“Gaza is Hamas’ fault.” Not an unusual sentiment (though not usual enough), but scrape your jaw off the floor when you hear that it was said by an EU official. The usual suspects aren’t pleased, of course:

A Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, was quoted by Reuters as saying his group was “shocked” at Michel’s comments. He lambasted the official for “giving cover to massacres and terrorism committed by the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people… Palestinian resistance is as legitimate as the resistance of European countries that fought against foreign occupiers.”

Well, I have to admit that I share their shock. But not their dismay. I guess their mendacious game isn’t working as well as it used to.

[Evening update]

As long as they’re having a fit of sanity, the EU might want to consider the fungibility of money, and whether or not they’re fueling violence with foreign aid to the so-called Palestinians.

How long are we going to tolerate security theater, and behave like the sheep that the government wants us to be?

Can George Mitchell bring it? I doubt it. As the article notes, the comparison of Hamas to the IRA is spurious, and the Democrats in general, including George Mitchell, seem to think that it’s possible to engage in diplomacy with someone whose goal, and in fact primary motivation in life, is to kill you. What does that “dialogue” look like? What would be the “compromise”? That only half the Jews go into the sea?

I have a piece up at PJM today on the revival of the old cult of child sacrifice in the Middle East.

First time as tragedy, second time as tragedy again — Europe’s continuing estrangement from Israel:

I am standing in a queue waiting to buy a train ticket from London to Canterbury. A well-dressed lady standing behind me informs her friend that she “can’t wait till Israel disappears off the face of the earth.” What struck me was not her intense hostility to Israel but the mild-mannered, matter-of-fact tone with which she announced her wish for the annihilation of a nation. It seems that it is okay to condemn and demonize Israel. All of a sudden Israel has become an all-purpose target for a variety of disparate and confused causes. When I ask a group of Pakistani waiters sitting around a table in their restaurant why they “hate” Israel, they casually tell me that it is because Jews are their “religion’s enemy.” Those who are highly educated have their own pet prejudice. One of my young colleagues who teaches media studies in a London-based university was taken aback during a seminar discussion when some of her students insisted that since all the banks are owned by Jews, Israel was responsible for the current global financial crisis.

It’s looking like the 1930s again in more ways than one. Let’s hope it ends better this time.

The left has been pretending to support the war in Afghanistan ever since we went into Iraq, as a cudgel against the Bush administration. Obama himself played that game. Well, now that he’s got the keys to the White House, and the actual responsibility for foreign policy, what will he (and they) do?

Armed Liberal explains:

As I never tire of reminding people, the disparity in power between Israel and the Palestinian proto-states (and the entire Arab world) is immense, driven in large part by the cultural gap between the westernized Israelis and the balance of the Middle East.

I’m no expert, but I have to believe that the day Israel gets tired of this stalemate and simply starts playing by Hama rules, it will be a matter of days before there simply are no more Palestinian people.

And here’s the problem – the same problem I’ve worried about since 2001. How do we prevent this from seeming like a good idea?

Well, the strongest way is for Israel to know that it’s not alone.

And we’re doing a worse and worse job of that.

I also think that Joe Katzman’s comment about the Juan Coles of the world is spot on:

You assume that the hatred of people like Juan Cole is rational.

If Israel falls, and million of Jews are murdered, Cole and his ilk will just smirk and enjoy the victory their Islamist friends have won.

If Israel wipes out the Palestinians, it serves as full justification to them for all the loony things they blieve about Western Civilization (and the Jews), and in their minds they were the “heroes” who tired to stop it. On some level, I suspect they may desire this; it fits their ideological fantasies too well. The fact that [they] would have done a fair [b]it to cause the situation will not, of course, be allowed to enter their minds.

So, their position is one in which nothing of theirs is held at risk, and either way they “win.”

Logic is not relevant to any of this. Only the hate that animates them.

And there are far too many of them, particularly in Europe.

The voting for best Middle-East/Africa blog is pretty much down to Juan Cole and Michael Totten. Please don’t sully the award by allowing Cole to win.

Something I just noticed, which is typical of leftists — false advertising. From the Bolsheviks (no, they weren’t really the majority), to “progressives” and “liberals” and support of “appropriate technology,” they have to steal a base with their misleading (to be polite) names. Not to mention, of course, Democratic. “Informed Comment” is just the latest (and even more presumptuous than usual) in the sham names.