only for themselves, lampooning a fanatical religious sect whose members, by the way, specifically advance the delightful goal of exterminating millions of “infidels.”

    The correct comparison, in fact, for Nazi and Klan terrorists are their brothers under the hoods — the jihadists who issued a death sentence on writer Salman Rushdie, who beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl and businessman Nick Berg, and who kidnapped an innocent American female journalist and showed videos of her sobbing and terrified among armed men holding guns to her head.

    A ‘dangerous moment’ for Europe and Islam

    As Islamic protests grew against the publication in Europe of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, a small Arab movement active in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark responded with a drawing on its Web site of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. “Write this one in your diary, Anne,” Hitler was shown as saying.

    The intent of the cartoon, the Arab European League said, was “to use our right to artistic expression” just as the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten did when it published a group of cartoons showing Muhammad last September. “Europe has its sacred cows, even if they’re not religious sacred cows,” said Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the organization, which claims rights for immigrants aggressively but without violence.

    Such contrasts have produced a worrisome sense that the conflict over the cartoons has pushed both sides across an unexpected threshold, where they view each other with miscomprehension and suspicion.

    “This feels to me like a defining moment,” said Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford professor of European history. “It is a crunch time for Europe and Islam,” he said, “it is an extremely dangerous moment,” one that could lead to “a downward spiral of mutual perceptions, and not just between extremists.”

    U.S. says Iran and Syria stoking cartoon protests

    America entered the row over the Muhammad cartoons yesterday accusing Syria and Iran of stoking up protests against the caricatures to suit their own ends. In France, the publication of all the offending cartoons by a magazine sparked further protests.

    Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said: “I have no doubt that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and have used this for their own purposes. The world ought to call them on it.”

    Meanwhile, as all this plays out over a dozen, generally tame cartoons, some of which showed more the cartoonist’s fear of Moslems than an image of Mohammed, realize that today’s tremors are, at least in part, driven by lies and fakes (hat tip to Gateway Pundit).

    Also remember that, while the entire brouhaha is supposedly based upon the employment of images of the prophet Mohammed, such images are certainly nothing new. No, there are other motivations at play here, and they may be a case of radical Islamists showing their hand too early.

  • U.S. Officials Meet Iraq Insurgent Groups

    Perhaps we are looking at the beginning of the end game in Iraq.

    U.S. officials have met figures from some Sunni Arab insurgent groups but have so far not received any commitment for them to lay down their arms, Western diplomats in Baghdad and neighboring Jordan said Wednesday.

    […]

    The meetings, described as being in the initial stage, have not included members of al-Qaida in Iraq or like-minded religious extremists, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

    Contacts have taken place in western Iraq, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, according to two diplomats based in the Jordanian capital, Amman. One of them said talks might shift to Egypt “at some point.”

    U.S. officials have said establishing a dialogue with the insurgents was difficult because of the lack of a unified command structure among the various groups and the absence of a leadership capable of speaking for most of them.

    Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the United States is involved in talks on promoting Iraq’s political process with “all sorts of groups,” but declined to say if any insurgents were among them.

    However, a Western diplomat in Baghdad who is familiar with the dialogue said the U.S. was reaching out to “Sunni Arab nationalists” and “some Islamists from the Shiite and Sunni sides,” many of whom have grievances about jobs and reconstruction money.

    “We hear all the time that they are interested in coming in but we haven’t seen signs,” the diplomat said. “We want to see attacks stopped. The question is, can they help end the violence if they want to join.”

    Please note that I am not saying that success in Iraq is close or even a certainty. That would be quite a statement in the face of political scene where the likes of Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan have their words and deeds selectively reported and the doom-laden calls for retreat by Congressman Murtha (D-Penn.) are trumpeted while the pronouncements of progress by Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) barely register a blip on the radar.

    That said, this may be the first step in seperating the men from the boys … errr … the actual Iraqi insurgents from the radical Islamist terrorist bastards. Realize that the domestic Iraqi holdouts have witnessed large parts of their homeland enthusiastically embracing democracy and have become disgusted with their supposed Islamist terrorist allies’ tactics of murderously targeting innocent Iraqi civilians. Oh yeah, they have also seen a lot of their insurgent brethren getting shredded by Coalition troops they cannot truly engage, as well as improving and growing Iraqi security forces. With a wedge already developing between the insurgent and terrorist facets of our enemies in Iraq, it is only sensible that the U.S. would work to further drive home that wedge in the hopes of reducing our opponents by means other than bullets. While it is at yet uncertain any benefit for the Iraqi people and the Coalition will come from these efforts, certainly there is no foreseeable harm in the maneuver.

