Cranking up the scare level, at home and abroad

When Mahmoud Abbas (in statements made during his visit to Italy) accused Hamas of having introduced AlQaeda into Gaza and protecting them there, he was saying something not only completely illogical (given the fundamental enmity between AlQaeda and Hamas), and without evidence. Because in addition to those points, if there is AlQaeda in Gaza, this is surely something traceable to the era of the corrupt security regime that Hamas has just replaced. Not only that (says Al-Quds al-Arabi in its lead editorial today), the purpose of this kind of baseless accusation is to support the planned pressure for an international force to occupy Gaza, by raising the scare level. And the editorialist scolds Abbas thus: It is understandable that you have personal animosity as a result of what has happened, but please try to keep separate and distinguished in your mind what is in your personal interest and what is in the national interest. When you use scare tactics aimed at laying the groundwork for turning Gaza into an international protectorate you are not hurting only your personal enemies, but the Palestinian cause as a whole.

In the same vein, there was a posting at Daily Kos on Monday yesterday titled: "Hamas threatens to fire on 6000 stranded Palestinians", a ludicrous charge made up out of whole cloth, and yet there it is backed up with the Daily Kos brand. It's all in the interests of raising the Hamas scare level. You'd think they'd be able to find a way of helping press for the opening of the Rafah crossing, instead of acting as host for this kind of thing, being a collective of progressives and all.