Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

C  Parsons, thank you for your reply and thank you for ignoring the more intemperate shades of my post. I let you under my skin today, that's my fault.

I'm off to bed now and will rise to a very busy weekend. Therefore, I'll not have the chance to raise some important issues until Sunday evening.

Juste wanted to let you know that I'm not ignoring your reply to me.

Mark Ross: "So C Parsons, what's your point?"

Well, Mark. I have several points I have been developing on this topic.

Firstly, the world had better start preparing itself for more, rather than less conflict in the Middle East.

Moreover, I am very pessimistic about the prospects of some moderate wing of Hamas prevailing over the hard men.

And given the messianic fervour of the rhetoric coming from Hamas, and its apparent belief that it is verging toward some final cataclysmic showdown with Global Zionism or whatever, we'd be fools not to expect some kind of drift towards war on a fairly major scale in the region.

After all, here are a bunch of people who have not resiled at all from their medium to long term objective agenda of eliminating Israel.

They just keep saying it over and over.

These people think they're being conciliatory if they prefix their expressed aim of wiping Israel off the map with the phrase "Not this week, but soon".

They actually say things like:

"Negotiating with the Zionist enemy is not on our agenda. Talks between the Palestinian Authority and the Zionists were a disaster and Hamas does not want to repeat the same mistakes." - Ismail Haniya, top candidate on Hamas's electoral list.

And the apparent nihilism they express could well be heart felt. They may actually believe the gibberish about destroying Israel, and in any case that's the promise they've made to the Palestinian people.

Exacerbating this trend, I believe, is the internally destabilising impact of the rise of Hamas within the occupied territories themselves.

If you've got God on your side and you're on a mission to exterminate the reviled Infidel presence that's polluting your sacred precincts, blah, blah, blah, then;

(a) you're too busy to worry about day to day boring things like building a modern state or

(b) having to debate any of this with wiser or more moderate critics among your own population.

So, you start killing them, too. Because they're traitors or whatever.

Also, you'll be encouraged to learn that a wide spectrum of opinion in the Infidel world, too, seems to be echoing your rhetoric about the perfidious Israelis and their undue influence on western policy and the inevitability of their extinction.

Why, there's David Duke more or less agreeing with David Irving who more or less agrees with George Galloway who definitely agrees with John Pilger who can always rely on a good review from Richard Neville who is always being quoted by National Vanguard which is endorsed by David Duke.

Round and round.

This, coupled with the fact that everyone else in the West seems to hate you is confirmation enough of your own splendid righteous virtue.

And if you can just patch things up a bit with the Iranians and Syrians and make good the contacts you have with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (because you've got them in spades), then it must be time to show the Infidel you mean business.

What we need now, of course, is a really spectacular hit.

Something really massive that will silence the critics at home, show the Zionist Infidels who's in charge - and bring about the impending showdown.

Some pretext that's to hand. I dunno? The insult to Islam caused by the Danes perhaps?

That'll do.

Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't engage these throwbacks in dialogue.

By all means, we should. But it won't do much good. Give us a bit of breathing space, that's all.

And you never know, miracles sometimes happen.

The useful idiots who have been peddling the pro-Fatah line for years in the west, now find that the ante has been upped very considerably.

Now they have to peddle the pro-Hamas line, and started doing so almost immediately Hamas won the elections.

Their idea of 'dialogue' will be to cheer the Hamas loonies on.

Reality will dictate that Israel, the USA and EU will communicate through pronouncements, through informal diplomatic channels and third-parties.

But that's won't work.

Because as Hamas points out, actual negotiations are not on their agenda.

So, prepare for the inevitable.

So C Parsons, what's your point?

Should more helicopter gunships be brought in to assassinate every Hamas politician so that those foolish Palestinians can have another go at democracy?

Should everybody who has never agreed with your political views commit mass suicide because they've been put in the untenable position of giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt?

What are you doing, C Parsons, to help the situation?

All you do is hang shit on anybody who is politically left of Rush Limbaugh. You're a tired old ideologue who issues the same boring sputum time and again.

Yes. yes, I know. No such thing as multiculturalism. Peace Activists are actually warmongers. If you're not a neocon then you must be a Marxist and, of course, all "Lefties" are born to support brutal dictators.

So C Parsons, I ask again, what is your point in making the above statements? Could it be the same point that you always want to make?

This is just sport for you. A chance to express your pathological hatred of anybody who doesn't agree with you.

Hamish: Mark, name-calling does not help your argument.

How ironic I find it looking at this particular cartoon whilst this is going on in the world.

Is the cartoonist on this site so very radical? I suppose it all depends on where the cartoons originate? In Palestine at the moment I guess this piece of work would be considered rather "wholesome and somewhat folksy"?

Excellent cartoon, sad but true. When will we wake up? The bullies on the international scene are the ones with the huge armies and nuclear weapons. Out of pure frustration the Palestinians have elected a radical government. We fight not for democracy but for domination. Iran and the Palestinians have elected governments that reject domination. Can you blame them? All governments must reject nuclear weapons and work for peace. Unless this happens soon we are doomed as a species.

Hamish: "What, everyone who voted for the Greens, Dems and Latham? Can you stop being absurd and specify who you mean? Your criticism would then actually be very valid."

Well, Hamish, you might recall that I recently I predicted when Hamas took over official control of the Palestinian Authority, it would put the pro-Palestinian lobby into an awkward position where they would either, on the one hand, have to qualify their support for the Palestinians.

Or on the other hand, they would be forced to 'reposition' or 'rehabilitate' the murderous Hamas militias and their off-shoots as some kind of benign or at any rate legitimate political force.

A quick glance down the Democracy can be a damned nuisance thread and aleady there's Green Left Weekly claiming Hamas is "not a terrorist organisation" at all but "really" aiming at secular democracy where Jews and Muslims would live  would live in peace and harmony.

Yeah, right.

There's Sid Walker denouncing Israel for assassinating "senior Hamas leaders on more than one occasion in cold blood", as if these guys had nothing whatsoever to do with their campaign of bombings and attacks on civilians in Israel.

Oh, boo, hoo.

There's someone suggesting that Hamas has "really" dropped its insistence on Israel's extinction. Though Hamas then boldly reaffirms this as its objective.

Mark my words. We'll be being told Hamas is a kind of Boy Scout movement and debating club before long.

Hamish: thankyou. Now you have cogent (I'm not saying I agree or not here) criticisms of the "pro-Palestinian lobby," Green Left Weekly and Sid Walker. It helps your argument to be specific.

Ah, yes...

Something quaintly Chaplain-esque and endearing about those poor little fellows from Hamas, isn't there?

Look at the poor little guy, with a gun held to his head, being forced to consider - though quickly reject - the possibility of having to perhaps stop recruiting kids for suicide bombing attacks on "Zionist" civilians.

And not demanding Israel's anhilation. And maybe even come to terms with them.

The big challenge for the political Left, now allied to these guys, is how to package them up as all cuddly, and cute. [Hamish: 'the political Left'? What, everyone who voted for the Greens, Dems and Latham? Can you stop being absurd and specify who you mean? Your criticism would then actually be very valid.]

I know.

Let's hire a public relations consultant to get the spin going.

"For international consumption, Hamas has engaged an outside media consultant, Ramallah-based Nashat Aqtash, who has been busy massaging foreign journalists with a message that says, in essence: Hamas, Not As Scary As You Think We Are."

There.

Aren't they sooooo sweeeet?