    If Iraq can actually come to grips with its domestic insurgents, embracing them and isolating the truly blood-craved Islamist terrorists, then this may indeed by the opening moves of a lengthy end game. After all, as much as the anti-war opponents and large portions of the media have tried to paint the picture of another Viet Nam, one key difference has never been overcome: the war in Nam was, post-Tet, fought primarily against a regular military of an outside force backed, supplied and heavily maintained by a global superpower. That is certainly not the case in Iraq. That has never been close to being the case in Iraq.

  • Hamas Offers Deal if Israel Pulls Out

    A key Hamas figure is talking about a lengthy truce with Israel. Of course, there are a few key catches.

    Hamas yesterday offered a long-term ceasefire if Israel withdraws from all land occupied in 1967.

    The announcement by Khaled Meshaal, one of Hamas’s most senior leaders, was its clearest policy statement since winning the Palestinian general election last month.

    Mr Meshaal was speaking before a crucial Hamas meeting in Cairo on how the Islamist movement will form the new Palestinian government. While he promised a possible “long-term ceasefire” he refused to commit the organisation to a full renunciation of violence, which is demanded of Hamas by the international community and Israel.

    Its charter warns that Israel faces elimination by Islam and calls for holy war or jihad against non-Muslim claimants of Palestine.

    Mr Meshaal said he wanted to send a message to the Israeli government that Hamas would be ready to talk if Israel met conditions that included a withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries. Hamas would then “possibly give a long-term truce with Israel”, he said. Others have suggested a 10- to 15-year truce.

    All the Israelis have to do is completely withdraw to their strategically-disadvantageous borders they held before their success in the 1967 Six-Day War. Oh yeah, in return, Hamas offers nothing that they can be trusted to actually manage. Ummm … I’m thinking no.

    This was the crystallisation of several, often ambiguous, remarks made by Hamas’s senior members since the election and represented a clear bargaining position.

    Hamas will hope the international community puts heavy pressure on Israel to leave the occupied territories.

    Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath on that international pressure thing — for lo! these many years, that same pressure has failed to force Israel to leave the occupied territories and failed miserably to get Hamas to recognize Israel or swear off violence.

    Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation and has vowed not to deal with any Palestinian government set up by the group after its unexpected election victory.

    As well it should, as Meshaal’s further statements demonstrate.

    Mr Meshaal sounded a more strident note in other remarks that were made public yesterday, refusing to drop Hamas’s call for armed resistance against Israel.

    “We will not stand against the resistance, we will not condemn any operation and will never arrest any mujahed [holy warrior],” he said.

    “Anyone who thinks Hamas will change is wrong.”

    That certainly sounds like a truce offer that can be trusted.

    I’ve a better idea for Israel — withhold funds until Hamas cracks under the financial strain. Then, after Hamas is forced to come to the table with some real acquiescence on recognition and violence, provide them with support until Hamas, like Fatah before them, become rife with corruption while failing to bring peace and prosperity to the Palestinian people. Lather, rinse, repeat until the Palestinians have a leadership ready to move forward. That is, if they ever do.

  • Al Qaeda Jail Escape Seen as Blow to Yemen

    Once again, Islamist terrorists have made use of the shelter of a mosque, this time to rescue a captive with American blood on his hands.

    The escape of 13 al Qaeda inmates, including two convicted for deadly attacks on a U.S. warship and a French supertanker, was a serious blow to Yemen’s fight against the Osama bin Laden network, diplomats said on Monday.

    Yemeni security forces scoured mountainous provinces for the fugitives, who included the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the U.S. warship Cole and the leader of a group that bombed the French oil tanker Limburg two years later.

    The United States said it was disappointed at the jailbreak and vowed to pursue the militants with its allies.

    “It’s a disappointing development that al Qaeda operatives escaped, particularly one who targeted and killed Americans. We will be working with Yemeni officials and our international partners to actively go after these dangerous terrorists,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

    U.S. ally Yemen, bin Laden’s ancestral homeland, has shed its image as a haven for militants by cracking down on al Qaeda. Analysts and opposition politicians said the jailbreak was a serious embarrassment for the government as well as a blow to its security efforts.

    “This unravels all the work that the Yemeni government has done over the past couple of years (against al Qaeda),” said a senior Western diplomat. “It is a very serious error.”

