Twitchy is currently pushing a story about an appearance Nancy Pelosi made on CNN in which she made some comments about Hamas. Let me provide the relevant part of the transcript:
PELOSI: Well, we all – war is a deadly thing. And I have many Palestinians who live in my district and I am hearing them regularly about how their families are affected who live in the region. It’s a terrible thing. But let me just say that any missile that comes from someplace has a return address. And if Israel is responding to that address, then that’s a shame that the Palestinians are use – are rumored to be using children and families as shields for their missiles.
Should we all try to, first of all, avoid conflict, the Hamas initiated this. So again, this has to be something where we try to have the two-state solution, that we have to support – we have to support Abbas and his role as a leader there. We have to support Iron Dome to protect the Israelis from the missiles. We have to support the Palestinians and what they need. And we have to confer with the Qataris, who have told me over and over again that Hamas is a humanitarian organization, maybe they could use their influence to –
(CROSSTALK)
CROWLEY: The U.S. (INAUDIBLE) organization though, correct, to you? [Twitchy’s transcript of this portion: “The U.S. thinks they’re a terrorist organization though, correct? Do you?”]
PELOSI: Mmm-hmm.
CROWLEY: Yes.
PELOSI: We’ve had that discussion.
Now, Twitchy has apologized for running a headline calling Pelosi a “Jew-hating bitch” and for misrepresenting what Pelosi actually said. What she said is that the Qataris keep telling her that Hamas is a humanitarian organization but that she thinks that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Admittedly, the last part is a bit difficult to decipher from the audio but, at most, Pelosi was trying to suggest that maybe the government of Qatar could use their influence over Hamas to help modify their behavior. Nonetheless, Twitchy initially wrote that she had endorsed the view that Hamas is a humanitarian organization and the right went predictably crazy, accusing Pelosi of anti-Semitism, stupidity and mental instability.
Let me start off with the fact that Nancy Pelosi is contributing to making people stupid by arguing that Hamas initiated the current conflict. This is highly misleading, although the way events played out makes things just ambiguous enough to prevent me from saying that it’s an outright false statement. Still, stating that Hamas initiated this conflict is so simplistic that uttering those words actually makes people who hear them turn into half-morons.
Prior to the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, Hamas had been actively suppressing rocket fire in the Gaza Strip. Other groups like Islamic Jihad were essentially being policed. Every once in a while a rocket did get fired into Israel, though this was not with the blessing of Hamas, but more a matter of their inability to suppress rocket fire completely.
When the teenagers were kidnapped, the government in Israel knew they had been executed almost immediately but pretended not to know this and let the Israeli public suffer in anguish over the fate of the boys for more than a week before “finding” their corpses. In the meantime, they used the search to round up dozens of members of Hamas and prisoners who had recently been released as part of the failed peace process. During this period, the government of Israel repeatedly blamed the Hamas government in Gaza for the murders in the West Bank, but they never produced any evidence and government officials basically think the killers were acting on their own initiative.
This is the true context within which Hamas decided to stop suppressing rocket fire into Israel and to begin using their own rockets. To say that Hamas initiated this war is either to accept the Israeli government’s lies about the kidnapping incident or it is to ignore the round up of Hamas leaders in the West Bank. In any case, Hamas had no particular reason to want a war with Israel right now, and they had been honoring a cease-fire agreement to the best of their abilities.
Then there is Twitchy. They label Hamas as a terrorist organization and they want you to stop all further thinking about the matter. Is Hamas more al-Qaeda or more Muslim Brotherhood? Why does that distinction matter? Who used to support Hamas but no longer does? Why did they stop supporting Hamas? What’s the difference between Fatah and Hamas and why did they recently announce a unity government? Why is Hamas popular in some circles? What kind of humanitarian work do they do?
These are the types of questions that, by labeling them as terrorists, don’t get asked or answered. But, if you don’t know the answers, you cannot understand this conflict.
