Same goal different mask

John Podhoretz:

THE Palestinians have voted in a terrorist group that has been involved in killing Americans, attacking Israeli civilians and seeks the destruction of Israel and its replacement by a Palestinian state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

So? What else is new?

Yes, Hamas, the dangerous terrorist organization, has won a stunning victory at the polls. It replaces Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat. People are screaming in horror. Why?

Fatah is no better than Hamas. It has a comparably monstrous history of Jew-killling, including the murder of Americans. During the last intifada, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade — which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Fatah — stood second to none in its bloodthirsty slaughter of Israelis as they dined in cafes or rode on buses.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

There are two distinctions to be drawn between Hamas and Fatah. First, Fatah has supposedly given up its goal of destroying Israel and has supposedly accepted the principle of a two-state solution. Big deal. The Palestinian educational system created by Fatah preaches Israel's destruction from kindergarten through college, as do the state-run media. Fatah remains philosophically committed to Israel's destruction, even though it has adopted a more pragmatic stance politically.

Second, Hamas has always been a very useful tool for Fatah and its leaders, who garnered support in America and elsewhere (including Israel) on the grounds that, whatever sins Fatah and Arafat might have committed, they at least weren't Hamas.

Hamas was said to be infinitely worse than Fatah on the grounds that Hamas was an Islamic movement, whereas Fatah was a secular nationalist Arab movement. All well and good — except that a dead Jew is a dead Jew no matter who kills him.

And a Stalinist like Arafat was never any sort of improvement on an Islamic fundamentalist. Their goals were the same, their aims the same, their tactics equally disgusting.

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Don't be fooled by the headlines that declare these elections a catastrophe for the "peace process." There is no "peace process." There hasn't been a "peace process" for years. And there won't be a "peace process" with Hamas just as there wasn't with Fatah once President Bush realized the truth about Arafat and his lies and cut him and the Palestinian Authority off.

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