    […]

    Mohamed al-Sabri of the opposition Nasserite Party told Reuters the escape was “a serious setback for Yemen’s security that puts the country in a very embarrassing position”.

    “This has implications not only for Yemen but for all countries in the region,” he added.

    Security sources said the militants were among a group of 23 inmates who escaped through a 140-metre (460-feet) long tunnel that appeared to have been dug from a nearby mosque.

    The entrance of the tunnel was in the less frequented women’s section of the mosque and the inmates probably fled on Thursday night, the sources added.

    […]

    The escapees include prominent al Qaeda members Jamal Badawi and Fawaz al-Rabe’ie.

    Badawi masterminded the October 2000 attack on the Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors. His death sentence was commuted last February to 15 years in prison. Rabe’ie was sentenced to death for the Limburg bombing.

    Badawi should have already been dead. Here’s hoping he reaches that destination soon without taking any innocents with him. The memory of seventeen American sailors demands it.

    Yemen should be embarrassed. That these dangerous, murderous swine were able to be let loose is a disgrace to the nation and its security system and an added threat in our efforts against Islamist terror. The question remains: where will that threat surface?

  • Hamas-in-Charge Link Dump

    Bush: Hamas Jeopardizes Palestinian State

    In an interview with The Associated Press, Bush also addressed oil’s future, offering a more ambitious hope than in his State of the Union speech for cutting imports from the volatile Mideast.

    However, he said his oft-stated goal of a Palestinian state in the region cannot be realized if a Hamas-led government refuses to renounce its desire to destroy Israel.

    […]

    On the international front, Bush talked about trouble in Iran and in the Palestinian territory.

    He said it was too early to tell what path Hamas would choose in dealing with Israel. “The conditions for peace and the conditions for a settlement will be up to Hamas to make the right decisions,” he said.

    Bush was the first U.S. president to espouse a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel. Those prospects have dimmed with the triumph of Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections last week.

    “I made the position of this government very clear,” Bush said. “Hamas must renounce its desire to destroy Israel; it must recognize Israel’s right to exist and it must get rid of the armed wing of its party.”

    “In order for there to be democracy and in order for there to be two states living side by side with peace, you can’t have the party of one state intending to destroy the other state,” he said.

    Hamas rejects Bush’s call to disarm

    Hamas rejected on Wednesday U.S. President George W. Bush’s latest call to disarm following the Islamic militant group’s crushing victory over the long-dominant Fatah faction in last week’s Palestinian parliamentary election.

    “Our resistance is legitimate self-defence in the face of aggression,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas leader in Gaza, referring to Israeli military action.

    In Washington, Bush demanded in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that Hamas “recognise Israel, disarm, reject terrorism and work for lasting peace”.

    Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction and has carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000.

    Arabs pressure Hamas to renounce violence

    Egypt and Jordan joined the West in pressuring the militant group Hamas Wednesday, declaring it must recognize Israel and renounce violence if it wants to lead the Palestinians. Hamas held fast to its militant platform but suggested it might extend its cease-fire with the Israelis.

    The message from the two key American allies in the Arab world – both nations have signed peace treaties with Israel – was the strongest yet to the militant group, which calls for Israel’s destruction, opposes peace talks, refuses to lay down its arms and had carried out dozens of deadly suicide bombings against Israelis.

    Rumors had swirled through the Arab world over the past several days that moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction was defeated in the vote, would meet by week’s end with Hamas leaders in Gaza to talk about forming a government.

    But all sides have subsequently played down that possibility, with Fatah members saying Abbas was in no hurry, viewing the passage of time as a tool for winning concessions from Hamas.

    In Cairo, however, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit spoke bluntly as he emerging from separate talks between President Hosni Mubarak with Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

    “When you (Hamas) sit in the (Palestinian) parliament, you talk with your tongue and not with a gun. …(Hamas) should not run away from the reality,” he said.

    Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief and point man on Palestinian issues, was even more emphatic: “Nobody will talk to them before they stop violence, recognize Israel and accept (peace) agreements.”

    Egypt predicts Iran will fill Palestinian cash gap

    Egypt predicted on Wednesday that Iran would step in to fill the finance gap if the United States and Europe stop their aid to the Palestinian Authority.

    “Iran will give them the money, I think,” intelligence chief Omar Suleiman told reporters after talks between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

    Suleiman was answering a question on what would happen if the Palestinians lose financial support from the West after the militant Hamas movement won parliamentary elections.

