Exactly Who Is Evasive?

Two people I hadn't heard of before (*) had their op-ed published in the New York Times Firday (today already in Israel).

Here's one excerpt:-

And although the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the liberation of Palestine "from the river to the sea," the party's campaign manifesto made no mention of these goals.

Instead, when asked about making peace with Israel, Hamas representatives offered nuanced, if evasive, answers. As Ziad Daiah, a Hamas representative in Ramallah, told us: "We are not interested in the Oslo-type peace process that went on for 10 years and wasted time. But if Israel will start new negotiations, with direct benefits for Palestinians in a useful time frame, we will accept that."

Ah, yes, that evasive character trait.

Of course, you can't realy call an Arab, or a Palestinian or a Hamasnik "evasive" as that would be racial profiling and just not politically correct. Like calling him "sneaky", "duplicitous" or even "mendacious". And that would place you outside the boundaries of polite, civilized and cultured conversation.

So, you say/write that their answers are evasive. Okay, I can play the game too.

These two persons, and the Op-ed editor, are playing at fooling their readers. Their facts are not all the facts, their opinions are biased, their references are limited, their approach one-sided and they select what they like and ignore what is not likable.

Here's another example:-

A radio reporter recently asked Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister, about negotiating with Hamas. "We are not fighting against a name," he said. "We are fighting against a situation. If the situation changes, then what difference does a name make?"

Besides the fact that Peres has been wrong about everything for the past 15 years (see AFSI's wonderful collection of his bon mots), his above quote is ludicrous. Both a prostitute and a wedded wife engage in the same physical conjugal activity. The situation is the same and in most cases, money changes hands. The principal is the same. Does the name matter? It sure does!

Hamas is not democratic even though Israel and its "allies" allowed it to exploit the political process to take over the Palestinian Authority. It will remain a terror organization because that is its charter no matter they call themselves or we call them.

President Bush's press conference yesterday was an excercise in ridiculousness (see next posting).

And so, evasiveness is the key to peace? Okay, Israel can be evasive, too.

Right?


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(*)
One works for the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard (and her e-mail address is here) and the other works for the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy in Ramallah, which is actually the Miftah organization which has a very powerful anti-Israel agenda.