Unable to launch major terror attacks, Hamas is considering following in the footsteps of the Irish Republican Army. According to IDF Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash, as reported in the Jerusalem Post, this means Hamas will formally enter Palestinian politics while maintaining a “military wing.”
According to Ze’evi Farkash, “the local Hamas leadership wanted to be a part of the process to exploit the PA system to advance its aims and to make an impact, including on foiling the peace process.” This explains the latest developments of Hamas joining the PLO and also applies to Hezbollah’s agenda in neighboring Lebanon.
But as Washington Times columnist Tony Blankley noted:
…Al Capone set up soup kitchens during the Depression. And the Nazis provided social services to poor and starving Germans in the 1920s and early ’30s. But they both kept killing until, respectively, the FBI and the Allies put them both out of business.
Hezbollah is certainly a ruthless band of cutthroats, but there is no evidence that they are insincere in their beliefs, or that they are open to changing their minds and joining the Women’s League of Voters. If, at their heart, they oppose our objectives, then either they have to be defeated or we do.
Any political party — be it Sinn Fein, Hezbollah, Hamas or the Nazis — that has its own private army is inherently not a democratic institution. Nor is it likely to evolve into one if it holds undemocratic ideas.
Further, the Boston Globe examined the IRA’s record since a 1994 cease fire; along with a $50 million bank heist, the IRA is implicated in the murder of 39 people and so much criminal and vigilante activity that the group’s traditional Catholic supporters favor disarming once and for all. Is this a model worth emulating?
