Dear Friend of FLAME:

It's amazing how so many in the West refuse steadfastly to treat Palestinians as grown ups. For decades Yassir Arafat and his Palestinian Liberation Organization waged war against Israel, steadfastly refused every peace deal put forth by Israel and its Western backers, and refused to remove its commitment to destroy Israel from the PLO charter. Yet against all this evidence, leftists (and many moderates) insisted that Arafat and the Palestinian people really wanted peace and argued that Israel should stop fighting back.

In essence, these (mostly) well-meaning sympathizers were projecting their own sense of rationality and goodwill on the Palestinians. Yet this tendency to disregard what the Palestinian people say they want and to substitute one's own peace-loving good-heartedness is ultimately condescension.

It assumes that the Palestinians aren't capable of speaking or acting for themselves---that somehow they need (superior) Western liberals to articulate their real desires. While Arafat encouraged the left to be what Lenin called "useful idiots," he never endorsed their line. Arafat certainly never promised the Palestinians anything but total victory over Israel.

Now the Palestinian people, in a breathtaking display of democratic will, have voted in Hamas, knowing full well that the group is classified a terrorist organization by Israel and most Western nations. The Palestinian people---not stupid, not naive, not childish, as many seem to consider them---knew full well that when they voted for Hamas, they would pay dire financial consequences. They certainly knew that Israel and the U.S. would not support Hamas economically and that chances were poor that Europe would continue its full funding of their war against Israel once they had a government that brashly denies any peaceful intentions. Yet now we hear rumblings all around---in New York Times editorials, in statements by Russia's Putin and other European diplomats---that once Hamas is in power, it will moderate itself and become a responsible peace partner. These people reason that to cut off funding to the Palestinians will only isolate and radicalize them further.

Of course, this "logic" flies in the face of all the facts (and all history of appeasement, going back to Hitler). The U.S. and Europe have given billions of dollars to the Palestinians over the last three decades, and not only has this support failed to improve the Palestinians' economic situation or cause them to renounce their commitment to defeat Israel, it has also led at their first democratic opportunity to the election of an ultra-radical Islamofascist regime. In other words, financial support has proven only to help the Palestinians do what they've always told us they wanted to do---fight Israel to the death.

But more importantly, this belief that if we protect the Palestinians from their own democratic choice---if we give them one more chance---is patronizing. At heart, it says that we don't think the Palestinians are grown up enough to suffer the consequences of their own bad decisions.

Democracy can be a wonderful thing. It's a profound right and privilege. Yet with the freedom to determine one's own destiny through democratic elections comes the responsibility to live with the consequences. Isn't it time we listened to the Palestinians and, if we can't respect whom they chose to govern them, at least respect their right to learn what happens when you make bad choices?

This FLAME Hotline features a brief article that puts the Palestinian electoral mandate in stark relief. In it, commentator David Horowitz exposes the heart of conflict between Hamas and the West, including Israel, which is the desire of radical Islam to rule the world. I believe his description of Hamas' alarming tactics and intentions makes it clear why this regime should not only receive no support from the West, but just as importantly why it should be dealt with harshly and defeated. Hamas is not just Israel's enemy, it is our enemy.

Best Regards,

Jim Sinkinson
Director, FLAME

P.S.

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The First Terrorist People
by David Horowitz, FrontPageMagazine.com, January 26, 2006

The Palestinian Nazi Party has won the elections. This is a party, Hamas, that calls for the obliteration of the Jewish state (in so many words) and the killing of Jews because they are Jews (in so many words), and cites the Koranic damnation of Jews and incitement to murder Jews in justification. Hamas is a party of Islamic fanatics who are part of the global jihad against the United States and the West, whose hero is Osama bin Laden. Hamas was the biggest foreign supporter of Saddam Hussein. With this vote in record numbers, the Palestinian people have joined en masse the Axis of Evil. They are the self-declared enemies of Jews, of America and of civilized values, and should be treated as such. The Palestinians have declared with this vote they want no peace. They should be given none.

The defeated Fatah Party—the "moderate" party—is of course the creation of the terrorist Yassir Arafat. Its official charter calls for the destruction of Israel and its leadership has been dedicated to terror since the the PLO was created by the dictator Nasser and the KGB in 1964. Its leader Mahmoud Abbas is a Holocaust denier and the financier of the kidnapping and execution of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972, and Arafat's ally in terror for the duration since.

But then the father of Palestinian nationalism himself is the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem al-Husseini a fanatical devotee of Adolf Hitler who served the Nazi cause in Berlin during the Second World War and infused Palestinian nationalism with the Jew-hatred that has dominated it ever since.

The Palestinians are the first people in the history of humanity to embrace terror and genocide as a way of life. Palestinian schools train kindergarteners and first graders to aspire to murder innocent Jews by blowing themselves up alongside them, and then tell the children that if they're lucky enough to have male genitalia they will go to heaven and be rewarded with 72 virgins to attend their every whim. Palestinian parents murder their own children by telling them to kill Jewish children so that Allah can receive them. This is the sickest culture on the face of the earth, and the fact that it is supported by secular leftists in Europe and America reveals the terminal sickness, as well, of those who crusade in the name of "social justice."

At the core of this sickness is a hatred for the West and Israel for the crimes of being successful, democratic and tolerant. And at the core of that sickness is self-hatred. Self-hatred for the 1,000 year failure of Arab Muslim culture to compete with the West and for the absolute bankruptcy of the Palestinian cause—despite billions and billions of dollars poured into the West Bank and Gaza by Europe, Israel and the United States whose sole purpose was to help this people consumed in their own emotional poisons. The money of course was stolen in transit by their corrupt and homicidal leaders who buried their loot in Swiss bank accounts or used it to buy weapons of mass murder, and to spread destruction, which is the only contribution that the Arabs of the Palestinian mandate have made to the world since their national aspirations were first announced half a century ago.