The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ron, When You Accuse Israel Of Starting Hamas, You Need To Cite A Good Reference

Posted on | December 27, 2011 | 15 Comments

by Smitty


Ron, you can build a case that the history and politics are complicated, and unfortunate, and never moreso than the Middle East. But when you claim that Israel started Hamas as a means of checking Yassir Arafat, you had better back that up. Otherwise, you risk sounding like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist.

Some of the various tidbits I’ve seen indicate a general blend of the last century’s totalitarians and anti-Semites as informing the more radical and militant aspects of Islam and anti-Israeli organizations. More to the point: Ron Paul could have as easily discussed the fundamental theorem of calculus in two minutes as recapped the Gaza situation. Instead we hear the broken ‘blame Israel’ record.

It’s a shame that, since 1948, Yassir Arafat is the ‘best’ example of a statesmen that the West Bank or Gaza Strip have produced. Maybe this underscores the exceptional nature of the crop of thinkers who created these United States. The existential truth of human nature seems to be that the leaders of the West Bank and Gaza Strip find it simpler to perpetuate old evils than set about improving the situation.

Support Israel? Darn right I do, with a sad eye toward the common folk of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, who are the ones mostly getting burned by the oxymoron labeled ‘peace process’.

via Yid with Lid

Update: Israel Matzav amplifies the situation with some better accuracy than Ron Paul. Ron, Ron, Ron: two places for sloppy, sensational statements are (a) used car advertisements, and (b) tabloids. Just trying to help your career planning, sir.

Update II: linked by Surber.

Category: Israel, Ron Paul

Comments

15 Responses to “Ron, When You Accuse Israel Of Starting Hamas, You Need To Cite A Good Reference”

  1. Lisa Graas
    December 27th, 2011 @ 8:13 am

    They’re getting “burned” by the Arab nations who refuse to accept them as refugees. The “Palestinians” are actually Jordanian and should be absorbed by Jordan. Anyway, Israel Matzav has responded to the claim that Israel “created” Hamas. 
    http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/12/yes-israel-played-role-in-spawning.html 

  2. ThePaganTemple
    December 27th, 2011 @ 8:17 am

    There might be a smidgen of truth to it, but as is usually the case, leftists, particularly in this case American and European socialists and communists (which seems to be Ron Paul’s “source”, by the way) have this nasty habit of manipulating facts and data to justify their own preconceived notions.

    For what its worth, the Israelis probably did give aid to Palestinian religious leaders, and many of those leader probably used that aid, as well as what they received from the US, as a means of shoring up their support with the Palestinian people, and this might well have been the genesis of the founding of Hamas. But that doesn’t translate as Israel encouraging the founding and activities of Hamas, except in the deranged mind of booger-eating Paulites, and assorted other progressive freaks.

    They play the same game with Reagan’s aid to the Afghan Mujaheddin, citing this as “proof” that the CIA and State Department “created” the Taliban and Al-Queda, when in this case as in all similarly cited examples, the relationship was tangential at best.

  3. Joe Budzinski
    December 27th, 2011 @ 9:11 am

    Chris, it’s a controversial claim but it is not tin foil hat stuff. The history of the 1950s-70s period in the Middle East is opaque to a lot of us.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html

    I don’t have time right now to dig into the background but will throw that WSJ link at you for now.

  4. Zilla of the Resistance
    December 27th, 2011 @ 9:13 am

    Ron Paul is the type of guy who I would not be surprised to learn that he blames the Jews for Hitler and the Nazis too. He’s already said that it was a mistake for us to stop Hitler from killing more Jews during the Holocaust. 

  5. Anonymous
    December 27th, 2011 @ 9:32 am

    Israel did not “start” Hamas per se, but it provided early funding, etc. for its own reasons.

    As far as Jews in the Holocaust are concerned, let’s not re-write history to make US intervention about that. The US turned German Jewish refugees away en masse before entering the war and sent them right back to face Hitler’s gas chambers. The camps were finally liberated because they were on the road to Berlin — US troops were not on the road to Berlin to liberate the camps.

