Whether it's the Left or Hamas: Call a Spade a Spade!

It must be difficult for a columnist like Mark Steyn. Every single one of his columns is brilliant, how does he consistently raise that bar? And yet, in Sunday's Chicago Sun Times he hits another one out of the park.

In a piece headlined: "At least Hamas is open about it's evil intentions" he weaves together the sense of reality setting in in the wake of the Palestinian election with a thread from the recent Joel Stein "I don't support the troops" LA Times bombshell.

If you're opposed to the mission, if you don't want to see it through, if you're supporting a position whose success would only demoralize those serving in Iraq and negate their sacrifice, in what sense do you "support the troops"? Stein ought to be congratulated for acknowledging that he doesn't....

The Palestinian elections were similarly clarifying. The old guard -- Yasser Arafat's Fatah cronies -- had their own take on the "But some of my best friends are Jewish" routine. For years they insisted, at least in the presence of Americans and Europeans, that they were in favor of a "two-state solution" -- Israel and Palestine living side by side -- at the same time as they supported and glorified and financially subsidized suicide bombers and other terrorists. Insofar as their enthusiasm for a two-state solution was genuine, it was as an intermediate stage en route to a one-state solution.

Hamas, by contrast, takes a Joel Stein view: Why the hell should we have to go tippy-toeing around some sissy phrase we don't really mean? Hamas doesn't support a two-state solution, it supports the liquidation of one state and its replacement by other, and they don't see why they should have to pretend otherwise. And in last week's elections for the Palestinian Authority they romped home. It was a landslide.

Ever since President Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, there has been a conscious effort to legitimize Palestinian terrorism. Or at least to look the other way.

It's much more difficult to look the other way when the mandate of a new government is handed to those who overwhelmingly support terrorism. Steyn adds this:

Mariam Farahat, a mother of three, was elected in Gaza. She used to be a mother of six but three of her sons self-detonated on suicide missions against Israel. She's a household name to Palestinians, known as Um Nidal -- Mother of the Struggle -- and, at the rate she's getting through her kids, the Struggle's all she'll be Mother of. She's famous for a Hamas recruitment video in which she shows her 17-year-old son how to kill Israelis and then tells him not to come back.

David Horowitz ties the truth thread from Hamas to the Left this way in "The First Terrorist People:

The Palestinians are the first people in the history of humanity to embrace terror and genocide as a way of life. Palestinian schools train kindergarteners and first graders to aspire to murder innocent Jews by blowing themselves up alongside them, and then tell them that if they're lucky enough to be males, they will go to heaven and have 72 virgins attend their every whim. Palestinian parents murder their own children by telling them to murder Jewish children so that Allah can reward them. This is the sickest culture on the face of the earth, and the fact that is supported by the American secular left reveals the terminal sickness of those who crusade in the name of social justice.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

While there may be blocs of reality challenged leftists out there still in denial about the nature of Palestinian terrorism, which is at the very heart of the history of modern terrorism, the mask of obfuscation and denial has been torn away for the rest of us.

Hamas begs that aid not be cut off on the one hand, but in the same breath rejects calls to renounce violence. And today, a new twist: demanding that Israel change it's flag and remove the two blue bars (a symbol found on Jewish prayer shawls) as it symbolizes occupation to Palestinians.

U.S. led efforts to cut off all funding to a Hamas controlled Palestinian Authority are bearing early fruit. Angela Merkel, newly elected conservative Chancellor of Germany in a visit to Israel offered the strongest explicit support for such international action.

No doubt other Western leaders who recently witnessed the political shifts in their own countries (Canada eh?) will also follow suit and present a united front.

Honestly confronting the Palestinian problem is the first step to real and workable solutions. It's clear the old ways have not worked. So on with the new.

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