    The United States and the European Union, main donors to the Palestinian Authority, have threatened to suspend aid to a Hamas government unless it recognizes Israel and renounces violence.

    Hamas says Israel has opened ‘gates of hell’

    The first step towards a major financial crisis came yesterday when Israel made good on a threat to suspend the transfer of about £30 million in customs payments which it collects every month on behalf of the authority. The money is used to pay many of the authority’s 135,000 employees. Saudi Arabia and Qatar promised to give £18.5 million to help keep up payments.

    Farhat As’ad, a Hamas spokesman in the West Bank, said Israel was “opening the gates of hell” by suspending the money transfers and that it would lead to greater extremism and fuel violence.

    […]

    Hamas has consistently rejected the Oslo Agreement as a sell-out of Palestinian rights.

    It is thought that both the failure of Oslo and Mr Abbas’s path of negotiations to bring tangible improvements to Palestinian life contributed greatly to Hamas’s electoral rout of Mr Abbas’s Fatah movement last week.

    Hamas’s electoral platform specifies that it continues to claim rights not only to all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip but also to the territory that comprises Israel within its 1967 borders.

    Fun times ahead, y’all. Note: definition of fun may vary.

  • 100th British Soldier Dies in Iraq

    The casualty-figure coverage and round-number obsession is not limited to merely American troops, as the media and anti-war folks are now using the sad century mark for British deaths in Iraq.

    Two British soldiers have died in southern Iraq this week, bringing the number of the UK force to die during the conflict to 100, a Ministry of Defence statement said.

    On Tuesday morning, an explosion killed a solider in Basra province. Three other soldiers were wounded in the same incident — one seriously.

    Another British soldier died Monday morning after his patrol came under fire in Maysan province.

    The defense ministry did not give the identity of the 100th soldier, nor of the others hurt in Tuesday’s blast, all from the 7th Armoured Brigade, the main British force in Iraq. The three injured soldiers were being treated at a British base.

    Anti-war campaigners in Britain seized on the 100th death to once again demand Britain pull out of Iraq.

    The Stop The War Coalition was due to hold a vigil at parliament Tuesday evening to read out the names of the dead.

    Left-wing Member of Parliament George Galloway, one of those reading out the names, told CNN it was a “melancholy milestone.”

    “We have just sent thousands of new soldiers to Afghanistan, if anything an even more dangerous mission. Events are marching in the direction of the vindication of the anti-war movement.

    I’m afraid Galloway is unsurprisingly confused. Simply put, dangerous does not imply wrong. Had the likes of Galloway held sway in the Great Britain of the ’40s, well, red armbands would be all the rage in London today and reality TV would still suck.

    As to the media attention to casualties at the expense of true war coverage, I’ll again quote Power Line‘s Paul Mirengoff, who blogged the following:

    Have you ever read a history of war that focused almost entirely on casualty figures (with an occasional torture story and grieving parent thrown in), to the exclusion of any real discussion of tactics, operations, and actual battles? I haven’t. But that’s what our self-proclaimed “rough drafters” of history are serving up with respect to Iraq.

  • Hamas Landslide Shakes Mideast

    Well, I must say that the Palestinian elections have generated an interesting situation.

    The Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which has said it favors the destruction of Israel, won a landslide victory in Palestinian elections, securing 76 seats in the 132-member legislature, officials said Thursday.

    The preliminary results showed Fatah, which has held power since the creation of the Palestinian Authority, garnered only 43 seats, dramatically shifting the political landscape in the volatile region.

    […]

    President Bush — whose Middle East policy includes support for emerging democracies — said Thursday he would not deal with Hamas unless it renounced terrorism.

    “We don’t have a government yet, so you’re asking me to speculate on what the government will look like,” Bush told reporters during a White House news conference. “I have made it very clear, however, that a political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of its platform is a party with which we will not deal.”

    “I don’t see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform.”

    Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has already accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei, Erakat said. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority Cabinet also has resigned.

    Bush said, “we would hope [Abbas] would stay in office and work to move the process forward.” The president acknowledged that the election appeared to “open the eyes” of the Palestinian “old guard.”

    “Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo,” Bush said.

    “The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find health care.”

    “It’s a wake-up call to the leadership,” Bush said, many of whom are holdovers from the days of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

    First, some media reactions.

    Ben Lynfield at The Scotsman looks at great length at the causes and ramifications.

