The Last Exile

Jennifer Rubin at Commentary quotes Hillary Clinton’s speech to AIPAC:

When a Hamas-controlled municipality glorifies violence and renames a square after a terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis, it insults the families on both sides who have lost loves ones in this conflict. And when instigators deliberately mischaracterize the rededication of a synagogue in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s old city and call upon their brethren to “defend” nearby Muslim holy sites from so-called “attacks,” it is purely and simply an act of incitement. These provocations are wrong and must be condemned for needlessly inflaming tensions and imperiling prospects for a comprehensive peace.

And rightly points out it wasn’t a recently a “Hamas-controlled municipality” who glorified violence and renamed a public square after a terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis but a Fatah-Palestinian Authority run-municipality.

Rubin has more to say on the who moral equivalency issue, but in a weird way, I find it oddly reassuring that the US Secretary of State gets just as confused over the whole Hamas-Fatah/Palestinian Authority governance issues as I do. There is something about the artificial constrict of ‘good’ terrorists versus ‘bad’ terrorists that I just find frightfully confusing. If it’s bad when Hamas does it how can it be that it suddenly becomes hunky-dory when the Palestinian Authority-Fatah does it? This is remarkably refreshing after the Bush years when Bush Administration press secretary speculated Hamas would evolve into regular businessmen upon electoral victory…and having a US Secretary of State refer to Abu Mazen as the ‘moderate’ leader of the Palestinian Authority.

And speaking of the moderateness of Abu Mazen – the Jerusalem Post lists recent examples of his ‘moderate’ creds.

http://lastexiled.com/index.php/2005/04/16/tyrants-at-the-gate/

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