Hamas Leader has Better Grasp of Democratic Theory than White House, Europe
Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh complained loudly about the recent Israeli attack on his terrorist endorsing / act-of-war enabling office. If you think about a little, he kind of has a point:
Israel hit the office of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader. The office was empty at the time. Haniyeh decried the attack. He said that "targeting the Cabinet office means targeting the Palestinian people" and called upon the international community to restrain Israel.
In a very real sense, an attack on an opposing government's property (like, say, an army base on soverign territory) is an act against the population as a whole. Especially in a democracy, the people are the government - the assumption being that if the people didn't endorse the government's actions, they would have voted the government out of office.
Only the Palestinians get an exception - they elect a terrorist government committed to all out war against Israel, and the entire world immediately begins to devote itself to ensuring that "the Palestinian people do not suffer" because of their choice.
We can't find the exact quote right now, but Abba Eban once observed that international diplomacy in the Middle East seemed devoted to always ensuring that Israel's head was in a noose. Every time Israel seemed on the verge of fighting its way out of the noose - '48, '67, '73 - the United Nations would immediately step in to force an end to Israeli progress and a return of Israeli gains. The run-up to 1967 was the clearest example: Arab diplomats publicly threatening to annihilate Israel and explicitly demanding that the UN stay out of the way, and then literally sobbed after begging for a ceasefire immediately after the war began. And, true to form, the UN immediately took up action to protect Arab nations from the consequences of their belligerence.
This coddling of the Palestinian public comes from the same sensibility, but it's slightly more pathological. It's still a matter of "it must be Israel's fault", but it's even more incoherent. At some point, the "Palestinian people" have somehow become the pristine victims of the international community. So when they do things like, well, overwhelmingly supporting and committing terrorism and acts of war - well, some excuse must be found so that the golden-haired children of anti-colonialism don't have to be at fault.
Israel hit the office of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader. The office was empty at the time. Haniyeh decried the attack. He said that "targeting the Cabinet office means targeting the Palestinian people" and called upon the international community to restrain Israel.
In a very real sense, an attack on an opposing government's property (like, say, an army base on soverign territory) is an act against the population as a whole. Especially in a democracy, the people are the government - the assumption being that if the people didn't endorse the government's actions, they would have voted the government out of office.
Only the Palestinians get an exception - they elect a terrorist government committed to all out war against Israel, and the entire world immediately begins to devote itself to ensuring that "the Palestinian people do not suffer" because of their choice.
We can't find the exact quote right now, but Abba Eban once observed that international diplomacy in the Middle East seemed devoted to always ensuring that Israel's head was in a noose. Every time Israel seemed on the verge of fighting its way out of the noose - '48, '67, '73 - the United Nations would immediately step in to force an end to Israeli progress and a return of Israeli gains. The run-up to 1967 was the clearest example: Arab diplomats publicly threatening to annihilate Israel and explicitly demanding that the UN stay out of the way, and then literally sobbed after begging for a ceasefire immediately after the war began. And, true to form, the UN immediately took up action to protect Arab nations from the consequences of their belligerence.
This coddling of the Palestinian public comes from the same sensibility, but it's slightly more pathological. It's still a matter of "it must be Israel's fault", but it's even more incoherent. At some point, the "Palestinian people" have somehow become the pristine victims of the international community. So when they do things like, well, overwhelmingly supporting and committing terrorism and acts of war - well, some excuse must be found so that the golden-haired children of anti-colonialism don't have to be at fault.
