How Terrorists Win...

There's an editorial in the Financial Times here.

What the FT argues is that it is not merely intolerable that those living in the Gaza strip be punished for the actions of their leadership, but downright prohibited by international law. According to the FT, the Arabs and international mediators should immediately seek an armistice with Hamas and that Israel cease the blockade of Gaza. The Islamists should be brought into the talks, with the goal of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital East Jerusalem, and then Hamas and all Arab countries should be required to recognize Israel.


Good lord, what is in the water at the editorial offices of the FT? Bottle it and sell it to the decadent, because it apparently takes the best and the brightest into a land of delusions and insanity.


Seriously: this is so wrong on so many levels.

First of all, the likelihood of Hamas recognizing Israel has the same likelihood that a snowball in hell has of maintaining its temperature. Who, pray tell, is going to take it upon themselves to "require" that Hamas and Arabs in general are going to recognize Israel? Anyone want to explain that mechanism?

Second of all, this is tantamount to suing for peace. The terrorist group known as Hamas - and somehow the FT failed to mention the financing of Hamas via Iran - wins under these conditions.

Hamas is using the captive population of the Gaza as a political tool to achieve its aims. Nothing more, nothing less. By giving in, by saying that it is intolerable that a population so held in thrall be punished for the actions of its political leadership, is to effectively say the Hamas and the Hamas-like thugs elsewhere that all they have to do is to take such a population hostage and the West will capitulate in order to protect the hostages.

Because what the FT calls for is surrender: it is letting the terrorists win.


What about the civilians living in Gaza? What about their frustrations, their rage, their abject poverty.


You have to make it clear who is to blame, and the West and Israel fails to do so: the situation in Gaza is nothing less than the result of the politics of Hamas, and alleviating the terrible situation there without removing Hamas is nothing less than rewarding Hamas for behaving as they have, giving them absolutely no incentive to change their politics. None whatsoever.

If anything, it gives them incentives to active make things worse. Every dead child in Gaza, every picture of the hopelessness of that population, is of use to Hamas as a political weapon to extort money from western countries who can be called naive and humanitarian at best, but who remain mind-bogglingly ignorant of what is going on.


To repeat: if the West and Israel were to follow what the FT calls for, only the terrorists win.

Put bluntly, this is an appalling editorial, filled with platitudes and outrage that the population of Gaza is suffering. This is woolly-headed thinking at its worst, and if it is indeed indicative of the thinking of London's finest, then ... good night, turn out the lights behind you.