Hitchens: kill 'em before they start

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Fri Sep 6 08:30:09 PDT 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Jannuzi" <b_rieux at yahoo.com

- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc Rodrigues" <cuito61 at onebox.com>
>What the heck are you talking about? The basic
>division between the PLO and Hamas is based on
>the issue of secularism versus Islamic
>fundamentalism as goals of the movement.

-I think you are wrong again Nathan. The biggest -disagreement among Palestinians is liberation and -how to achieve it--that is, how collectively to -deal with the Israeli behemoth and expansionist -zionism.

There are folks outside the Fatah-Hamas groupings and there are rejectionists within the PLO who go along (barely) only because they want to stay within the power nexus. But Hamas is run ultimately by religious leaders and is based on a religious view of the conflict with Israel-- that may lead them to a more rejectionist position than the Fatah folks, but it is the religion driving the rejectionism. As some have pointed out, Hamas was initially given support by the Israeli government on the (wrong as it turned out) belief that it's religious ideology would make it more flexible than the PLO.

The problem that Hitchens is highlighting is that too much of the Left has this imperialism template, so that anyone opposing a Western-identified target is assumed to have liberationist views and goals, so they must be the good guys. But there are worse social structures than capitalism, a point Marx often made and too few of his latter day disciples recognize.

-- Nathan Newman



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