CELEBRATING HAMAS

Dennis “The Wizard” Turner only sleeps on the Jewish Sabbath. Every other day and night he spends at the Aroma Café in Jerusalem with his laptop, sending me a never-ending stream of emails telling me how wrong I am about things.

About twenty-seven times a day, I get an emailed article from him with a note, “Jack, you are so wrong about Sharon… Jack, you are so wrong about Gaza… Jack, you are so wrong about Olmert and Kadima…” So I can just imagine how totally wrong Dennis will say I am about Hamas winning the Palestinian elections.

For I don’t think it’s a disaster at all. I think it’s an opportunity. I’m happy Hamas won. (Dennis has now collapsed into a twitching heap on the café floor. I hope he didn’t let his laptop crash on the floor as well.)

It’s time to celebrate the end of moral goo, the end of pretending Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority were “people we could work with,” the end of all the evasion and desperate avoidance of reality. At last, it’s the End of Pretend.

No one, not even the Euroweenies, can pretend with Hamas. Those peace-loving innocent driven-snow-pure Palestinians just elected straight-out suicide-bombing terrorist murderers to govern them.

The Euroweenies and Arab-lovers in the State Department could pretend that Abbas was a “moderate,” just as they could with Iran’s Khatami. And just as they can’t with the latter’s replacement Ahmadinejad, they can’t with Hamas.

So not only can GW and Condi clearly and without reservation demand that Hamas must formally recognize the legitimate existence of Israel before we have anything to do with their government, they can get the Euroweenies to say the same.

The Palestinian Charade is over. With Abbas, even with the monster Arafat, the pinstripes could mouth inanities about the “peace process.” There’s no peace process with Hamas. Either Hamas surrenders or there’s war.

And make no mistake. If Hamas recognizes Israel, it has surrendered, for the illegitimacy of Israel is the moral foundation of its existence. Take that away and their raison d’etre dissolves.

It’s the Hamas Catch-22. The only way to be recognized as a legitimate government is to de-legitimate themselves. And if they don’t de-legitimate themselves and refuse to recognize Israel, then the Palestinians have a pariah government that GW can force everyone to treat as a pariah.

Others worry that Gaza and the “Palestinian Territories” are now going to become Hamastan, a “safe haven for world terrorism” into which “Iran is going to pour hundreds of millions” to weaponize. Me, I’m glad Sharon got the Jewish hostages out of Gaza in time.

Now Hamastan is painted with a giant bullseye with no Jewish “settlers” in the way. All this “safe haven” malarkey is going on while everyone is also talking about Israel taking out Iran.

Folks – Gaza is four and a half thousand times smaller than Iran. It’s 360 square kilometers, twice the size of Washington DC. Iran is 2,000 kilometers away from Israel. Gaza is right next door. It’s just ridiculous for people to be clamoring for an Israeli knock out of Iran and worry about a tiny Hamastan terrorist haven.

Plus – Hamas is going to fail. There’s no way it’s going to establish a real country with a real economy and rule of law where Palestinians can flourish in peace. There’s going to be civil war and internecine bloodshed between Hamas and Fatah and Islamic Jihad and other gangs of thugs. Gaza is going to be an ungovernable mess, and so will the so-called “West Bank.”

But that’s so six months from now. The opportunity on the golden plate before us at this moment is to shove Hamas’ face into its Catch-22, force them to publicly recognize Israel, to actually use and say the word Israel instead of “Zionist Entity.”

The election of Hamas brings moral clarity to the struggle between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Such clarity was always there, but now it’s much harder to pretend it wasn’t. We should welcome such clarity, we should welcome such an opportunity.

Even Dennis, if for once he would take off that furshligginer black hat glued to his bald pate.

You can talk that way to someone who’s been a friend for forty years.