Hamas is definitely a militant organization that has resorted to terrorism on a massive and deplorable scale in the past. They are also an organization that focuses of getting people access to health care, education, and basic nutrition. Their roots are with the Muslim Brotherhood which is a Sunni organization that is completely distinct from al-Qaeda. In the past, Hamas got much of its support from Iran and the Syrian regime, which no longer support Hamas because the fighting in Syria became a sectarian brawl between Sunnis and Shiites, and Hamas stood with the Sunnis. Hamas also lost the support of the Egyptian government when Morsi was overthrown in a military coup and the new leaders began a purge of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fatah and Hamas recently settled their severe differences and announced a unity government. This was the result of the failure of the peace talks, which had excluded Hamas. Hamas’ decision to join a unity government showed, at once, that they had become quite weak and isolated and that they were willing to moderate their position in order to survive.
Indeed, while it’s true that Hamas’ charter calls for the elimination of Israel and that they have never formerly renounced their charter, their leaders have moderated their tone and their demands over the years. This is in addition to honoring a cease-fire over a number of years.
It should be remembered that Fatah is just another word for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) that became famous for stunts like murdering athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Simply labeling a group as a terrorist organization and then refusing to have any further discussion with or about them is not productive. It is not enlightening. And it cannot advance peace.
Hamas is under attack right now not because they had anything to do with the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers but because Israel didn’t want them to be in a unity government with Fatah, and because most of the governments in the region hate the Muslim Brotherhood at least as much as Israel does and don’t mind seeing them slaughtered.
But this is a little more difficult to understand than rockets and tunnels.
When the media and our political leaders are in collusion to make us stupid, it’s no wonder that we don’t know what the fuck we are talking about.
Twitchy is currently pushing a story about an appearance Nancy Pelosi made on CNN in which she made some comments about Hamas.
I saw this last night, thanks to Twitter. I hope Malkin is proud of the site she runs. Pelosi, like almost all Democrats(except maybe Ellison), is an AIPAC stooge. I’ll repeat it again. Haim Saban paid for the construction of the current DNC HQ. Look him up. He cares about one thing, and one thing only. More than that though, look at the Senate the past week. They passed two resolutions in the past week or so saying that Israel can do absolutely no wrong. Guess how? With unanimous consent. In the f–king Senate!! Where Yertle the Turtle blocks everything!
Compared to who/what? Not vague assertions but the factual record of the deaths, injuries, and property damage Hamas is responsible for having perpetrated. Have they managed to exceed that of the few days of the US “shock and awe?” Wasn’t “terrorism” a method used by those that founded Israel? If not for those terrorist acts, would Israel exist?
None of us can know how we would feel and what we would do if we’d be thrown off our ancestral lands and herded into an open air ghetto, denied ordinary goods, and subjected to periodic raids of terror for decades. Not sure my pacifism would survive such treatment.
you know what I would never do?
I would never tell a teenager that he can get into heaven by strapping explosives to himself and setting them off on a public bus or a pizzeria or anyplace else. Forget any legitimacy to resistance itself. That’s only part of the equation. How you resist matters greatly, both from a moral perspective and from an effectiveness perspective.
I would never tell a kid that a sky spook looks after you if you pray. What does this country (and all countries, factions, etc.) tell teenagers to get them to fight in wars for some rich people? Propaganda — religious or nationalistic — has to be more sophisticated in nations with more economic privileges than what is used among people with much less privilege and when life seems hopeless. Are the numbers of “suicide bombers” in conflict zones more than the numbers of mass shooting incidents in this country?
What I also would never do is lie this country into a war. How many kids did this country send to die in Iraq for a lie?
Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
Thanks – 804 total fatalities from Palestinian suicide attacks 1989- 2014
US 2006 through 2/21/14 mass shootings totaled 934. These deaths are less than 1% of all gun related homicides during the period.
So?
An observation. We in this country act helpless to reduce gun violence in our own communities, but are quick to condemn violence perpetrated in other parts of the world. As if those in other countries are more responsible for the violence committed by their people than we are for ours. As if our mass killers are merely crazy people and theirs are evil.
