Thursday, January 8, 2009

Frankly,

This is racist. Goldberg writes:

Well, yes, of course. Ariel Sharon did not evacuate Gaza to serve the Oslo peace process. But he evacuated Gaza all the same. His motivation is not as interesting to me as the colossal reality. Yes, it was wrong to do unilaterally -- I agree with Daniel on that -- but he did it! And Daniel knows as well as I do that Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert, hoped to do the same thing across much of the West Bank. But what stopped him? Palestinian rockets from Gaza, a special gift from Hamas.

Riiiiight. Goldberg thinks that Olmert was full of good intentions, but those crazy 'stinians stopped him from peace. Too bad Israel, with the US, was aiding Hamas and thus had a direct role Hamas' firing of rockets into Israel. Moreover, Olmert didn't merely stop the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank--they expanded.

Palestinians interested in a two-state solution would have viewed the withdrawal in 2005 as a first, important step toward independence. They would have used the billions in aid money that flowed to Gaza to build schools and hospitals and roads and farms on the abandoned land of the Jewish settlements. But they turned those ruined settlements into rocket launching pads. Sharon was wrong to pull out of Gaza without extracting concessions from the Palestinians, and he should have done it in the framework of a negotiation, but that doesn't change the fact that he gave the Palestinians of Gaza what they said they wanted.


I really don't know what world Goldberg lives in. The Palestinains who are interested in a two-state solution are the majority of Palestinians. The Palestinians who control the aid money in Gaza are Hamas. Unfortunately, Hamas isn't a government; its a resistance movement. Its like complaining that the FLN didn't give French lessons. Lumping the two together is akin to equating the Israeli government with all Jews--which is, frankly, racist.

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