Soccer Dad

Ahead of the curve

A few non-related items:

1) Yesterday I credited Mere Rhetoric for predicting that American government would still deal with the PA even if Hamas joined the government. I missed that IRIS had predicted this American weakness too.

2) IRIS is probably best known for being first to notice that there was something wrong with the medical treatment PM Sharon received from doctors in the wake of his first stroke. Now IRIS has a story that the apparent mis-diagnosis by PM Sharon's medical team is emerging as a full blown scandal.

I have no facts to back up what I'm going to suggest. Just I'd like to note a famous midrash that had Moshe (Moses) asking God to let him to enter the land of Israel as a commoner. But living as a commoner was too difficult for Moshe and he decided that he preferred death to entering Israel as a regular person.

What if PM Sharon's doctors told him that if they would treat him properly he would be, at least, partially incapacitated and would not be able to function at 100% of his abilities. What if it was the Prime Minister who then insisted that he take his chances? His doctors would no doubt have warned him that without possible treatment he could be healthy enough for a month but they couldn't even guarantee him that. And what if he said, I would rather die than function at a lower level? I don't know what the doctors' obligations would be at that point. But isn't it possible that it was the PM who refused proper treatment of his condition in the hope that he'd be able to do all he felt he needed to do before it was too late? This is pure spculation; of course.

3) On a more substantive note, I saw a picture of a well groomed gentleman voting at AbbaGav. The caption gave me a start:

Senior Hamas leader Mohammed Dahlan casts his ballots inside a polling station in the Khan Younis refugee camp south of Gaza Strip January 25, 2006.

Now I've always thought that Dahlan was pretty tight with Hamas as Ehud Olmert noted three and a half years ago:

On his watch, Mr. Dahlan permitted Gaza to become a safe haven for the hundreds of fugitive terrorists fleeing Israeli forces. Among those being sheltered is his childhood friend Mohammed Dief, a leading Hamas mastermind with the blood of scores of Israelis on his hands. In the meantime, Mr. Dahlan's district became the primary launching grounds for the hundreds of Kessem missiles fired at Israel.

Mr. Dahlan's involvement in terrorism has not been confined to mere nonfeasance but, rather, gross malfeasance as well. Mr. Dahlan, along with his assistant Rashid Abu-Shabak, are the primary suspects in the terror attack on an Israeli school bus in Kfar Darom in November 2000. The bombing of the bus left half a dozen children maimed, and seriously injured an American citizen, Rachel Asaroff. In response to this brutal terror attack on Jewish school children, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak dispatched Israeli planes to strafe Mr. Dahlan's Gaza headquarters.

I just never expected an outlet of the MSM to admit it.

Actually, it appeared that they changed things later:

Senior Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan casts his ballots inside a polling station in the Khan Younis refugee camp south of Gaza Strip.

Oh well.

4) Mediacrity noted that the NY Times has started to describe Honest Abbas as some sort of latter day Honest Abe. But the Times has nothing on the Washington Post that offers a Ghandi like detail to describe Mahmoud Zahar a leader of Hamas :

On his forehead is the dime-size bruise of a devout Muslim, the result of many hours spent praying in the mosque across the dirt street from his house here.

(I'm not pressing this point too hard, the article also describes Zahar as getting angry often; not very Ghandi like behavior.)

Technorati Tags: Palestinian Authority, Israel, Hamas.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.