    The Islamic militant group Hamas swept to victory over the long-dominant Fatah party yesterday in Palestinian parliamentary polls, a political earthquake that could bury any hope for peace talks with Israel soon.

    Official election results released yesterday evening gave Hamas a surprise victory in Wednesday’s parliamentary elections. Hamas, an organisation best known for its suicide bombings but which also runs social services, capitalised on widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo of economic, political and security instability to gain a stunning 76 seats out of the 132-member parliament. President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah movement, which has dominated Palestinian politics for the last 45 years, gained only 43 seats. The Islamic movements winning campaign slogan was “With one hand build, with the other resist”.

    Hamas leaders said they would like to see Fatah and smaller groupings join them in a broad coalition government, while stunned Fatah leaders weighed up their next steps.

    Mr Abbas, who was elected last year, does not have to resign, but has said he might do so if he is unable to pursue his plans for restarting Middle East peace talks. With the Hamas victory, Israel is even more likely than before to unilaterally pursue the drawing of its final borders, withdrawing from parts of the West Bank while annexing other sections. Perhaps Mr Abbas’s greatest failure, not entirely of his own making, and another key reason for Hamas’s victory, was that he was unable to deliver on his strategy of getting Israel back to the negotiating table.

    […]

    The victory of the fundamentalist Hamas in the Palestinian elections will have far-reaching consequences for the region, some totally unexpected.

    Two aspects, however, are already visible. The Hamas victory is, first and foremost, an indication of the total failure of the traditional Palestinian leadership to create a body politic. Palestine is not yet a state, but it is already a failed one.

    […]

    It is still an open question whether Hamas in government will become more pragmatic and less committed to terrorism; it certainly is a possibility, and one should not prejudge the outcome. But nor, on the other hand, is it clear that the existing organs of the PA – especially the security services at its disposal – will allow a peaceful transfer of power. Indeed, no such precedent exists: there has never been a peaceful transfer of power in any of the Arab League’s 22 member states.

    Greg Myre at the New York Times expects the results to drive greater Israeli unilateralism.

    The Hamas landslide in Palestinian elections has stunned Israelis, but it may also have brought them a rare moment of clarity: with peace talks off the table, Israel will most likely pursue unilateral actions, drawing its own borders and separating itself from the Palestinians.

    Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister, made it clear after an emergency cabinet meeting that talks with Hamas, a Palestinian party sworn to Israel’s destruction, were out of the question, while experts said Israel was now freer to establish its future on its own.

    They said Israel — whose own elections in two months could be heavily influenced by the Palestinian results — was likely to focus on speeding up construction of the separation barrier, which runs along and through parts of the West Bank. After more than three years of building, it remains less than half finished, but Israeli officials say it has contributed enormously to the reduction of suicide bombings and other attacks. Palestinians, on the other hand, say the barrier takes land they want for a future state.

    […]

    Since on-and-off peace talks began more than a decade ago, Israelis have been deeply divided over what sorts of concessions to make, how much territory to keep and whether the talks would lead to an end to the decades-old conflict. On Thursday, it seemed there were few such doubts.

    From Israeli hawks who oppose concessions to doves who constantly pressed for renewed peace talks, Israelis said there could be no negotiations with Hamas.

    Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service and now a parliamentary candidate for the left-leaning Labor Party, said the absence of a negotiating partner should not halt Israeli actions aimed at separating from the Palestinians.

    Israel, he said, should seek “to create a situation where Israel disengages from the Palestinians and preserves the character of Israel as a Jewish democracy.” Israel should continue, he said, “to move fast and independently to our goal.”

    Mr. Olmert hopes to become prime minister in elections on March 28 as head of the centrist Kadima Party started by Mr. Sharon.

    But Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, made clear that the Palestinian results offered an opportunity for his more hawkish message to be heard. He said the Hamas victory was a result of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and proved that no more withdrawals should occur.

    […]

    Hamas’s electoral triumph comes at a time when Israel is going through its own political upheavals, and the government is unlikely to make any major moves until after the Israeli election.

    […]

    The campaign may also mean that Mr. Olmert and his party will have to take a tougher tone to ensure that they are not outflanked on the security issue by Likud.

    The Telegraph’s Tim Butcher points out a possible path for future diplomatic discourse with the Palestinians in a piece headlined “Terrorists voted into power.”

    Hamas, the Islamic group behind suicide bombings against Israel, was swept to power yesterday in a stunning victory in the Palestinian general election.

