Wednesday, April 11, 2007

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PALESTINE - PART 1

ABC radio has now released the transcript to the segment on Hamas from Monday's edition of FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. However, I'm somewhat perplexed about the ABC's use of terminology.

The item is entitled, "HAMAS URGED TO RENOUNCE TERRORISM" but presenter Elizabeth Jackson describes Hamas as a "Palestinian militant group".

Doesn't Hamas use terror like suicide bombings, rocket attacks on civilian areas and other cold-blooded methods of killing like suicide bombings, rocket attacks on civilian areas and other cold-blooded methods of killing as a tactic to terrorise the Israelis (not to mention the atricites it commits against its own people)? Here's a recent example of Hamas' modus operandi -ISRAEL SAYS HAMAS PLANNED TEL AVIV TRUCK BOMBING.

The article from Agence France Presse gives us a pointer that might help Ms. Jackson and the ABC out of the militant/terrorist bind.

"Although the Islamist movement - the main party in a Palestinian unity government - has largely abided by a November ceasefire agreement with Israel, its armed wing has been involved in a growing number of attacks against Israeli targets in recent weeks, including the shooting of a civilian along the Gaza Strip border." (note: there's no mention here of the continued use of quassam rockets fired across the border into Israeli towns and villages aimed at its civilians)

Get that?

According to the AFP, the political wing of Hamas, which was elected to govern the Palestinians a year ago, has "largely abided" by the so called November ceasefire. They're not the terrorists and they don't break cease fire agreements - its the armed wing of the organisation that does that. Hamas takes no responsibility - they're just militants - not terrorists!

Thanks to the ABC's David Hardaker the FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT report tells us a little more about Hamas and the way it exploits Palestinian children - some as young in age as four - for its sinister and obscene terrorist ends. His story tells of how the Hamas television station in Gaza featured the young children of a female suicide bomber apparently glorifying their mother's deadly attack on Israeli soldiers. Jackson says in her introduction that this "broadcast comes as Hamas ministers in the Palestinian Government face international pressure to explicitly renounce the use of terror against Israel."

Hamas, of course, routinely refuses to renounce the use of terror and its apologists routinely continue to obfuscate about the reasons.

"HARDAKER: The international community will demand from Hamas that they condemn suicide bombing, that when you see something like that on the television, Hamas television, it's not condemning it. Do you condemn this kind of action?

"WASFI KABAHA: Well, we are against terrorism. Palestinian people, all Palestinian people, are against terrorism. But never ask the Palestinian people not to defend themselves.Why you are asking us to do something that asking the Israeli side actually to explain their activities against the Palestinian people? "

The truth is something different altogether to Kabaha's pathetic explanation. It can be found in the Hamas Charter Article 7.

We need to talk about that further, don't we?

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