The [European] Left and Islamic Resistance

A follow up to this post, albeit from a different point of view.

Excerpts below from a speech by Nadine Rosa-Rosso, a Brussels-based independent Marxist, at The Beirut International Forum for Resistance, Anti-Imperialism, Solidarity between Peoples and Alternatives, held from January 16 to 18, 2009 ( full text also here):

The massive demonstrations in European capitals and major cities in support of the people of Gaza highlighted once again the core problem: the vast majority of the Left, including communists, agrees in supporting the people of Gaza against Israeli aggression, but refuses to support its political expressions such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Left not only refuses to support them, but also denounces them and fights against them. Support for the people of Gaza exists only at a humanitarian level but not at the political level.

...

At all the demonstrations I participated in Brussels, I asked some demonstrators to translate the slogans that were chanted in Arabic, and they did so with pleasure every time. I heard a lot of support for the Palestinian resistance and denunciation of Arab governments (in particular the Egyptian President Mubarak), Israel's crimes, and the deafening silence of the international community or the complicity of the European Union. In my opinion, these were all political slogans quite appropriate to the situation. But surely some people only hear Allah-u-akbar and form their opinion on this basis. The very fact that slogans are shouted in Arabic is sometimes enough to irritate the Left. For example, the organizing committee of the meeting of 11 January was concerned about which languages would be used. But could we not have simply distributed the translations of these slogans? This might be the first step towards mutual understanding. When we demonstrated in 1973 against the pro-American military takeover by Pinochet in Chile, no one would have dared to tell the Latin American demonstrators "Please, chant in French!” In order to lead this fight, we all learnt slogans in Spanish and no one was offended.

...
If we would agree to stop staring blindly and with prejudice at the religious beliefs of people, we would perhaps "learn to understand" why the Arab and Muslim masses, who today demonstrate for Palestine, are screaming ‘Down with Mubarak’, an Arab and Muslim leader, and why they jubilantly shout the name of Chavez, a Christian-Latin American leader. Doesn’t this make it obvious that the Arab and Muslim masses frame their references not primarily through religion but by the relation of leaders to US and Zionist Imperialism?

And if the Left would formulate the issue in these terms, would they not partly regain the support of the people that formerly gave the Left its strength?

Another cause of paralysis of the Left in the anti-imperialist struggle is the fear of being associated with terrorism.

On the 11th of January 2009, the president of the German Chamber of Representatives, Walter Momper, the head of the parliamentarian group of ‘Die Grüne’ (the German Greens), Franziska Eichstädt-Bohlig, a leader of ‘Die Linke’, Klaus Lederer, and others held a demonstration in Berlin with 3000 participants to support Israel under the slogan ‘stop the terror of Hamas’. One must keep in mind that Die Linke are considered by many in Europe as the new and credible alternative Left, and an example to follow.

The entire history of colonisation and decolonisation is the history of land that has been stolen by military force and has been reclaimed by force. From Algeria to Vietnam, from Cuba to South-Africa, from Congo to Palestine: no colonial power ever renounced to its domination by means of negotiation or political dialogue alone.

Nadine's criticism is powerful because it comes from an athiest, European, leftist who is able to take a step back and point out the racist, islamophobic, and imperialist glasses through which the European 'left' views the world, wether they realize it or not.

This is important to take into consideration when discussing not only global protests and resistance to Zionism/neocolonialism but also the status and 'integration' of Muslims in Europe.

Finally, comments below from a I.K. (thanks for forwarding speech and comments!), in relation to US 'Left':

One additional comment I would add, is that it is important to note that the author is characterizing major trends of the "European Left" specifically "traditional" Marxist/Communist political organizing which has a long history there. There are, however, some elements of "Third Worldist" leftists that view Islamists in a more positive way.

In the USA, this could be seen reflected in the differences between UFPJ (which has its organizing base in the much older Communist Party of the United States (CP USA) and ANSWER (which currently has its organizing base in the Party for Socialism and Liberation; but before the 2004 split, in the Workers World Party).

