Soccer Dad

Hamas rights

I'm guessing that Mediacrity will have more on this later but this struck me in Steven Erlanger"s "news analysis" about the conundrum whether or not to fund a Hamas government:

Hamas, the quartet said in its statement on Monday, "must be committed to nonviolence, recognize Israel and accept the previous agreements and commitments," like the Oslo accords that set up the Palestinian Authority and the "road map" peace plan, which calls for the dismantling of armed groups like Hamas.

All that pleased Israel, its diplomats said Tuesday. But it is like asking Hamas to convert to Christianity, they concede. Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel, defends the right to use arms to combat Israeli occupation, and considers Oslo null and void. The most Hamas offers is a long-term truce with Israel, as a stage to Muslim rule over all of the former Palestine, if Israel agrees unilaterally to pull back to its pre-1967 boundaries and cede East Jerusalem.

It's a "right" to "...use arms to combat Israeli occupation." It's surprisng to read that the NY Times apparently supports the second amendment (though not in America.) But of course "...combat Israeli occupation." But combatting Israeli occupation is coded language, not just for attacking soldier but for attacking civilians too. "Settlers" are fair game.

But even B'tselem disagrees here. They believe

Palestinian spokespersons distinguish between attacks inside Israel and attacks directed at settlers in the Occupied Territories. They argue that, because the settlements are illegal and many settlers belong to Israel's security forces, settlers are not entitled to the protections granted to civilians by international law.

This argument is readily refuted. The illegality of the settlements has no effect at all on the status of their civilian residents. The settlers constitute a distinctly civilian population, which is entitled to all the protections granted civilians by international law. The Israeli security forces' use of land in the settlements or the membership of some settlers in the Israeli security forces does not affect the status of the other residents living among them, and certainly does not make them proper targets of attack.

So then I guess that Erlanger should have written that Hamas "...defends the right to use arms to kill Jewish civilians with impunity." That would have been a more accurate rendering of Hamas's ideology.

(Why do I fault Erlanger? Because he uses the language of "rights" and doesn't challenge it.)

Of course when the Palesitnian Authority was getting all its money and it was using it to line the pockets of its most equal members teh PA wasn't much better off either. What was lacking then was accountability. To continue funding the PA with an unapologetic terrorist organization in charge is to continue that mistake.

In twelve years the PA has failed to incubate any significant industry or economy to speak of. It has used its resources to reward its supporters and to promote its terror war against Israel. There should be no "riddle" for the West.

Yesterday I criticized the Washington Post for lending its op-ed page to a Hamas leader to justify his organization's terror. But with its Sulzberger Indifference Template in place the NY Times doesn't need to go that far. It justifies Hamas on its news pages.

UPDATE: Below, Bill Narvey politely but forcefully disagrees with me on this point. He argues, in short, that rather than endorsing the Hamas claim, Erlanger was just being careless because he was seeking brevity over clarity. I see his point but mine was criticizing Erlanger for not taking greater care when using the word "right." The instances of media inadvertantly seeming to endorse the legitimacy of Arab claims against Israel are too frequent.

Technorati Tags: Hamas, New York Times.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.