    It vaulted from being a shadowy fringe movement advocating the destruction of Israel to a party of government, sending shock waves through the region and beyond.

    Western countries united to call on Hamas to change its charter after it achieved what amounted to a peaceful Islamic revolution through the ballot box. As Hamas has close links to Teheran, the victory extended considerably the influence of the Iranian Islamic republic across the Middle East.

    […]

    Tony Blair said that Britain recognised the Hamas victory. “But I think it is also important for Hamas to understand that there comes a point – and that point is now, after a strong showing – where they have to decide between a path of democracy or a path of violence.”

    While the European Union and America regard Hamas as terrorists, British diplomats represented the EU during talks with Hamas councillors who won local elections in the West Bank last year. Britain argued that it was possible to have links with Hamas about official municipal business as long as security and militancy were not discussed. A similar formula may be used by EU officials as they work out how to deal with a Hamas-run government.

    Second, a selection of reactions from my blogroll.

    Ed Morrisey at Captain’s Quarters takes a hardline approach to the results.

    Unless someone can show widespread voter fraud on behalf of Hamas, the Palestinians should be judged by the choices they have made this week. They have chosen war and the annihilation of Israel over the two-state solution favored publicly (if not fervently) by Fatah. Europe and the United States need to wake up from their delusional dreamland of a situation where both sides in this conflict want a peaceful conclusion and a world without hatred for their children and grandchildren. Clearly, the Palestinians want war, and they have made no secret of using their children and grandchildren as bomb fuses in order to perpetuate it.

    The first item on our list should be an absolute end to all aid to the Palestinian territories and government. The US should not subsidize Hamas, nor should it give money to a people whose only aim appears to be genocide. Second, the US should allow Israel to respond militarily to any and all provocations — no more pressure from Washington on Tel Aviv to moderate their responses to suicide bombings and missile attacks.

    Ace at Ace of Spades stands in agreement with the captain.

    The infantilization of the Palestinians, by which they are immunized by the world for the vicious, murderous decisions they as a people make, has got to end. This is a depressing moment, but a clarifying one. Let no one say again that the Palestinians “want peace” and would choose it if only they could get past their extremist and corrupt leadership. They chose war — as they have been choosing war for 30 years.

    However, PoliBlog‘s Dr. Steven Taylor warns against such reactions as oversimplifications.

    For one thing, it isn’t as if Fatah was utterly opposed to political violence, or that their members were all lily-white in terms of their innocence vis-à-vis terrorism. Remember: Fatah came out of the PLO, which was Hamas before Hamas was Hamas.

    I point this out to note that the notion that there was a stark choice for the Palestinian voters between a “peace” party and a “war” party is incorrect. For one thing, that was not, as best as I can tell, what the campaign was about. The key issues in this election were corruption and the fact that Fatah has had a difficult time delivering on basic governance in the PA.

    […]

    That the Hamas victory creates problems is undeniable. That I would have preferred Fatah to remain in control is certainly the case. However, I take some solace that Hamas comes to power through legitimate elections, not a military take-over and that they will have to govern. Governing has a way of changing organizations, especially when they are beholden to voters.

    Meanwhile, Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom looks at what he thinks the election results confirm about Palestinian society.

    And they clearly are not ready for democracy—which, as has been noted a million times—goes beyond the easy mechanical process of elections. “Palestine”—for all the recent (canny) good will shown it by Ariel Sharon’s Israeli government and the deference of the Bush administration—was not prepared for any such shift in ruling philosophy. They are a culture raised primarily on hate (via schools and TV) and a sense of deferred entitlement, all of which has been consistently reinforced by an international press hostile to Israel, and by a leftist academic ethos that for years has excused the barbarism, corruption, and obvious (and directed) scapegoating of the Jewish state under the guise that victim politics and the absense of whatever pet utopian theory of workable social and geopolitical organization they’ve in their minds knitted together from the various fraying strands of hardcore fundamentalist religion, soft marxism, grievance marketing, and a particularly pernicious brand of identity politics has yet to swaddle the region in a magic blanket of peace and rapprochement.

    And what do I think? I think the oncall pager should have left me alone this evening and allowed me a chance to throw together something meaningful.

    Beyond that, I think that the Palestinians have shunned blood and corruption for blood and … well … more recent blood, with possible corruption to follow. Please realize that a large impediment to any success in Fatah’s actually ruling over the Palestinians was Hamas. Now, after the election, Hamas is reaching out to Fatah in hopes of eliminating the same kind of hurdle that they themselves were.