Traditional Marxists (like many in Europe) do not see beyond "class" as an organizing unit, neglecting the national aspirations of Third World nations that may very well organize beyond "class" including the use of religion.

Jimmy Carter on Meeting with Hamas

No, You Forget MSA UCSD is the most Terroristic

See I was spending the day going over MSA activities, after seeing that FrontPage Magazine, I knew they got it all wrong. UCI, UC Berkeley, UCLA - they have nothing over UCSD. I should know, I went to UCSD.

UCSD had the first propaganda wall, and the first successful take down of the propaganda wall. UCSD had an entire issue of the the "Dawn" the tabloid Jihadist newspaper dedicated to "super sonic jihad" activities attacking in propaganda fashion Israel. It was UCSD that prominently displayed anti-Semitic "Zionsim=Nazism" signs on campus, Library walk of all places, with over two blocks worth of Art, graphics and facts. It was Amir Abdul Malik's first outdoor venue speech. It was UCSD that coined the term "Muslim activist" to cover up the real purpose and design of MSA's in the United States- to take over the Supreme Court!

It was UCSD where the MSA lead a student uprising against FREE SPEECH, lead to the shut down of a respectable University Newspaper: The Koala. Using communist tactics and allying with left wing liberal forces they spread a virulent negative perspective of the paper.

So yes, I am not only bitter but outright angry. All those years trying to not associate with Muslims because of being labeled a terrorist now seems to have paid off for nothing, seeing that MSA UCSD wasn't even on the terrorist network list!

How could they have gotten it so wrong? I mean come on - Queensborough Community College? Who the hell goes there?

Maybe Daniel Pipes could create a special category for UCSD, because we are in a "League of our Own". UCSD is like the Sex Pistols to Punk. Or the Ramones to "new wave" (huh?). UCSD is like the Harvard of institutionalized "terrorizing networks". UCSD is like Edward Said's Orientalism, re-writing the entire face of Academic activism on campuses. UCSD is like the Al-Qaeda manual to Muslim activism on college campuses, like duh!

Being such an outlier on the curve, Pipes probably felt it was unfair to include us in the "list of stealth Jihadist" MSA's so as not to be an anomaly.

See great minds do tend to think a like. Though I am not sure if Pipes was following this great mind, because Queensborough Community College? (What The Monkeybutt?)

No really, that's out of left field. Its like saying Cuba is a democracy. Or like Mugabe is the greatest elected official in the world, right after Emperor Bush and Comrade Putin.

Look I have the pictures to prove it:

Subversive forces work to undermine President Bush's evidence gathering. This picture raises questions on how the UCSD MSA can be so small yet present everywhere, where is their funding coming from? (2002)

Amir Abdul Malik, the fiery "anti-Semite", a consistent

Spreading propaganda and "Right of Return" in other words, the annihilation of Israel. (2005)

Here using morbid tactics, placing body outlines all over campus to win sympathy for terrorist organizations, during the "Peace not Apartheid Week"- (Spring 2005)

Spring 2004, "Justice in Palestine Week" all members wore black to intimidate any other voices but theirs. This picture is of the shirt produced by the MSA for this week, where did they get funding for this?

Though outnumbered, there were Freedom loving patriots undercover monitoring the "hate fest". Patriots are never intimidated by fascists.

The intimidation continues, while celebrating the 56th anniversary of the establishment of the only Democracy in the Middle East, MSA drew on propaganda and "shock and awe" tactics to diminish the Jewish student presence on campus.

Part of the intimidation and Antisemitism displayed proudly with consent from Chancellor Dynes at the time.

The notorious propaganda wall- this is from 2004.

The wall propaganda destroyed, and the terrorist wearing TERRORIST garb worn by Hamas militants trying to prop it back up.

Promoting illegal sanctions against Israel, a MSA co-sponsored talk on Divestment (2002)

Vanity Fair: The Gaza Bombshell

Not that this is new or surprising information...

