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February 01, 2006

Taking zealots at their word

Surprised by the new "democracy in the Middle East", some in the punditocracy are in full court hand wring mode over Hamas. Witness Richard Cohen of the Washington Post:

While it is probably true, as everyone says, that Hamas won the recent Palestinian elections not because it promised to wipe out Israel but because it promised to pick up the garbage in Gaza City (all politics is local, etc.), it is also true that the prospect of increased violence did not deter the average Palestinian from voting for Hamas. We have seen this sort of thing before, and it is not very comforting. The rule -- the only rule -- is to take zealots at their word.

It seems reasonable to do that, in many cases. Cohen quotes the Palestinian charter:

In due course we will be told that what Hamas has been insisting on for years -- the utter destruction of Israel -- is not really a serious goal. Hamas should not be taken literally, and anyway it will be forced to moderate both its platform and its policies by the reality of governing. When, for instance, it repeats the words of its charter -- "The solution of the problem [Israel] will only take place by holy war" -- we will be assured that it is just throwing red meat to what in America is called "the base." As for its truculent anti-Semitism -- not to be confused in this case with anti-Zionism -- it, too, will be dismissed as without consequence. Hamas will have to deal with reality -- and Israel, in the region, is the mightiest reality of them all. Yasser Arafat came to understand that.

Pretty ominous stuff.

But if we were to take every organization's founding charter at its word..the US would be looking down the crap end of some messed up priorities: women couldn't vote, blacks were 3/5ths of a person, civil rights for nonwhite nonmales were essentially nonexistent. Not exactly our finest parts of the Constitution.

But through the years as this nation grew and matured, we cleaned up the heinous parts of the Constitution. In some cases it took almost 200 years to fix some of the basic civil rights issues.

We should be looking not at our founding charter, but the actions we took to mend the Constitution to put citizens on an equal footing with one another (And we still have a ways to go..no equal rights amendment for women..no equal rights for gays/lesbians, for example). Its not our founding charter that makes us what we are. Its how we conduct ourselves and what we actually do that matters.

There's plenty of good reason not to trust Hamas. They've a recent history of violent actions. But this election is a watershed moment for them. This is the first time they're going to have to make government work. Hamas has in fact dropped its call for the end of Israel, at least prior to the election.

So if we're to take them at their word..just as we take the US Constitution as its word...shouldn't we be taking them at the one they said two weeks ago? Instead of the word from two decades ago?

More importantly, we should be watching their actions. If they take an aggressive stance in the region, then its time to crack down on them. If Hamas does what it was elected to do, create an effective government that does right by the Palestinian people, we should be supporting them in that effort.

This heated rhetorical diarrhea from the panic stricken needs to stop. Let's see what Hamas does with the new found responsibility.

Posted by Carla at February 1, 2006 02:45 PM