This morning I have seen three "news blips" on MSNBC decrying Hamas cartoons for children showing Bush as killing Palestines and the children stabbing Bush..

You will never see "news blips" on cable showing the Israeli children who were writting "from Israel with love" on the bombs Israel used on Lebanon.

Someday..we are gonna have a turnover in this country…can't come soon enough for me.

First they hire William Krystol, then they do these repeated hackjobs on the Palestinians. This is not the first one this year. During the assault on Gaza, they made it seem as if the Gazans were actually invading Israel.

Had Hamas's January 2006 election victory been recognized, Hamas would have been forced to tone down its rhetoric, or face ostracism as an outlaw state. The ex post facto nullification of an election of course leads to radicalization, as it did in Algeria after the nullification of an Islamist party's democratic victory in 1991. Rewriting the Palestinian electoral results cast Israel and the U.S. in the role of the antidemocratic outlaws — the Mugabes of the Middle East, as it were.

The West thinks Burma's refusal to recognize Aung San Suu Kyi's 1990 electoral victory is bad, very bad. But it's okay for us to do the same to Hamas. Ends trump means, and results trump due process.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports today that "the Bush administration … has positioned American warships off Lebanon's coast and is delivering U.S. Humvees and ammunition to the Lebanese army. U.S. assistance to the Lebanese military soared to more than $320 million last year from less than $1 million in 2005. The Bush administration pledged an additional $770 million at a Paris donors' conference to rebuild Lebanon following the 2006 war."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aaxUpuq5jM_w&refer=home

I don't recall much democratic debate on this rather inflammatory interventionist policy. But to the $3 billion a year for Israel, and the $2 billion for Egypt to make nice to Israel, let's add the $1 billion a year for the Lebanese government to keep a lid on Hamas's evil twin, Hezbollah, on Israel's behalf. Total, $6 billion a year. Plus $12 billion a MONTH for Iraq. A munificent sum indeed. But in return, we receive … errrr … well, never mind.

That isn't deescalation. That's escalation.

They conducted a hudna with Israel, but trained and supplied Islamic Jihad with missiles.

Its still a good idea to communicate with them, but its also a good idea to see what they are constructing on their own steam and funds.

I read that station that aired the offensive "drama" is censored by officials.

Also, if there is any evidence whatsoever that Hamas specifically trained and armed Jihad, I suggest you link to it.

Richard,

The Palestinian election was held in late January 2006. Barely two weeks later, the Times's fierce Hamas critic Steven Erlanger reported, Israel and the U.S. had decided to retaliate against the winner:

————

JERUSALEM, Feb. 13 [2006] — The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats.

The Palestinian Authority has a monthly cash deficit of some $60 million to $70 million after it receives between $50 million and $55 million a month from Israel in taxes and customs duties collected by Israeli officials at the borders but owed to the Palestinians.

Israel says it will cut off those payments once Hamas takes power, and put the money in escrow. On top of that, some of the aid that the Palestinians currently receive will be stopped or reduced by the United States and European Union governments, which will be constrained by law or politics from providing money to an authority run by Hamas.

On Sunday, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced after a cabinet meeting that Israel would consider Hamas to be in power on the day the new parliament is sworn in: this Saturday.

So beginning next month, the Palestinian Authority will face a cash deficit of at least $110 million a month. If a Hamas government is unable to pay workers, import goods, transfer money and receive significant amounts of outside aid, Mr. Abbas, the president, would have the authority to dissolve parliament and call new elections, the officials say, even though that power is not explicit in the Palestinian basic law.

http://tinyurl.com/br8x9

————

As the article makes clear, Israel, the U.S. and the Quartet plotted from the moment the election results were announced to lay siege to Palestine, destabilize its elected government, and force a new election at economic gunpoint.

This was pure bad faith. Directed against any other democratic nation or territory, these actions would be considered acts of war. The "escalation" was entirely on the part of Israel and the Quartet.

All Jews should be moved to Israel. Yes, every Jew in the world who believes in zionism should be forced to move to their true homeland.
Why should any country accept Jews as citizens? They have their own country, financied for them by the rest of the world's taxpayers,let them go there.

Moving all the Jews to their own country would solve a lot of the world's problems.
They could move all their World Jewish congress offices and their AIPAC offices and their Israel Project offices and their Jewish congressional cacaus offices and their Jewish Fund offices and their Camera offices and their Jewish mayors conference offices and their Jewish Presidential congress offices and the NYT and Faux and MSNBC…we will even deport both our political parties ( but not the US taxpayers checkbook) to them to take with them.

Why should Jews be allowed to live in other countries when they don't allow non Jews to be full citizens in the Jewish state? That doesn't seem fair.

Only in the Jews Victimhood Guide Book does this hypocritical exemption for Jews make sense.

Head 'em up and move them out. If it works for Jews to expell Israeli Arabs it will work for the US to expell Jewish Americans. If Arab Israelis can't identify with Palestine then US Jews shouldn't be able to identify with Israel.

Makes perfect sense to me. I don't see how they could object to what they themselves advocate for all other people.

Israeli Jews favor 'Palestine' for Arabs

Published: 04/01/2008

Three in four Israeli Jews favor the idea of transferring their Arab compatriots to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state, a poll found.

According to a survey commissioned this week by the Knesset Channel, 76 percent of Jews in Israel believe all or selected Israeli Arab communities should be included within the borders of "Palestine" when it arises. Some of those favoring the idea proposed that Arab citizens deemed loyal to Israel be given the option of staying.

Twenty-four percent of respondents were opposed to the proposed "transfer."

Arabs comprise 20 percent of the Jewish state's population, and long-simmering racial tensions have been pushed to the boiling point by the past eight years of Palestinian violence. Many in the Israeli Arab sector openly identify with the Palestinians, including their radical anti-Zionist elements like Hamas.

Israeli demographers also note that the relatively higher birthrate in Arab communities poses a long-term threat to the Jewish majority.

Here are links to the Jerusalem Post article quoted above:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632376762&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/04/01/americans-for-p.html#comment-62256 <p>"American, I hope you're not serious about that Jewish expulsion bit. I've got a couple of distant Jewish ancestors. You might be sellin' ol' Jim down the river with that 'move 'em out' talk."</p> <p>Sometimes I have the impression that R. Witty creates much of the ultra extreme statements in the comment section. </p> "American, I hope you're not serious about that Jewish expulsion bit. I've got a couple of distant Jewish ancestors. You might be sellin' ol' Jim down the river with that 'move 'em out' talk."