When Was The Last Time You Listened to Mubarak, Carefully

From an interview with Dr. Michael Widlanski:

In a major New Year's Eve address on December 30, Mubarak criticized Hamas for goading Israel into the kind of military action which would hurt Hamas and all Palestinians, but he justified Hamas attacks, while excoriating Israeli "aggression" no less than 11 times in a ten-minute speech.

"I say honestly and with full conviction that the right of resisting the occupation is a solid and legal right, but the resistance must be responsible before its people," said Mubarak, using the term "the resistance"—al-muqawwima in Arabic—to describe Hamas. [In Arabic Hamas is an abbreviation for Harakat al-Muqawwima al-Islamiyya –The Islamic Resistance Front.]

Like the late Yasser Arafat, who never condemned the suicide bomb attacks of Hamas or his own Fatah organization, Mubarak is basically saying that the attacks themselves are okay and legitimate, but that they bring Israeli reprisals.

For Mubarak, like for Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the current head of the PLO, such attacks are not immoral, but only "counter-productive."

Mubarak did not explain why attacking Israel with rocket fire on cities or bomb-carrying infiltrators was a form of "resistance" even after Israel troops had completely withdrawn from Gaza, evicting all Israeli citizens with them.