Soccer Dad

Around the web 2/5/06

As is his particular forte, Elder of Ziyon makes an observation about today's situation and brings historical support for his point. His new post Building an economy under fire is related to his classic "'Plastics"".

In "'Plastics'" he wrote

But the Jews were always looking towards building their own country, their own infrastructure, their own future - no matter what the politicians or generals or bureaucrats did.

and that stands in contrast to the Palestinian insistence on aid from elsewhere while they devote their resources as a society, not to creating an economy, but to terror.

In his more recent post, Elder of Ziyon writes

No one seems to ask the question: why have the Palestinian Arabs, who have been there for decades, failed to build up any sort of decent independent infrastructure and economy on their own?

Many would answer that Israeli military actions have devastated any chance that Palestinian Arabs may have had to build such an infrastructure. This theory assumes that it is impossible to build something permanent in uncertain times, that one cannot expect people to think far ahead when they have to worry about today.

His comparison with the the troubles that Jews of the pre-State Yishuv faced shows that the adversity that the Palestinians face now is much less.

Daled Amos constructs a neat argument about how to deal with a new Hamas regime in "Does Hamas put the 'fascist' in Islamofascist?". Je argies against the prevelant conventional wisdom suggesting that Israel (and the West) should deal with Hamas because it is the will of the Palestinian people. (Israel, in the end, dealt with the PLO because a bunch of unelected despots declared it "the sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people." And we know how well that worked out.) As Daled Amos writes

Arafat's success was in creating the mythos of the "Palestinian People"--the Palestinian masses that could be forgiven even when the leaders they followed were terrorists. Given this worldview, Israel remains the occupier-perhaps regardless of her borders.

And as accepted as the regimes are by the world, they are even more welcome by the masses who bring them into power. Making the masses happy is done according to a time-honored formula claiming to be corruption-free and making the trains run on time--something that was way beyond the ability of the ruling Fatah party.

He also entertains questions about the future of a Hamas led PA. In presenting his case Daled Amos knows when to make his point and when to step back and let someone else do it. In the course of things he exposes us to a number of excellent articles.

A related article (but not a blog) that he didn't mention but is worth reading is "Palestine without Illusions" by Charles Krauthammer. His main point is

With this election, we can no longer hide from the truth: After 60 years, the Palestinian people continue to reject the right of a Jewish state to exist side by side with them. Fatah -- secular, worldly and wise -- learned to lie to the West and pretend otherwise. Hamas -- less sophisticated, more literal and more bound by religious obligation to expel the Jews -- is simply more honest.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Or did I?

Adloyada follows up magnificently on a Washington Post op-ed written by Mahmoud abu Marzook one of the head honchos of Hamas in How Hamas learned not to mention the War. She notes (among other things) that the op-ed is an obvious effect of Hamas's "extremist makeover" campaign. It's an excellent observation. I'm glad that she left me a comment so that I'd know to check out her blog!

Meanwhile Meryl Yourish highlights the various terror and terror attempts that somehow fall below the radar of the MSM who are praising Hamas's "restraint."

Posted by SoccerDad at February 5, 2006 6:03 AM