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2007-08-03 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Alan Johnston and Hamas
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Posted by ryuge 2007-08-03 09:40|| || Front Page|| [5 views ]  Top

#1 Good article. Some of the money quotes:

The claim that Hamas was unconnected with Johnston’s kidnappers is wrong. The evidence points instead to an elaborate piece of manipulation, with Hamas using the kidnap to open a line of communication with Britain (as its Gaza leader, Ismail Haniyeh, boasted last week).
The government not only sanctioned an informal visit to Britain by a senior Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad, but the UK Consul-General in Jerusalem, Richard Makepeace, met Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza to ask for his help in freeing Johnston.
In doing so, the Western embargo on contact with Hamas was broken — an important step in Hamas’s strategy of gaining international legitimacy, and integral to its plan to undermine Mahmoud Abbas, take over the West Bank and further its goal of Islamising the region.


Qu'elle surprise!

It was Hamas which had everything to gain from the ordeal of Alan Johnston, its friend whom the BBC was about to transfer out of Gaza anyway — and its strategy has worked brilliantly. Not only did it open communication with Britain, but the idea of negotiating with Hamas is now gaining traction fast on both sides of the Atlantic.
This agenda is being pushed by organisations such as Conflicts Forum, whose director Alastair Crooke is now a constant media presence. Material posted on the Conflicts Forum website — whose slogan is ‘Listening to Political Islam, Recognising Resistance’ — openly promotes Hamas itself.


Recognizing resistance = Recognizing terrorism. At least Crooke's last name is pronounced properly. It is these Western facilitators of Islamic terrorism that represent a threat almost equal in significance to that of Islam itself. I am almost obliged to agree with those who maintain that such enablers are even more dangerous and a greater enemy. If it were not Islam, most likely these same useful idiots would find another equally seditious and violent cause to further. It is only Islam's incredibly craptacular evilness that makes me continue to think otherwise.

While there are undoubt-edly differences between them, the Islamists form an unbroken continuum of fanatical religious war against the West. Their strategy involves both terrorism and non-violent cultural aggression — a fact the establishment, obsessed by its belief in ‘divide and rule’, refuses to grasp.

Yo, George! Are you paying attention to any of this?

Secular Arab states, horrified by the collapse of nerve in the one power which might save them from the Islamists, are now looking for deals with radical Sunnis to counter the greater threat of Shiite Iran. The emerging EU/American strategy is to help that process, gambling that the Sunni Islamists will fight the Shiites rather than topple secular Arab governments. The wooing of Sunni Hamas is the West’s opening gambit.
This strategy is lethally ill-judged. It fails to recognise that, despite all the splits between Islamist factions, they are united by a common project of Islamising the world. The most likely outcome of this suicidal Western approach will be the further radicalisation of Arab and Muslim society, the toppling by Islamists of secular Arab regimes and a strengthening of the global jihad.


Yo, George! Any of this getting through your thick skull?

This most dangerous development has been given an enormous boost by the way the Johnston kidnap has been manipulated — no small thanks to the BBC itself.

The BBC needs to be torn limb from limb with its entire staff fired then arrested tried and convicted for high treason.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-08-03 16:30||   2007-08-03 16:30|| Front Page Top

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