It’s possible, I hold out some hope that Abbas is less of a kleptocrat than Arafat.
Yes - but he’s just one man.
Yeah, it’s too bad their populist party is too busy worrying about a war that they can’t win.
But the Israelis are vulnerable on each of these points. By Western World, you largely mean the U.S. And I can tell you, the Muslim population in the U.S. is zooming upwards, while the Jewish population is stagnant. There will be a softening of U.S. support for Israel, as the American Muslim population begins to make its weight felt. In Israel itself, the demographic trends are exceedingly unfavorable toward the status quo. And as regards WMDs, the experience of the Americans in Iraq is the premier example of how WMDs can be neutralized by people skilled in asymmetric warfare.
Isarel is a little vulnerable here, and they know it. How else can you account for their sudden enthusiasm for Abbas’s government? They’re showering it with money and promises after basically ignoring it for ages. But this is problematic for Fatah, because it makes them look like they’re in the pocket of the U.S. and Israel. Hamas has a major opportunity here to show that they can both govern and face down the Israelis.
The Muslims that move to America tend to be the type that like secular liberalism and not inclined toward Islamism. It’ll take quite some time for the Muslim lobby to rival the Jewish lobby. It’s not just sheer numbers but also buying power. Jews are highly disproportionately wealthy in aggregate than pretty much any ethnic subset within America.
Do you mean “Goldstein”?
Well, perhaps, if “disproportionate” means out of proportion to their numbers. Most wealth in America, I’m sure, is in the hands of WASPs.
Don’t know that either of these things is true. Ten years ago, it used to be rare to see a headscarf in Boston. Now it’s quite common. These people are not “islamists” in the pejorative sense of the term, but if given a choice whether to support Palestine or Israel, it doesn’t take much hard thinking to see where their loyalties will fall. Same goes for secular Muslims, by the way.
And aside from some immigrants from Somalia and other parts of Africa, a lot of the Muslims immigrants seem well educated and pretty prosperous to me. To the extent that lobbying is about little more than money, I don’t see as being a priori ridiculous that Muslim Americans could pretty soon have a potent lobby.
Yes. Sorry.
Yep, that’s what I meant.
I didn’t mean it in a perjorative sense, I meant it in the sense that they subscribe to a totalitarian form of Islam. Secular Muslims will lobby their ethnic interests sure, bt that does not equal to a rapid and sudden shift on Israel policy.
They already do have a potent lobby. You are talking about them overpowering the Jewish lobby which has an incredibly strong support amongst the Evangelical base in addition to all the wealthy Northeastern and Californian Jews who lobby day and night for support of Israel. I don’t see abandonment of Israel occurring imminently.
I’m sorry but that is nonsense. Support for Israel is utterly solid in western europe. Unlike the US administration though Europe is not ‘Israel right or wrong’ and we are not quite so totally indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians. We also do not have a black and white, good and evil outlook.
As with ETA and the IRA we understand that terrorism thrives on unaddressed grievances. We also understand that terrorist organisations are not monolithic. The trick is to isolate the madmen and embrace as many of the organisation as you can into a political process. And this was the mistake made with HAMAS.
What some organisation constitution says is unimportant. What matters is facts on the ground - if a ceasefire lasting a generation is offered then take it and see what happens. And ceasefires cuts both ways - so no more extra-judicial executions, no more kidnapping from the streets. Negotiating in good faith also cuts both ways. Elements of the Israeli state are great at sabotaging peace moves. Sharon’s provocations, the who gives a damn about collateral damage helicopter attacks on ‘suspected’ militants in crowded streets etc.
And all this hysteria about rising muslim birthrate and immigration in the west is just that - hysteria. Not the approaching doom of Israel.
Fascinating; there are never direct answers like these in response to questions. Instead they load verses from a production line; rehearsed. Stuff like protecting democracies and America’s strategic interests.
snip
Which was the “mistake” – allowing them to run candidates in the elections, or treating them as a terrorist organization after they won?
Well they ARE a terrorist organization, have never been other than. I think treating it so heavy handedly, not giving them a chance to evolve, was a big mistake. However, pretending that they were ever anything but a terrorist organization would have been an even bigger mistake.