NYTimes Suicide Bomber From U.S. Came Home Before Attack
Let’s not forget that the US supported the Syrian rebels and McCain met with some in the field.
Twitchy is significant to what audience? The fans of anchor babies?
The most significant fact about Hamas in the current context is that it is the legitimately elected government of Gaza and charged with the defense of the people of Gaza, which requires that it use weapons in any event. The genius of Israeli propaganda is to ignore this fact and focus on Hamas as a movement, not Hamas as a political party.
The second significant fact is that terrorism is a tactic of necessity, not a philosophical and ideological commitment. It is a means of asymmetric warfare. The United States of America owes its existence to a terrorist campaign against the British Army (and French naval support in interdicting British supplies and reinforcements). British tax agents were tarred and feathered; read a description of what this process consisted of. US Special Operations are all about terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism when even the “greatest power in the world” must operate asymmetrically because of international politics.
What is galling about this incident is how passive Pelosi was about the whole thing. How indirect her answers were. People are stupid because Democrats are not holding up a contrary view with enough intelligence and precision to connect. As a result even once strong Democrats like Pelosi no longer connect with an audience for whom any thing she says has now been delegitimized. And the 100-0 Senate vote backing Israel shows the extent to which AIPAC owns Congress. All of it, from Ted Cruz to Bernie Sanders.
And that is more disturbing than what Twitchy has said or done.
Yes, the reality of the situation is fairly complicated, and the goal of the Rightwing Noise Machine cogs like Twitchy is to add more lies to the ocean of Israeli propaganda every hour.
But notice how quickly the fine representative of the corporate media jumps on the fairly meaningless comment by Pelosi about Hamas and humanitarianism. It is clear from Crowley’s behavior that her goal is to catch (the Dem) Pelosi in a gaffe, a gotcha. Getting a gaffe is Job One. And instead of actually informing the American boob about Hamas, the corporate media’s goal is (also) to add to the invariable “terrorist” drumbeat.
Pelosi is herself mostly incoherent on the issue because she must always support the absurd Israeli line 100%, no slight deviation allowed. Thus we see the idea that Israel’s colonization campaign could somehow become a partisan issue in the US seems wishful thinking, indeed unimaginable. The likelihood that anyone would ever learn anything in this sorry teevee news exchange is zero.
Israel has played the “terrorist” card so long that one would think it would begin to lose some of its force, but no. There will never be a time when some Palestinian resistance group or party is not declared a terrorist organization by Israel. If a terrorist organization didn’t exist, then it would have to be manufactured. The Palestinians cannot ever be seen as an anti-colonial resistance movement, they can only be terrorists.
Yesterday’s thread discussed if any Americans care. Israel seems concerned that seeing the disproportionate violence they are dishing out in Gaza could possibly cause some Americans to care. We have been propagandized so long that it’s sort of hard to imagine us being able to actually think about the subject. But until the actual facts of the situation become known, and placed within the actual historical framework of the decades-long colonization effort, they certainly will never care.
And the corporate media’s job is to ensure that the Israeli line is the only line they ever hear. Bravo Crowley!
Hamas is also under attack because Bibi didn’t want people to start processing the fact that two-state peace talks are deader than dead and Israel murdered them (many years ago). A nice little war is the perfect dust cloud to kick over that fact. What Pelosi’s comments demonstrate more than anything else is the sheer gibberish American politicians are forced to babble about the situation.
How can they be ‘forced’? They do it of their own free will to line their political pockets.
She thinks/believes exactly what she said. She is definitely not an especially independent thinker: just regurgitating the fog of talking points in which she exists form the pres, congress, media, influential jews and on and on.
Great piece.
Is there a way to access it without a subscription?
no.
But it let me read it for free.
I logged in using Facebook and the article became available.
Thanks, read it that way too. Interesting read.
I suggest everyone catch this interview http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/30/henry_siegman_leading_voice_of_us on Democracy Now by Henry Siegman. You will be surprised by who he is and what he has to say.