"A Man's a Man for all that!" - Rabbie Burns

"Religion? No thanks. I prefer not to outsource my brainwashing."
Trying to get your average Joe creationist to understand the phrase scientific theory is as hard as getting a fish to enjoy mountaineering. Its an unimagined world for them - it requires a complete reversal of their normal modes of thinking and being. The fact that humans could explain the complexities of this world without a creating God is a world view they cannot grasp. It's like asking a tuna if it appreciates the view from the top of Mount Everest.

Jan 19, 2009

Hamas claims hollow victory and defies Gaza truce

In a further demonstration, if one were needed, of the cynical and violent nature of Hamas they are now claiming that the recent conflict in Gaza was a "victory" and that they will rearm. The claim of victory rings hollow of course. It makes as much sense as if the Georgians had claimed victory after the Russians recently invaded and destroyed their military.

A representative of the Hamas Islamic group's armed wing is reported to have said that Hamas would rearm. As part of it's claims of victory the group is downplaying the number of fighters that it lost in the conflict. Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades claimed "the martyrdom of 48 Qassam fighters" was a holy victory.

He also dismissed attempts to stop weapons smuggling into Gaza which was a declared aim of the war and is part of the truce expectations.

"Do whatever you want. Manufacturing the holy weapons is our mission and we know how to acquire weapons," he said.

Israel has claimed that up to 500 Hamas members were killed during it's military action.

As I suggested in a previous post it is clear that Hamas sought the Gaza conflict, although it seems likely that they did not anticipate that Israel would launch the scale of attack that has raged for the past three weeks.

Having brought this disaster down on the heads of Palestinians in Gaza Hamas has no choice of course now but to try to present the outcome as some sort of victory. In some senses they have of course achieved advances. They have had the outrage against Israel around the world that they sought. The issue of the opening of the crossings is on the agenda. The Muslim world is enraged against Israel.

Hamas will count these as gains and the suffering and loss of it's citizens will be set as an unfortunate but necessary cost in the ongoing struggle against Israeli oppression.

Expect to see more rockets and suicide bombings in the coming months because it is clear that Hamas remains an organisation that lacks any vision for a way out of this conflict other than by violence.

The most likely scenario will be that at the end of their week truce they will announce that Israel has not withdrawn sufficiently and the rockets will start again.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a while ago, the Lashkar e Toiba has announced that it is stopping its jehad in Kashmir. Like the Hamas, this is another entity that cannot be trusted. Just like you predict that Hamas will fire rockets and send suicide bombers into Israel, I predict that LeT will also resort to some unspeakable things shortly, despite the clear indication from Kashmir that they no longer are willing to accept violence as a means to achieve whatever it is that they wish to.

Me said...

I assume that Lashkar e Toiba are doing this because they are under pressure in Pakistani following the Mumbai attacks?

I think you are right to be cynical Rum but on the other hand the Northern Ireland peace process really get underway once the IRA started to state publicly that they were committed to purely political solutions. It still took a long time from there of course to achieve peace. Howver their first "peaceful" pronouncements were clearly made as the result of the pressure of circumstances.

The difference with Hamas at the moment is that their public pronouncements are still belligerent and do not indicate any abandonment of their commitment to violent Jihad.

Marf said...

Holy weapons? That just doesn't seem very... Spiritual.

Me said...

Marf - LOL don't expect much sense from religious fundamentalists and you will never be disappointed.

Marf said...

See how far that captcha word verification image goes for stopping comment spam?

That may have been an actual person, but anymore they make programs that can figure out what those letters are better than I can.

Me said...

Some spam comments are subtle and contain some relevant comment. That was the least subtle drive by spamming I have seen in a long time.

I did a bot of mucking a round with neural nets a while back and I assume that the automatic ways of getting round Captchas uses them.

I suspect that was an actual person though. Probably someone being paid a few dollars per hundred spam comments.
Anyway - zap and it's gone

Marf said...

Thankfully, I haven't been getting much spam lately.

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