Mere Rhetoric: AQ Complains That Hamas Is Not Insane Enough

It's hard out here for a genocidal lunatic:

Al-Qaida's number two accused Hamas of selling out by agreeing to respect past peace deals with Israel, according to an audio recording broadcast Sunday by Al-Jazeera satellite channel. Ayman al-Zawahri lashed out at the group for making its most concrete commitment to a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict when it agreed in February during a meeting in Saudi Arabia to "respect" earlier peace deals with Israel.

Here's the thing: Hamas used the word "respect" because they were unwilling to "accept" the peace deals that any Palestinian government is bound to (at least if they're going to pretend to be a real government rather than just the thugs in control for the moment). So essentially, AQ is going after Hamas for pretending that they're willing to consider someday not killing all the Jews. Because once you take that step, you're apparently just a hop, skip, and a jump from being a far Left peacenik.

Al Jazeera, of course, was helpful as always:

The Qatar-based television channel broadcast the message just minutes before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas finished a meeting - their second in a month... "The Jews have realized the true weight of those governments after most of them had recognized or expressed their readiness to recognize Israel," Zawahri said.

And for those of you who don't think that AQ pays attention to the New York Times:

He mocked Saudi King Abdullah, who proposed the Arab peace plan in 2002 when he was crown prince, calling it the "initiative that was dictated to him by the Jewish Thomas Friedman which Arabs are begging Israel to accept." Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, often writes about Middle East affairs.

Here's the real question: is this part of a deliberate strategy on the part of AQ to make Hamas seem reasonable, or is Zawahri really just that crazy? We're inclined to believe the former - he knows that the unity government deal was a complete victory for Hamas, and that it gave most of the world an excuse to resume funding - without Hamas having to give up anything. It was the entire Israeli-Palestinian peace process in its naked essentials: the Palestinians pocket Israeli concessions, take an outright genocidal position, and then when they slightly back off that genocidal position the world declares that progress is being made and that Israel must make more concessions for peace. Even though, in slightly backing off their totally insane position, the Palestinians never actually meet the obligations they originally promised to meet.

Just a reminder: just because Hamas is centrist by the standards of radical jihadists does not mean that it's actually centrist. That's a mistake that a lot of people make (cf. Times, Los Angeles). We know it's cliched to say, but if genocidal lunacy gets treated like a reasonable position then the terrorists have already won.

References:
* Al-Qaida Leader Says Hamas "Sold Out" [JPost]

Previously:
* Carter Should Not Be Accepting Boatloads Of Money From Radical Islamists
* Debate On Saudi Peace Plan II - Iran Won't Even Accept Slow Extermination of Israel
* Debate On Saudi Peace Plan I - Arab States Still Committed To The Slow Destruction Of Israel

[Cross-posted to The Astute Bloggers]