  6. Anonymous
    December 27th, 2011 @ 10:02 am

    Yes, it’s a complex story, but the elements actually lend them to the notion that they shouldn’t be trusted, just like when Sadat released the Ilkwan in the mid 70s, which ended with
    his assasination in 1981

  7. Pathfinder's wife
    December 27th, 2011 @ 10:53 am

    The situation with Hamas could be summed up as a very big mistake on the part of the Israelis and chalked up to “these things happen” — mistakes are often made.
    America has made the same mistakes in regards to the Middle East (and we, like the Israelis, did not listen to those who warned us…oh well, it’s too late now).

    Of course, at the time said mistakes seemed like very rational, good policy because hindsight was not operative and in a rush to fix the problem we saw on the surface we allowed an even bigger problem to come about.

    In that regard, Paul is not far off the target, but — his comments 1) do not really advance a notion of how to address where we are at now, not really anyway; 2) are at best very ham-fisted in their description, as you allude to, which negates anything positive to be found in them (at worst, well that’s already been widely conjectured); 3) doesn’t provide anything more than a very simplistic, idealistic idea of how to best avoid such things in the future (maybe the simple idea is best, but then again it’s always good to have some sort of nuanced backup plan, imho).
    And this, again imho, is where Ron Paul falls flat.

  8. Ron Lewenberg
    December 27th, 2011 @ 1:45 pm

    Israel gave money to a non-violent predicessor of Hamas to promote its social work. Israel should have known better, that any movement involved with the Muslim Brotherhood is evil. But this stupidity is not just that of Israel. We allow CAIR and the MSA to operate in America. And the Obama ms-administration is reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

  9. Ron Lewenberg
    December 27th, 2011 @ 1:46 pm

    Purposely conflating the non-violent social group, which created Hamas, with Hamas is ridiculous. Ron Paul clearly doesn’t believe this, otherwise he would call for the government to round up members of CAIR and the MSA.

  10. Anonymous
    December 27th, 2011 @ 2:11 pm

    Very well said.  Paul is committing logical fallacies all over the place. He’s going to hurt himself by jumping to these insane conclusions:

    A. Israel generously gives support to Muslim religious constituency;
    B. Ignore this part;
    C. Israel created Hamas!

  11. Daily scoreboard « Don Surber
    December 27th, 2011 @ 5:07 pm

    […] From Robert Stacy McCain: “Ron, When You Accuse Israel Of Starting Hamas, You Need To Cite A Good […]

  12. Chris Hadrick
    December 27th, 2011 @ 5:49 pm

    “The US turned German Jewish refugees away en masse before entering the war ”

    one of our darkest moments as a nation.   I have a book of writings from The Nation and at there was a really good editorial from that time period saying  we were world leaders if we help these people others will follow suit.

  13. Anonymous
    December 27th, 2011 @ 11:13 pm

    According to Wikipedia, hardly overrun by evil Joooooos-er, sorry, neo-cons, Israel tolerated Hamas as a counterweight to the secular nationalist Fatah while it occupied Gaza. So is that why it occupied Gaza? To start Hamas? Or was Hamas the one most successful shoot of a grassroots Islamist anti-Fatah swell that pre-existed in Gaza? And one that was anti-Israel too, but saw Fatah as the greater threat until recently?

    I think we can all agree, it was the latter.

  14. Rich Vail
    December 28th, 2011 @ 7:22 am

    This is the first campaign I can remember Ron Paul actually sounding as much of a lunatic as his supporters.  He’s a nut, utterly…and many of his supporters are completely whacked out.

  15. Anonymous
    December 28th, 2011 @ 11:53 am

    The author of this blog is being rather disingenuous and if he/she still needs clarification about the admitted CIA term of “blow back” and its meanings and consiquences, then it would be pointless to try and explain it again.