schachterrific!

All my friends already know pretty much where I stand on this. Yet i recently found an article that pretty much says it for me. The John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University runs a blog called Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH). In a recent article entitled “On the Ground in Gaza”, Barry Rubin pretty much covers it:

…many in the West think Israel has some kind of choice in this matter, that diplomacy was an option, that Hamas could be reasoned with. Those people have clearly never heard a Hamas leader speak or read anything on the group’s Arabic-language websites. In a real sense, Hamas is more extreme than Osama bin Laden, who periodically offers his enemy the chance to repent. Hamas’s goal is genocidal.

This has nothing to do with being dovish or hawkish, left or right. For those who are the biggest peaceniks—and this is true in Israel—know that Hamas must be defeated if Israel is ever to make peace with the PA. Even the PA knows it, and that’s what they say in private, no matter what they say in public.

Take it or leave it.