    Hamas has long claimed that they were ready to lead the Palestinians politically, so it’s time to shut up and put up for the terrorists. Here’s hoping for a strong Israel and a little bit of spine from Europe. Hold on tight — we could be in for a bumpy ride.

  • Iran Turns up Heat in Nuclear War of Words

    Because the Iranian nuclear ambitions cannot be allowed to just simmer on the back burner for a day or two.

    Iran yesterday warned Israel it would be making a “fatal mistake” if it took military action against Tehran’s nuclear programme.

    The warning came as part of escalating verbal warfare between the two regional rivals, with Shaul Mofaz, Israel’s Iranian-born defence minister, saying Israel would not let Iran acquire nuclear capability.

    “We are giving priority at this stage to diplomatic action, but we cannot tolerate a nuclear option for Iran and we must prepare ourselves,” Mr Mofaz said.

    Iran’s Foreign Ministry yesterday branded Mr Mofaz’s comments “a form of psychological warfare”.

    A spokesman said: “Israel knows how much of a fatal mistake it would be [to attack Iran]. This is just a childish game by Israel.”.

    But speakers at a seminar in Israel yesterday voiced suggestions ranging from a show of military force to bombing Iran’s nuclear installations.

    “Only a show of force by the entire world, including the United States and, afterwards, Israel, will be effective in doing away with Iran’s acquiring nuclear capability,” said Yitzhak Ben-Rafael, an army reserves general who teaches at Tel Aviv University.

    Ephraim Sneh, an MP from the opposition Labour Party, said: “The state of Israel is on a collision course with the Iranian regime.”

    One could just as easily make the argument that it would almost assuredly be a fatal mistake for Israel if there were no action taken against Iran.

    The story also included this mildly interesting tidbit.

    Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Iraqi cleric, said yesterday that his Mahdi army would help to defend Iran if it were attacked by a foreign nation.

    “The Mahdi army is beyond the Iraqi army. It was established to defend Islam,” he said.

    This little two-bit thug has been allowed to be a repeated pain in the arse for far too long. There is humor to be found, however, in his delusions of grandeur about his little rabble.

  • Iraqi Shiites Fail to Get Majority, Need Coalition

    The Iraqi parliamentary election results have been announced, and the news is good.

    Iraq’s Shiite Muslim-based religious parties won 128 out of 275 seats in the December vote for a permanent parliament, requiring them to form a coalition government, according to results released today.

    The United Iraqi Alliance, which controlled the transitional assembly with 146 seats, fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to form a government, according to a tally given by Safwad Rasheed Sidqi, a spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission, in a televised news conference from Baghdad.

    The minority Sunni Muslims, who boycotted the January 2005 election of the transitional assembly, made the biggest gains after their leaders encouraged participation in the Dec. 15 vote to gain representation in the new government. The National Concord Front won 44 seats and another Sunni-based party, the National Dialogue Front, won 11, Sidqi said.

    “The elections have now confirmed that Sunnis are not the majority in Iraq and that they will not call the shots,” said Vali Nasr, professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The Bush administration has expressed hope that the participation of Sunnis in the new government will help to stem a Sunni-led insurgency, allowing the withdrawal of U.S. troops to begin.

    The Kurdish Alliance, which voted with the Shiite bloc in the current parliament, saw its presence reduced to 53 from 75. The rival Kurdish Islamic Party won five seats, a gain of three. Former premier Ayad Allawi’s secular Iraqi National List party took 25 seats, down from 40, according to the commission. Small parties won a total of 14 seats, according to the commission.

    No date has yet been set for lawmakers to take their seats in the new Council of Representatives, formerly the National Assembly. Council members will serve four-year terms.

    Politicians have four days to appeal the outcome, which were largely in line with the Dec. 21 preliminary returns. Officials then have 10 days to study any complaints before they certify the results.

    Allawi and some Sunni politicians have already made complaints saying there was voting fraud and intimidation by Shiites. Sunnis dominated ousted President Saddam Hussein’s regime, which suppressed the Shiite majority and the ethnic Kurds.

    Excellent. The best hope for Iraq right now is a continued pressure towards political compromise. Had the Shiites achieved a threshold allowing them to dictate the formation of the government, Iraq’s fledgling democracy may have taken quite a hit with non-Shiites as it struggles to continue its momentum forward.

    The results are hopeful but must be kept in perspective.