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Complete article here

"Thus have We placed leaders in every town, its wicked men, to plot (and burrow) therein: but they only plot against their own souls, and they perceive it not." [Holy Quran, 6:123]

Actor Overdoses on Drugs vs. An Entire People Being Suffocated

Can you PLEASE take a break from mourning Heath Ledger and pay some attention to the drama in Gaza?

Thousands of people have flooded through a hole blasted through the wall separating Gaza and Egypt. The hole was created by masked Palestinian gunmen and it allowed those trapped in Gaza to pass into Egypt, where they brought food, fuel and other supplies that have become restricted on the Palestinian side of the wall.

(Channel 4 News)

Hundreds of Palestinian women crashed a border gate Tuesday to protest Egypt's cooperation with Israeli sanctions against the Gaza Strip, setting off a riot that injured 35 people and curtailed a resumption of food aid to the impoverished territory.

(SF Chronicle)

Israel's limited reversal of its border closure was the result of international pressure, government officials said, but a one-day measure due to its own review of the situation, which included a sharp reduction in rocket fire since the weekend.

(Calgary Herald)

“With a great regret and strong condemnation of these crimes… the Islamic Republic of Iran will use all its diplomatic efforts to lift the Gaza blockade and the threats against the Palestinians,” Gholam-Hossein Elham told a regular news briefing.

(Tehran Times)

Thirty thousand cubic metres of untreated sewage from the Gaza Strip was dumped into the Mediterranean as a direct result of the four-day total embargo on fuel and humanitarian supplies, Palestinian water executives said yesterday.

(The Independent)

Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and - some would say - encouragement of the international community. An international community that professes to uphold the inherent dignity of every human being must not allow this to happen.

(Guardian Unlimited)

Q and A with Alan Johnston

I think Alan Johnston's answers say a lot about the Palestinian/Israeli 'conflict', especially in Gaza. Being a Western journalist who has lived in Gaza for years, he is in a unique position to see the bigger picture and understand both sides of the story.

His answer below sums up the situation very well:

Q: How has your experience shaped your views on the Palestinian problem? Do you think there is a solution?

For a century or more, this has been a dispute over the control of the narrow strip of land that stretches from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. If the Israelis were to withdraw from every inch of occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians would be left with about 22% percent of that land. The Israelis would have 78% percent.

Every time you see an American president sit down with the two sides to talk peace, the question is largely about how much of that 22% the Palestinians should be allowed to have - and under what conditions.

I tend to feel that the Israelis will never really give enough - or be forced by their American friends to give enough. And for at least some angry young Palestinians, 22% could never be enough. They would want to fight on for much more.

I think that they would be hard to rein in, and in the poverty, despair and oppression of the occupation, the ranks of the radicals are only likely to grow.

Set against that, most people on both sides do want an end to the conflict - a settlement that might allow their children to live in peace and prosper. So, perhaps there is hope - "God willing", as they say in Palestine.

Click here for rest of Q and A on BBC News.com

Blair 'will fail unless he talks to Hamas'

The following article is actually something I will be referencing in a piece I am working on regarding the importance of the Turkish election victory of the "Islamist leaning" AKP. RUN WHITE FOLKS RUN, the ISLAMISTS are on the way- just kidding. Seriously it's nothing like that. We like democracy too. No seriously, I love living in America, and I love the freedoms we have. Why don't you believe me, okay, no you do not have to be skeptical, you will like what I have to say. Please do not judge me because I am a Muslim, brown and, okay, its true I am naturalized, not a born American.


