Greens and Hamas

Interesting what you can’t find on the Greens website.

And what you can.

That is, if one donated to an anti-apartheid cause yesterday, or for a democratic Palestinian state today, you would not necessarily fall foul of the Act, even if some ANC or Hamas members had been engaged in violent acts.

What about this? Israel is terrorizing the Palestinians, but Hamas merely has a “terrorist component to it”.

For example, is the Security Intelligence Service targeting those New Zealanders who give support to the Sharon Government in Israel that is occupying a foreign territory in violation of international law and UN resolutions, terrorising its Palestinian inhabitants, and that possesses weapons of mass destruction, or is it instead targeting any New Zealanders who support the Palestinian group Hamas that has a terrorist component to it?

Then we have this contribution from a year ago, which ventures way over into area previously only attempted by rock stars on mixtures of various mind-altering drugs.

The first misleading reason often given for excluding Hamas is that Hamas doesn’t recognise Israeli. The truth is that Hamas has explicitly recognised the Israeli government as in de facto control of Israel, and they have agreed to negotiate with it.

Yes, I’m pretty sure they recognise that Israel still has to be destroyed – that being their purpose and all.

Formal diplomatic recognition of Israel is surely not an issue. Hardly any of the Islamic countries recognise Israel — two countries represented here, Indonesia and Malaysia, don’t recognise Israel — and that is their right. The United States doesn’t recognise North Korea, yet the United States sits down at the negotiating table with North Korea.

Everyone’s mean to Israel, so why should Hamas be any different? I mean, the US is mean to North Korea, it’s not like they’re bad people or anything?

The second misleading reason for excluding Hamas is that it doesn’t renounce violence, yet the same test is not applied to Israel.

Hm, let’s think about that. I think Israel’s position is pretty similar to other countries who were invaded by 9 different countries shortly after being founded – you stop shooting first mate.

Oh, Wikipedia has a nice list in case you were wondering.

Egypt,
Syria,
Jordan,
Lebanon,
Iraq,
Saudi Arabia,
Yemen,^[1]
Holy War Army,
Arab Liberation Army

…

The third misleading reason for excluding Hamas is that it allegedly won’t accept past agreements. This is a strange demand in that Israel does not adhere to the past agreements, including the US-inspired Roadmap. Most notably, Israel continues to build new settlements on the West Bank, and to expand existing settlements.

This is quite true – there are a number of past agreements that Israel has failed to keep. This is of course, because once they carry out their first part of the deal, it’s never reciprocated from the other side and the whole thing breaks down.

While Keith notes the West Bank, he fails to note that Israel of it’s own accord removed all settlements from Gaza. Yet that’s where the problem is today.

Also, we should recognise that Hamas did win the 2006 Palestinian elections and a first principle of democracy is to respect the results of an election.

I forget, was that before or after they murdered their political opponents? Wait, it was before – yes, defiantly before.

Whatever criticisms we have of the Hamas or the Israeli government or Fatah, all three parties will be part of any solution.

Yup, those who want to wipe Israel from the map are just as much part of the solution of keeping it there as anyone else.

[snip]

And when we are thinking about Palestine we should remember our fellow Palestinian MPs, several of whom remain imprisoned in Israel today.

[sniff] can’t you feel the love going out – a fellow MP, locked up simply by being elected to parliament while already in jail for some combination of terrorism and/or mass murder. Let’s not get into antisemetics….

Finally, I would endorse the wording of the Indonesian delegation’s resolution before this conference that an internal dialogue is required in Iraq and that ‘the continued presence of foreign forces in Iraq has further worsened social, political and economic conditions, created fertile ground for the growth of terrorism and caused ethnic conflicts in Iraq which has which has the potential to spill over to the region.’

Most New Zealanders are proud that our country did not join the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Yup, gotta get that “proud to have not gone into Iraq” reference in there.

Electing mass murders – fine. Kicking out a dictator and installing a democracy – evvvilllllll.