    “The fact that elections have gone forward now three times shows that the political process is taking root in Iraq and the insurgency is losing ground,” Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a former adviser to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said in a telephone interview. “That said, the insurgency is still going to be with us for years. There’s no magic formula to end it, and most insurgencies on average last 10 years.”

    Quite right. There remains still a long row to hoe in Iraq, both politically and militarily, but progress is undeniable.

  • Bin Laden Speaks

    Well, it’s been a while, quite a while in fact, but a new audio tape of Osama bin Laden has been released.

    Osama bin Laden broke a year-long silence yesterday to warn Americans that al-Qaida is preparing new attacks against the US, according to a new audiotape attributed to him.

    “The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your houses as soon as they are complete, God willing,” the speaker on the tape said. At the same time he offered a “long-term” truce dependent on the US pulling out of Iraq.

    Al-Qaida has not attacked the US since September 11 2001, but Bin Laden said that was not because the organisation had been foiled by tightened anti-terrorism measures. “The proof of that is the explosions you have seen in the capitals of European nations,” he said.

    […]

    The release of the tape, parts of which were broadcast by al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic TV channel, may have been timed to quash speculation that Bin Laden had died or been killed. His last taped message came in December 2004.

    […]

    “This message is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end those wars,” yesterday’s tape began. Apparently addressing Americans, it continued: “It was not my intention to talk to you about this, because those wars are definitely going our way. But what triggered my desire to talk to you is the continuous deliberate misinformation given by your President Bush, when it comes to polls made in your home country which reveal that the majority of your people are willing to withdraw US forces from Iraq.

    “We know that the majority of your people want this war to end and opinion polls show the Americans don’t want to fight the Muslims on Muslim land, nor do they want Muslims to fight them on their [American] land.”

    Bin Laden has previously offered a truce to Europe, not the US. In the message he told Americans: “We do not mind offering a long-term truce based on just conditions that we will stick to. We are a nation that Allah banned from lying and stabbing others in the back, hence both parties of the truce will enjoy stability and security to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, which were destroyed by war.”

    […]

    Mr Atwan, the editor of the London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi, said he believed Bin Laden was trying to present himself as a politician, not as a terrorist or killer. “He’s saying, ‘We have a political agenda’, and offering a truce. He is saying to the Americans, ‘Your leadership is the source of the problem. Bush is not listening to you when you ask him to withdraw from Iraq.’”

    The full translated transcript is available here. Is it just me, or am I seeing a smattering of lefty and peacenik talking points there? Nope, it’s not just me.

    Now, what to make of that truce thing? Of course, it should be scoffed at and rejected, as it has been. Second, is it a sign of a pending attack or a hint at weakness? Anton La Guardia, diplomatic editor for the Telegraph, seems to opt for the latter.

    Meanwhile, the al-Qa’eda “brand” has been kept alive by videos released on the internet or to Arab satellite stations. For the past 13 months bin Laden has mysteriously vanished. The latest audio tape will quieten rumours of his death, but the feebleness of his voice may stoke speculation that he is too ill to be shown in the flesh.

    The principal role of marketing al-Qa’eda has been performed by Ayman al-Zawahiri. But his video appearances may have exposed him to greater risk of detection.

    The Americans appear to be getting closer, judging from events in the Pakistani village of Damalola. Details are sketchy but a US drone appears to have fired a missile into a building where Zawahiri was expected to be.

    Initially the strike was regarded as a massacre of innocent villagers. But Pakistani officials said yesterday that four or five senior al-Qa’eda figures were among the dead.

    Those killed are said to include a wanted explosives and chemical weapons expert, as well as a Abdul Rehman al-Maghribi, a relative of Zawahiri.

    The troubles of the “core” al-Qa’eda leadership are apparent from an intercepted letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi, released by the US last October.

    Zawahiri bemoans the fact that he cannot travel to Iraq, recounts how “the real danger comes from the Pakistani army” and, finally, begs Zarqawi for money because “many of the lines have been cut off”. Still, Zawahiri gives Zarqawi advice, telling him that “we are in a battle, and more than half this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media”.

    Jihad Watch, whose addition to my blogroll was long overdue and finally done, agrees.

    In Islamic theology traditionally the forces of jihad ask for a truce when they are weak and need to gather strength. Hmmmm.

    The post has more on the historical Islamist basis for truces in an update (hat tip to In the Bullpen)

    Michelle Malkin has a nice collection of links on the Osama tape.