By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 11:56pm BST 21/07/2007

Tony Blair's effort to revive the Middle East peace process will be doomed unless the West begins talking to the militant group Hamas, according to the man expected to advise the former prime minister. Daniel Levy thinks Hamas could find a way of accepting the reality of Israel In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Daniel Levy warned that al-Qaeda could win new supporters among disaffected Palestinians unless Hamas - regarded by Israel, America and other western countries as a terrorist group - is allowed "inside the tent". Mr Levy, 39, a former Israeli peace negotiator and the son of Mr Blair's former Middle East envoy, Lord Levy, said the West's effort to bolster the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, could not work if it ignored Hamas's control of Gaza, part of the Palestinian territory. He claimed that Mr Blair's record in Northern Ireland meant he understood the need to talk to extremists. "For any process to have sustainability, legitimacy, and to guarantee security, it will have to be inclusive, not divisive, and to bring in Hamas over time," he said. "Mr Blair, with his Northern Ireland experience, may understand this better than most." This week Mr Blair will make his first trip to the region since he was appointed envoy by the Quartet of powers - America, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia - who are overseeing the peace process. Announcing plans for a new Middle East peace summit, President Bush last week called on Hamas to renounce violence and recognise Israel, and repeated his refusal to deal with it until it did so. But Mr Levy, director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative at The Century Foundation, a Washington think-tank, said Mr Bush's stance was "bound not to produce results". Instead, he said, America must "try and construct a process where Hamas are inside the tent". He said the decision to shun the group was a "misguided" gift to al-Qaeda recruiters. "Al-Qaeda accused Hamas of selling out when they decided to run for election," he said. "The al-Qaeda position is that this electoral process is a western colonial implant, an abomination to Islam. Hamas goes in, wins and sees this boycott slapped on it. Al-Qaeda said, 'See, you played by their rules and you paid the price.' " Mr Levy said America would be better off emulating its policy in Iraq, where its soldiers are working against al-Qaeda with Sunni insurgents "who were shooting Americans two months ago". Calling Hamas a potential "bulwark against al-Qaeda", he said he thought Hamas could find a way of accepting the reality of Israel. "We don't need them to be Zionists," he said. Mr Levy spoke out amid growing doubts about Mr Blair's mandate. Last week Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, said that America alone would lead on the "political track", leaving Mr Blair to focus on building up the Palestinian economy and institutions. Mr Levy made clear that as yet he has "had no conversation" with Mr Blair since he left Downing Street, and would not act as a formal adviser. But a spokesman for Mr Blair said that he did expect to talk to Mr Levy about the Middle East in the future.

Three State Solution

I want to thank Dan Dan for a great article he forwarded to me. Brilliant analysis, worth taking your time to read:

Posted to the web on: 28 June 2007
Palestinians acting out a neocon script
Francis Kornegay

---

TO EXIST or not to exist: that is the question Israel and its backers cannot avoid revisiting as Hamas assumes full control of Gaza. The question of Israel’s right to exist is one that Tel Aviv and everyone else assumed had long been settled in the affirmative until the inconvenient electoral ascendancy of Hamas in occupied Palestine and its resolute refusal to recognise the Jewish state. No matter how much Hamas is made to suffer for its temerity in placing the question of Israel’s existence back on the table, it is a question not likely to go away no matter how much Tel Aviv, Washington, the European Union and “moderate Arabs” insist on making a puppet out of a compliant Mahmoud Abbas West Bank “emergency” regime.

Not everyone is buying this “divide-and-rule” script. It is widely recognised that there can be no Israeli-Palestinian settlement without the Hamas Islamists. However, before unpacking the political logic of revisiting the question of Israel’s existence, it is instructive to consider the ruthlessly cynical politics of manipulation that brought the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum to this juncture.

Israeli journalist Uri Avnery has alluded to US-Israeli collusion with Fatah in arming it to take on Hamas — against the wishes of Israeli army chiefs . Israel’s military brass feared, as Avnery puts it, “the arms might end up in the hands of Hamas (as is happening now). But (the Israeli) government obeyed US orders, as usual.” Well, there is more to this story. Does the name Elliott Abrams ring a bell?

