Rice Blames Hamas for Gaza Misery, Gazans Know Differently « Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Rice Blames Hamas for Gaza Misery, Gazans Know Differently

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Tags: hamas, palestine

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 1:15 AM and is filed under Mideast Peace, Politics & Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Rice Blames Hamas for Gaza Misery, Gazans Know Differently”

Bill Pearlman says:

December 17, 2007 at 1:41 PM

God forbid we demonize those happy go lucky lads of Hamas. Why they’re just a fine bunch of fellows. At least they are in the bizzarro world of Richard Silverstein.

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liberal white boy says:

December 17, 2007 at 7:02 PM

Even though sometimes I disagree with you Silverstein, as I told a friend the other day who also reads your blog, you are a good man with a good moral compass, and this post proves my point. Sooner or later you will come around to our socialist way of thinking. Don’t you think it’s time to put all this ethnic monkey business behind us.

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Richard Silverstein says:

December 17, 2007 at 10:35 PM

Thanks for the compliment, Liberal White Boy. I’m not quite ready to put the ethnic monkey business behind me yet though.

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americangoy says:

December 18, 2007 at 2:38 AM

“She apparently believes that demonizing Hamas will somehow score her points. But will it score her points with anyone that matters? Anyone who can advance the peace process even a millimeter forward? I doubt it.”

Look – the people who matter is the AIPAC and corporate donors. That’s all that matters.

Looking deeper into this, exactly WHO wants peace in Palestine?

The Israelis? But that would mean that they have to stop the settlements. Unacceptable.
Hamas? Their whole raison d’etre is to be the underdog and combat Israel. Peace would destroy them.
USA? USA does whatever AIPAC tells it to do.

Perhaps the only people who want peace are the common Israelis (of the non settler variety, i.e. sane), Europeans (who are just sick of the whole mess and generally try to be the lovey dobie lib good guys) and Palestinians themselves, who just like Afghanis before them couldn’t care less who is in power as long as they can leave home and go shopping and not get shot or blown up or stopped at a checkpoint and turned back or shot…

Profound ain’t it?

http://americangoy.myblogsite.com/

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Norman Weinstein says:

December 18, 2007 at 9:25 AM

Perhaps as an octogenarian my memory is faulty, but didn’t Hamas overwhelmingly win a parliamentary election a year or so ago that was apparently a hell of a lot more honest than ours in 2000? And didn’t we, along with Israel (the other part of our symbiotic we) then rapidly denounce this democratic election as unacceptable? Only does our arrogance exceed our hypocrisy. And these words are from a pro-Israel Jew whose wish for that country is that it become a just nation worthy of respect instead of contempt and condemnation.

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Andy says:

December 18, 2007 at 11:27 AM

“Layali al-Kher, 27, said there was little money in her family, because restrictions on cement and raw materials have led to the closing of factories and a halt to construction.”

This would seem to be the money quote here. Richard, you follow all of this much more closely than I do – to what extent is there a Palestinian middle class? IMO, if Israel and the U.S. are really serious about peace, then they need to do whatever it takes to create a strong Palestinian middle class that could (a) fend off the extremists and (b) demand/produce more competent leadership. With respect to Gaza, at the very least, Israel should relinquish control of Gaza’s borders, coastline, and airspace, and generally get out of the way and thus give the Palestinians the opportunity to economically pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, so to speak.

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Richard Silverstein says:

December 18, 2007 at 8:11 PM

Andy: There has been a Palestinian middle class & the Palestinians are quite enterprising when there is any economy to speak of. Of course, the Palestinian economy has become pretty flattened & pretty much everyone has nothing. Were Israel to “get out of the way” the economy would grow & become vibrant in short order I’m convinced.

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