Bland allt sarkastiskt och von-obendravel frÃ¥n den oförbätterlige, stagnerade och fÃ¥r jag säga, lögnaktige (bevisat av mÃ¥nga under Ã¥rens lopp) Fisk, som i artikeln hoppar desperat frÃ¥n det ena diktatoriska landet efter det andra i artikeln (för att försöka nedgradera Hamas’ mÃ¥l och agerande?), kan man läsa att han yrkar pÃ¥ att ge Hamas hederstiteln samtalspartner för fred. jag ser det som onuturligt stöd av förkastlig grupp. Jag och du, hoppas jag, vet att Hamas’ orubbliga agenda i effekt är terroristiskt, intolerant och folkfientligt.

Lite om din text dÃ¥. Vi bör dra in allt bidrag till Hamas och även vara beredda pÃ¥ att agera militärt, eftersom Hamas’ och andra mellanösterndiktaturer i förlängningen är ett hot mot vÃ¥r demokrati.

Om de är folkligt valda eller inte spelar mindre roll, om ett folk väljer galna mördare till sina ledare får de acceptera konsekvenserna.

Efter att ha läst din text måste jag konstatera att du är en riktigt ful fisk, Robert.

Kan du citera frÃ¥n texten var Fisk ger stöd till en ”terroristisk, intolerant, folkfientlig” organisation?

How does one deal with fascism? By pretending that it is what the people wanted?

Herr Fisk, du behöver inte fjäska för kungar och prinsar i Mellanöstern. men du behöver heller inte ge ditt stöd till en organisation som är terroristisk, intolerant, folkfientlig…

Dum argumentering, Robert!

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should
have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn’t like the democratically
elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have
voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas,
which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited
Oslo agreement.

No one asked – on our side – which particular Israel Hamas was supposed
to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders?
The Israel which builds – and goes on building – vast settlements for
Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per
cent of ”Palestine” still left to negotiate over ?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr
Abbas, the ”moderate” (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him)
Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without
once mentioning the word ”occupation”, who always referred to Israeli
”redeployment” rather than ”withdrawal”, a ”leader” we can trust because
he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right
things. The Palestinians didn’t vote for Hamas because they wanted an
Islamic republic – which is how Hamas’s bloody victory will be
represented – but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr
Abbas’s Fatah and the rotten nature of the ”Palestinian Authority”.

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose
walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But
what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps -
or variations of them – were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians
wanted an end to corruption – the cancer of the Arab world – and so they
voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to
sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free
vote. Maybe we should offer ”Palestine” EU membership if it would be
gracious enough to vote for the right people?

All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in
Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his
government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those
innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our ”war on terror” in the
wastelands of Helmand province).

We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished
with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo,
whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs – yes Mrs – George W
Bush – and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son,
Gamal.

We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves
have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah
of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair’s recent visit to Tripoli – Colonel
Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a ”statesman” by Jack Straw
for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions – and whose
”democracy” is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in
the ”war on terror”.

Yes, and we love King Abdullah’s unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan,
and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid
such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to
close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister – and
yes, I can indeed see why he doesn’t like The Independent’s coverage of
what he quaintly calls ”the Middle East”. If only the Arabs – and the
Iranians – would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and
daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the
”Middle East” would be to control.

For that is what it is about – control – and that is why we hold out,
and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas,
what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU,
the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched,
ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands)
or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine
(Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily
successful Hamas in Gaza?

It’s easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But
that’s what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad
wasn’t President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be)
or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn’t in control of
Iran (even if he doesn’t actually know one end of a nuclear missile from
the other).

If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn
countries – Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky
Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people,
love the wrong people, don’t behave like us civilised Westerners.

So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly
we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to
the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until
the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say – as we are
already saying of the Iraqis – that they don’t deserve our sacrifice and
our love.

How do we deal with a coup d’état by an elected government?