Abrams, a flaming pro-Likud neoconservative fanatic of Iran-Contra infamy, is the key architect of this latest Israel-Palestinian “three-state” scenario. As deputy national security adviser on Middle Eastern affairs in the White House, Abrams reportedly greeted a group of Palestinian businessmen last year with the idea of executing a “hard coup” against the newly elected Hamas government by supplying US arms to Fatah. According to Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke, writing at the beginning of the year in Asia Times Online, “over the past 12 months, the US has supplied guns, ammunition and training to Palestinian Fatah activists to take on Hamas in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank”. Thousands of rifles and bullets poured into Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan under the guise of “assist(ing) the Palestinian Authority presidency in fulfilling its commitments under the road map to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order.…

“Arab moderates” in Cairo and Amman went along with the programme , even though they didn’t believe it would work and it came in for “attack throughout the Arab world — particularly among America’s closest allies.” Incredibly, this crackpot scheme went ahead despite virtually everyone in the US foreign policy, intelligence and security establishment disowning it. This is testimony to neocon resilience in the Bush administration, despite their rapid erosion over the past year.

Moreover, as Abrams’ positioning indicates, they continue to be strategically placed to render rearguard resistance to more moderate policies and strategies. The fact of the matter is, they do not want a peace settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict unless it is on Israel’s terms. This largely accounts for the rise of Hamas and the decline of Fatah. The script goes like this: US acquiescence in Israel’s humiliation and undermining of Yasser Arafat and his PLO/PA regime to the benefit of Hamas Islamism, which Israelis and Americans alike knew would take a rejectionist stance on recognising Israel. This, in turn, would give pretext to further degrade Palestinian statehood under the guise of not having anyone on the Palestinian side to negotiate with.

Use Hamas’s rejectionism to justify putting further pressure on Palestinians in an effort to undermine the Palestinian Authority while fomenting civil war between Hamas and Fatah. Back Fatah over Hamas with the aim of producing a US/Israeli-dependent Palestinian regime to accept “peace” on Israeli terms — or a continued “no war, no peace” situation of Israeli dominance and occupation given the possible destabilisation that could come from uprooting Israeli settlers in the West Bank. All of which has helped Hamas’s credibility on the “Arab street” throughout the Middle East, due to its incorruptible, resolute nationalism.

Worse for US credibility is the alignment of Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraqi Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army as the new nationalist pan-Islamic forces of democratic resistance against Washington and London’s sectarian geopolitics of pitting Sunni “moderates” against Shiites in the battle to reshape the region’s political terrain; a strategy new Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair helped shape as UK prime minister.

Israel’s relentless settler expansionism in, and evisceration of, Palestine effectively calls into question whether Palestinians will ever have their legitimate national rights within a viable state fulfilled. In short, if Palestine is to have no “right to exist” as a result of western acquiescence to Israel’s “facts on the ground”, Hamas rejection of Israel’s existence flows logically from the follow-up question of what “Israel” Palestinians are to recognise: pre-1967 Israel or post-Six Day War Israel occupying the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights?

Unless this question can be answered to the satisfaction of Palestinians, the ultimate default alternative is a non-sectarian, democratic binational Israeli-Palestinian state. This may be the only antidote available to the bane of religio-nationalism in the Middle East introduced by Zionism. Hence: to exist or not to exist, that is the begging question.

Francis Kornegay is a senior researcher on foreign affairs at the Centre for Policy Studies.

"This Week in Palestine"

By Guest Blogger Rose Mishaan

It has been a pretty eventful week and a half. After the Hamas "coup" of Gaza, the Fatah forces have been making their presence known in the West Bank -- mostly in the form of many armed guards standing around the main square and various government buildings in Ramallah and occasionally masked men with rifles riding around town in jeeps. The situation seems to have stabilized somewhat, at least here. I can't say much for those trapped in Gaza with no way in, no way out, no aid, no food, and no fuel.

Aside from the sectarian fighting, the occupation is alive and well. I cross the Qalandia checkpoint twice a day on my way to and from work in Jerusalem. Its a two-hour trek to get to Jerusalem, usually an hour to go back. The checkpoint ordeal can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 45+ minutes, depending on the political climate, holidays, or just the mood of the soldiers at the time. Lately they've started adding another temporary checkpoint about 100 meters after the first one. here they come on the bus and check all the IDs again, sometimes just stand outside the door and hold the bus up and don't check IDs, and sometimes take people off the bus, even after they have cleared the main checkpoint.

