Liberal Hawks

Crossposted on JoeSettler
The views of this post don't necessarily represent those of the Muqata blog (though they really do) and its readers.

There is probably no more dangerous animal in the world than the Leftwing Hawk.

Yesterday I was invited to partake in a seminar of strategic and security experts who were discussing the current situation vis-à-vis Iran, and Hamas.

It was meant to be a purely security-based discussion, with no politics. But based on the backgrounds of the different speakers, one could guess what their positions would be in advance.

I found the position of the Liberal Hawk to be quite scary.

He provided a unique and logically built historical viewpoint for the development of the current situation, while completely ignoring inconvenient facts that would knock down his tower of cards.

I (and others) raised some very serious questions about things he said, which he sidestepped rather than answer directly.

His thesis is that there are two parallel and competing ideologies running through Arab society: Nationalism (Nasserism) and Islamic Fundamentalism.

Fatah (and its sub-groups) represents Nationalism, and Islamic Jihad and Hamas represents Islamic Fundamentalism.

The above is completely true, but not the complete story.

The premise for his discussion is that Islamic Fundamentalism is the more dangerous of the two and that peace can be made with Nationalists, and most acts of terror are actually caused by Islamic Fundamentalists.

The direct implications of his statements was that one group is religious, which he clearly sees as unthinking and dangerous, while the other group is “secular”, and can therefore be reasoned with.

Yet, when I asked him about the fact that both streams create terrorists, his roundabout answer was that the terrorists themselves were bad (implying not necessarily the organizations they came from). (translation: “He is a Fatah Apologist”).

He completely ignores that members of Fatah and Hamas armies have gone back and forth depending on who pays them. He completely ignores that Arab Nationalism is also Islamic based (how many Arab Christian Nationalistic terrorist groups are you aware of in the Middle East?). He completely ignores that while Hamas and Fatah may compete for control, it was specifically Arafat and Fatah who enabled Hamas to commit acts of terror against Israel.

Which is funny if you think about it.

Arafat and the PLO essentially (an openly) strengthened and enabled Hamas to act as their proxy when it was inconvenient for them to act directly, to the point where Hamas gained enough strength to eventually take over.

Furthermore, I decided to look up basic facts.

Is Fatah more moderate? Are they capable of making peace, as he firmly believes (given the right circumstances – meaning they have the guns, money, and power).

I decided that the best proof or disproof of that would be decided by whether or not Fatah committed acts of terror when they had power and were in control.

I found a number of charts.

During the same period of time since Arafat was let into Israel, Hamas killed 482 Jews in 73 major massacres, 162 Jews were killed by Islamic Jihad in 32 major massacres, while a mere 129 Jews were killed by Fatah in 23 massacres.

In numerous cases the different groups joined together for (i.e. Fatah and Hamas, or Fatah and Islamic Jihad) to commit their acts of terror.

In addition, Fatah were involved in some 1500 other terrorist attacks not deemed as major massacres.

So what this information does indicate is that Fatah, showed less success that the other groups in committing major terror attacks, they are clearly a full partner and player in the terror infrastructure – even when they are in full power.

Yet, here is this security expert, putting his eggs is Fatah’s corner, as “moderates”.

Yet the numbers don’t indicate moderation to me, just less success on the mega scale.

Another person at the meeting asked another important question.

This expert had said, that based on the Palestinian internal divisions between Nationalist and Fundamentalist ideologies, Oslo didn’t have a chance because the Fundamentalist division was ignored - but he supported it anyway.

He was then asked, if he knew in advance that it was doomed to fail and that terrorism would definitely result, as he claims he wrote back then, then why in the world did he support Oslo.

Now forget for the moment that he thinks we can make peace with Arab Nationalists that want an Arab-only Middle East. Forget for the moment that he ignores the core connection between Islam and Arab nationalism.

His answer was (word for word), “Oseh shalom bimromav, we have to try to make peace.”

Isn’t that wonderful! A (leftwing) strategic security expert admits that he was 100% positive that the “Oslo peace process” would only lead to increased terrorism and not to peace based on his incredibly deep understanding of Arab society, yet he supported it anyway, to give it a chance…

..and he continues to support it - because of “Peace”.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael