It wasn't a close vote Tuesday in the House of Representatives - 361-37 - but there is no reason it should have been, either, given the subject at hand: terrorists in charge of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which must still be taken up by the Senate, directs the United States to cease all aid and contact with that governing body until Hamas repudiates terrorism and recognizes Israel's right to exist.
It's not as if the Bush administration has been cozying up to Hamas since the group triumphed in January's Palestinian elections. But the House vote (and the Senate's when it comes) signals that U.S. refusal to deal with Hamas until it disarms and recognizes the existence of its neighbor is not a passing whim of a supposedly hard-line administration. It will remain permanent U.S. policy.
Predictably, the left-wing U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation immediately denounced the vote as an attempt to punish the Palestinian people "for exercising their right to vote." But of course no one who supports the anti-terrorism act has a problem with Palestinians voting. Quite the contrary. Their greatest hope is that Palestinians use the ballot box someday to elect a government that actually seeks a fair-minded peace.
Carter's one-sided vision
Former President Jimmy Carter was in another snit last week because Israel is taking "unilateral steps to establish its own geographical boundaries." Never mind that there is no responsible Palestinian partner for Israel to deal with these days - Hamas being Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Fatah Party, being in no position to deliver the terms of an agreement anyway.
Carter was in no mood for such unpleasant facts. And so, in an Op-Ed in USA Today, he portrayed an altogether different reality. The dishonest nature of his argument can be gleaned from a single line: " . . . the recently elected Hamas legislators," Carter said, "will neither recognize nor negotiate with Israel while Palestinian land is being occupied . . . "
The former president is no fool. He knows that Hamas considers Israel itself occupied Palestinian land, but his words suggest its aim is less ambitious. Why? Because he is determined to blame Israel, and Israel alone, for the failure to secure lasting peace.
Rather than acknowledge Hamas extremism, Carter simply airbrushes it out of the picture.
Churchill chimes in, too
Speaking of lies regarding the Middle East, leave it to the University of Colorado's Ward Churchill to promote one of the biggest whoppers of all. It can be found on Page 14 of the report released last week by a CU committee appointed to investigate the wayward professor's academic misconduct.
Churchill's falsehood is passed over in silence by the committee, which had bigger prey in sight. But let us pause to reflect on its chilling maliciousness.
The report reprints a paragraph and two footnotes from Churchill's essay Perversions of Justice in which he erroneously describes the General Allotment Act of 1887 as including a "formal eugenics code," and then proceeds to write the following: "It is noteworthy that official eugenics codes have been employed by very few states, mostly such unsavory examples like Nazi Germany (against the Jews), South Africa (against 'Coloreds') and Israel (against Palestinian Arabs)."
A formal eugenics code in Israel? ("Eugenics," as defined by The American Heritage Dictionary, is "The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding.")
Churchill is almost certainly referring to the familiar canard that Israeli citizenship is based on Jewish background or blood kinship. In fact, more than 20 percent of Israeli citizens are not Jewish at all, and the "law of return" for Jews was enacted as a path to asylum for the persecuted.
Leave it to Churchill to equate this humanitarian statute with those designed by Nazis.
Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point several times a week. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
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