As part of my internship, I went to survey the aftermath of 4 house demolitions last week, around Jerusalem. The tactic of house demolitions is one way that the [apartheid] Israeli government has been trying to "Judaize" Jerusalem and drive Palestinians off the land. They are devastating. The government can demolish a house with little or no warning on the basis that the family did not get a permit to build. The problem is, it is virtually impossible for Palestinians to get building permits from the municipality, even when they own the land and plan to do the construction themselves. ICAHD (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions), the organization I am working with this summer has started a campaign to rebuild every Palestinian house that is destroyed by the [apartheid] Israeli government this year. They are doing this as a political act of resistance against the occupation and the policy of house demolitions. At the campaign launch, we went to the house of a woman in the old city of Jerusalem. She had lived there for many years, after her family's house was destroyed when the Mughrabi Quarter of old Jerusalem was leveled to make room for a plaza in front of the Wailing Wall, in 1967. Those living in the Mughrabi Quarter were largely refugees from the 1948 Nakbe (catastrophe). She showed us her house and how she had tried to make improvements to the house, and how the army came and tore them down -- including the ceiling in her front room, which to this day she has not been able to rebuild.

The rubble of the houses was hard to take. strewn among the bricks, cement, and tiles, were personal possessions, bed sheets, toys, furniture. The first place we visited: the house had been destroyed that morning. The family was wandering through the ruins, somewhat dazed. They were building the house on land that they owned. The last one was on a family's property that they had owned for over 300 years. They had the deeds to prove this. Their main home was left standing, but the addition that they were building to house their extended family, was demolished.

Yesterday, I headed to the town of Bil'in in the West Bank, to go to a weekly protest by the villagers against the building of the wall through their land. Several hundred people participate in this protest weekly, waving flags, marching, and chanting. As we marched down the road, you could see the army and police convoys in the distance -- a solid wall of soldiers in the distance. The people stop as they approach the soldiers. They stand there with arms up to show they are unarmed and then continue to chant in Hebrew and Arabic. Eventually, the soldiers start shooting tear gas through the crowd. People run back. Some that are willing to risk arrest stay up front and refuse to be pushed back. As people run back, you can hear the tear gas canisters whizzing around, and see them landing in the midst of the protesters. For those of us new to the protest, like myself, this is a scary experience. The canisters can hit people and burn them or otherwise injure them. The gas is very uncomfortable and there are always a few people who need medical attention. The Red Cross/Crescent folks always accompany the protesters and assist those that are injured. For those that come here every week, this is normal. They are used to it. When the shooting subsides, they return to meet the soldiers again. Then the soldiers start firing live ammunition as "warning shots" and try arresting people. This week they got two. Then the jeeps drive down the road towards the town, as the protesters run back again. The soldiers fire more tear gas and start shooting rubber bullets (kind of a misnomer, since rubber bullets are just steel bullets with a layer of rubber around them. They can, and have, killed people. By this point, I have decided to hang toward the back, as I don't think my stomach, or my nerves, can take another round of tear gas and shooting.

At the end of the day, we are all weary from the ordeal. The villagers return to their homes, the internationals head back to their various centers of operation, and the wall stands. Next Friday they will try again.

What Hamas Wants

THE events in Gaza over the last few days have been described in the West as a coup. In essence, they have been the opposite. Eighteen months ago, our Hamas Party won the Palestinian parliamentary elections and entered office under Prime Minister Ismail Haniya but never received the handover of real power from Fatah, the losing party. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has now tried to replace the winning Hamas government with one of his own, returning Fatah to power while many of our elected members of Parliament languish in [apartheid]Israeli jails. That is the real coup.

Read on at: NY Times

Robert Fisk: Welcome to 'Palestine'

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise [apartheid] Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked - on our side - which particular [apartheid] Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an [apartheid] Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?

All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).

Read on at: The Independant