Quick thoughts on the Middle East
22 May 2024
On a Palestinian state
Salman Rushdie, the British-American novelist who survived a near-death stabbing in 2022 after living for years under a fatwa, or death sentence, by the Iranian ayatollahs spoke to the German magazine Bild about the Israel-Hamas war. Rushdie noted while he’s long supported a Palestinian state, he warned it would become an authoritarian Islamist regime like Afghanistan if created today. "If there were a Palestinian state now, it would be run by Hamas and we would have a Taliban-like state. A satellite state of Iran. Is this what the progressive movements of the Western Left want to create?"
Bret Stephens, New York Times columnist, wrote What a ‘Free Palestine’ Means in Practice:
When Abbas was elected in 2005, it was for a four-year term. He is now in the 20th year of his four-year term. When Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections, it didn’t just defeat its political rivals in Fatah. It overthrew the Palestinian Authority completely in Gaza after a brief civil war and followed it up with a killing, torture and terror spree that eliminated all political opposition.
Perhaps the absence of Palestinian democracy shouldn’t come as a shock. The regime established by Hamas isn’t merely autocratic. It’s more like the old East Germany, complete with its own version of the Stasi, which spied on, blackmailed and abused its own citizens.
“Hamas leaders, despite claiming to represent the people of Gaza, would not tolerate even a whiff of dissent,” The Times’s Adam Rasgon and Ronen Bergman reported on Monday. “Security officials trailed journalists and people they suspected of immoral behavior. Agents got criticism removed from social media and discussed ways to defame political adversaries. Political protests were viewed as threats to be undermined.”
White Colonizer? Student anti-Israel protesters often claim that Israelis are “white colonizers.” This video debunks that slur. The caption reads, “Israel has 9.2 million citizens. Over two-thirds are people of color. Among them are Sephardic, Ethiopian, Ashkenazi, Mizrachi and more!”
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