Hamas Being Forced To Collapse

Sam Bahour has appeared regularly on this weblog. This commentary is particularly timely, given the events of the day.

"The international community demanded Palestinians hold free and fair elections at all levels of government, so the Palestinians did just that, and superbly given their reality. But after voting a reflection of their bitter reality of being caged in open air prisons in their own homeland, the U.S. is now punishing them for not voting as the U.S. wanted."

Over the past several weeks, Israel has been intensely bombing Gaza killing and wounding many innocent civilians. There has been little news coverage of the mainstream U.S. press. Hence, the connection between Israeli violence and Palestinian response is obscured to many people in the U.S. By contrast, even the Israeli intelligence analysts concede that it is Hamas' decision to become politically engaged that has led to the reduction of their far more deadly attacks on Israel.

One would think the lesson is obvious: if violence leads to more violence and poltical engagement leads to a reduction of violence, then the best choice is to engage the enemy politically rather to than use more force. One would think. But apparently US and Israeli politicians don't think, since their response to any act of violence is to call for violence in retaliation. One explanation, then, is that politicians are just plain dumb.

But there is another, more reasonable, and more frightening explanation. My daughter is visiting from Israel and I had a conversation with her about the last elections. She said that people in Israel have become totally alienated from the political process. They have come to understand that politicians from all parties have absolutely no interest in helping the people - that politicians are only concerned about their own interests. Many people decided not to vote at all. At the last minute, some of those decided to cast a protest vote, so they voted for the Pensioners party, almost as a joke. The surprising number of votes that party won is not so much an expression of support for that party, but a big "fuck you" to the other parties.

She has also recently visited Egypt and we talked about how all over the world its the same story - the political elite enrich themselves and their cronies, and the gap between them and the rest of the people grows and grows. I said perhaps this will lead to people waking up and fighting for their rights. She turned to me and said: "Abba, the best way to keep people down is to make them so hungry, that all they can think about is putting food on the table for their children."

So the other explanation is that politicians do think - they think about themselves and how they can personally profit. Robbing from the poor and giving to the rich along with the continuation of war and conflict seems to be a great formula for retaining power and increasing wealth for the managerial classes.

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