Bad enough the State Department has mandated the banning of jihad, jihadi, and Islamic terrorist. Now they’re trying to tell Israel that isolating Hamas has made it stronger.
No, isolating Hamas without hunting down and killing its leadership has made it stronger. When the IDF goes after Hamas with a vengeance, Hamas sues for peace and cries uncle. When the IDF goes in in dribs and drabs and lets the leadership survive, Hamas wins. But this is unconscionable:
Israel’s continued blockade of the Gaza Strip is misguided and has helped rather than harmed Hamas, a senior State Department official told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
[…] “What we’re telling the Israelis is that the policy that was adopted after the summer [of June 2007] wasn’t working, of really closing the borders,” said a senior State Department official.
It’s the State Department’s fault in the first place. They’re the ones that strong-armed Israel into allowing Hamas to run in the elections, a decision that should never have been made. The Taliban were not allowed to run in Afghanistan. The Ba’athists were not allowed to run in Iraq. Only Israel was forced to allow a rejectionist, terrorist party to participate in democratic elections. And the result is the current craphole that is Gaza—which of course, State blames on Israel.
Israel has held the opinion that a blockade of Gaza would also weaken Hamas’s hold on the strip.
But a senior State Department official told the Post that policy has appeared to have backfired. Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel have continued and Hamas is gaining strength due to popular disaffection and Hamas can still get the resources it needs.
“Within Gaza, Hamas seems the least effected by the closure,” he said.
The solution? Why, find another way. Like, using European monitors. Or an international force. Gee. You mean, like there is in Lebanon? The one that runs away when Hizbullah threatens it? The one that stands aside as Hizbullah rearms southern Lebanon? The one that ignores the daily smuggling of arms and materiel?
Sure, let’s put one just like that in Gaza.
Effing State Department. Sink into the swamp at Foggy Bottom, will you? We need all new blood there.
Meryl, your cause and effect analysis is, of course, right on. But remember, the function of State is to serve the interests of the US, above all. While support for Israel is an important US policy stance, it’s something that can be made a lower priority if it’s diplomatically beneficial to us. If some of us feel that unqualified support of Israel on all subjects should be the one thing in US foreign policy that never changes, we will have a long wait for an administration that agrees with us.
Of course, a powerful terrorist organization in Israel does not serve US interests.
It serves the interests of left-wing wackos, whose anti-Israeli hatred is second only to their anti-American hatred. Unfortunately, the State Department is full of these wackos.
“’Within Gaza, Hamas seems the least effected by the closure,’ he said.”
NO SH*T SHERLOCK. Can anyone name a single government in all of history that didn’t do everything in its power to make sure it continued to function, even at the expense of the civilians who support it? The whole reason people form governments is to channel resources to those more capable of utilizing them; otherwise, they would remain tribal nomads ruled only by family ties.