Maggie's Farm

It is a signal event when even some from the political left who has long sided with pro-Palestinian assertions wakes up and recognizes the horror that is Hamas.

In 2005, Israel unilaterally removed its military and residents from Gaza, leaving behind the infrastructure and commercial ventures Israel and Israelis had built. Muslim Brotherhood's spawn, Hamas, then took control over Gaza away from the Palestinian Authorities Fatah. Since, Gazans and Hamas have destroyed that inheritance and live off the charity of others, mostly Western. The thousands of rockets fired into Israel are excused by Western apologists.

But, the human rights abuses by Hamas against Gazans is finally being recognized by some in the anti-Israel camp.

Let’s take a Lebanese blog, NOW:

In general, I thought of myself as someone who harbored few delusions about Hamas. Unlike an alarmingly large contingent of self-proclaimed leftists, I’ve never been willing or able to ignore the Islamic fascism that is the lifeblood of the group’s ideology, and that makes ridiculous any notion of it as a “resistance”. I confess, however, that I used to suspect there to be a degree of exaggeration and/or Zionist propaganda in the stories I would read about its moral policing.

Not so anymore. After meeting last weekend in Jordan with a group of Palestinian journalists that included three arrivals from Gaza, I was appalled to discover the reality is worse than I had dared imagine. Without me even mentioning the subject, they would almost tremble with rage as they described the party’s thuggery, palpably relieved at the opportunity to unload an intolerable weight off their chests.

…How “leftist”! How “revolutionary”!

The Middle East section of Human Rights Watch has long often carried the Palestinian meme as a major critic of Israel. Yet, Human Rights Watch’s latest report on Gaza is summed up in its release headline: “Gaza: Arbitrary Arrests, Torture, Unfair Trials.”

The 43-page report, “Abusive System: Criminal Justice in Gaza,” documents extensive violations by Hamas security services, including warrantless arrests, failure to inform families promptly of detainees’ whereabouts, and subjecting detainees to torture. It also documents violations of detainees’ rights by prosecutors and courts. Military courts frequently try civilians, in violation of international law. Prosecutors often deny detainees access to a lawyer, and courts have failed to uphold detainees’ due process rights in cases of warrantless arrest and abusive interrogations, Human Rights Watch found.

“After five years of Hamas rule in Gaza, its criminal justice system reeks of injustice, routinely violates detainees’ rights, and grants impunity to abusive security services,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Hamas should stop the kinds of abuses that Egyptians, Syrians, and others in the region have risked their lives to bring to an end.”

Human Rights Watch doesn’t let the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank get off lightly either:

Hamas’s rival in the West Bank, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, arrests and detains Palestinians arbitrarily, including Hamas members or sympathizers, and similarly subjects detainees to torture and abuse. The intra-Palestinian political rivalry remains a significant factor behind many Hamas abuses against detainees in Gaza, Human Rights Watch found.

Western funding, and Western apologists, keeps these two parasites on humanity existing, with little incentive to either decently treat those under their rule, stop siphoning away aid funds into leaders' foreign bank accounts, end hate propaganda among their residents, and cease attacks upon Israelis.