The left-wing Jewish group Brit Tzedek v’Shalom is asking the US to establish communication with Hamas:
“In the name of ensuring humanitarian treatment of the Palestinian people, please consider a pragmatic policy of contact with those Palestinians in control of the Gaza side of these border crossings who may be affiliated with Hamas,” Marcia Freedman, the Brit Tzedek v’Shalom president, said in a letter sent last Friday to the U.S. Secretary of State. — JTA
The idea is apparently that the suffering of the residents of Gaza, caused by the international boycott of Hamas, transcends politics. It’s a humanitarian issue.
In reality, Hamas has the resources to help Gaza residents on its own. Large quantities of military supplies, weapons, and ammunition pass into the Gaza Strip every day through the multiple tunnels into Egypt. Hamas receives funds from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Islamic ‘charities’ throughout the world, including the US.
Indeed last week, Hamas received a huge amount of money from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (in other words, from the US and EU), when 3,500 members of Hamas’ “Special Security Forces” were paid a full year’s salary — supposedly a result of a “computer glitch”.
Meanwhile Hamas continues ‘military’ activities against Israel, provoking responses like the recent incursion into southern Gaza, where the IDF clashed with Hamas troops armed with ‘advanced’ weapons.
It’s clear that Hamas has chosen guns over butter, as the saying goes.
But relief supplies are being sent to Gaza. The problem is that Hamas and other Gaza terrorist factions have made the crossings dangerous:
[On July 26, UN Mideast Envoy Michael] Williams said Palestinian militants fired 192 rockets and mortar shells at Gaza’s crossings and into Israel in the last month. He said Hamas’ military wing was responsible for most of the attacks on the crossings, while Islamic Jihad fired most of the rockets and mortars into Israel. — Justin Bergman, Forbes [my emphasis]
Two weeks ago, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh led reporters on a tour of Gaza to show them the “humanitarian crisis”:
‘Gaza today is better,’ Ismail Haniyeh, still calling himself Palestinian prime minister, told dozens of foreign reporters who joined a bus tour of the coastal enclave that took in a prison, a church, border posts and security installations.
‘But the strangling siege … has affected Gaza very much,’ he added, two days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embarks on a new round of peace diplomacy in Israel and the West Bank. ‘I hope on your visit you have seen the suffering and will convey to the world the reality of the suffering.’ — Reuters
So Hamas wants the ‘siege’ lifted because Palestinians are suffering, yet they continue their military buildup, their terrorist attacks against Israel, and even attack the very crossing points through which aid must pass!
It’s hard to see how Brit Tzedek v’Shalom can promote tzedek (righteousness) and shalom (peace) by helping to legitimize the evil and warlike Hamas.
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