Thursday, July 24, 2008
Melanie Phillips discusses the Commons International Development Select Committee and its recommendation to begin (overt) talks with Hamas: A lonely voice of principle. Her title refers to the sole dissenter on the committee who discusses his reasons at the link at top. A snip:
Hamas is a violent and ruthless offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Rejection and destruction of Israel is a core element of its rock hard ideology. In its twenty years of existence it has established a menacing track record in carrying out terrorist atrocities. It also provides cover for groups like Islamic Jihad to carry out their own attacks, especially at times when Hamas agrees to a ceasefire.
It was a Hamas crew that pulled off the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit in June 2006 (still being held) which precipitated another round of fighting between Israel and Palestinians that summer. Unsurprisingly, Hamas receives hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the Iranian government - some of which is used to fund a programme of ‘hate education’ among Palestinian children...
...Previous back-channel communications with Hamas have actually achieved very little. Ceasefires, like the one brokered recently by Egypt, have never amounted to anything more than a breather in the cycle of violence and bloodshed. The space gained is for re-arming, re-training and fundraising, not to engage in a process that might just deliver peaceful statehood for the Palestinians. If this one delivers more then it will not have been as a result of a softening of the Quartet principles...
Bravo to Stephen Crabb.
A voice of principle is precisely the right term, and make no qualms and have no doubts about it, it's moral principle. Stephen Crabb here demonstrates an ability to distinguish primary moral considerations from secondary and tertiary moral considerations. The latter can be allowed to be variously triangulated and subsumed within realpolitik considerations; the former need to be given far greater weight, need to be recognized for what they are, need to be acknowledged as such and given their role and full weight at center-stage.
I second the bravo to Stephen Crabb.
(This is why American exceptionalism is in fact a perfectly valid motif and point of reference. Not in some simplistic or stylized, manichean sense, but America has, nonetheless, been willing to distinguish primary from secondary moral considerations, with requisite gravitas (e.g., the Cold War), and has been willing to back it up with action and with dollars as well. Mistakes are made in the process, during any such ventures in the real world where contingency can play a huge and even pivotal role, but that is part of the venture, a part of the risks involved.)