All for A Drink

Martin Kramer pointed out this article by Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York. Entitled, "Israel and the politics of friendship", it appeared at The Electronic Intifada on February 3, 2009.

Massad first promotes the idea that radical Islamist forces supposedly could be pro-US:

The most dangerous enemy for any Arab regime today is any local opposition that seeks regime change while offering the range of services to the US that the current regime offers. This is why the Muslim Brothers are considered the biggest threat to the Egyptian regime. The regime would have been unperturbed had the Muslim Brothers been anti-imperialist and were they to refuse to provide services to the US. The regime, in fact, would have loved for them to be more radical, as this would have proved to the US that the current regime is the only one that could offer obedient services to its imperial white, or in the case of Obama, half-white master.

That the Muslim Brothers are willing to serve the US is precisely where their danger to the regime lies, as the US could easily abandon the current regime if it becomes a liability and switch support to the Brothers.

After the Muslim Brotherhood, Massad then tries to explain why Hamas is, well, just great because it is the natural ally of the PA which refuses, though, to acknowledge this:

Herein lies the enmity that the regime has shown and continues to show toward Hamas, and why regime allies in Egypt, including liberals and leftists, support it in its hostility to Hamas, which they see as an extension of the Brothers. The problem here is that in conjunction with Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas, unlike the Brothers, is the biggest opponent of Israeli colonialism and US imperialism. In the Palestinian context, it is the PA under Arafat and Abbas that established an alliance with Israel and the US and not Hamas. Indeed, the competition between Hamas and the PA is not over services to the US but rather over serving the interests of the Palestinian people. By contrast, the sometimes tense relationships between the PA and Egypt or the PA and Jordan have been based on precisely the former chipping away at some of the latter's role in serving US interests and in wanting a piece of the pie

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And why is the Hamas not appreciated by the PA? Because of booze, schnapps, liquer, alcohol, really:

West Bank-based Palestinian intellectuals, like their liberal counterparts across the Arab world, have been active in the last several years in demonizing Hamas as the force of darkness in the region. These intellectuals (among whom liberal secular Christians, sometimes referred to derisively in Ramallah circles as "the Christian Democratic Party," are disproportionately represented) are mostly horrified that if Hamas came to power, it would ban alcohol. Assuming Hamas would enact such a regulation on the entire population were it to rule a liberated Palestine in some undetermined future, these intellectuals are the kind of intellectuals who prefer an assured collaborating dictatorship with a glass of scotch to a potentially resisting democracy without. This is not to say that Hamas will institute democratic governance necessarily; but if democratically elected, as it has been, it must be given the chance to demonstrate its commitments to democratic rule, which it now promises -- something all these comprador intellectuals were willing to give to Fatah, and continue to extend to the movement after it established a dictatorship...

The journey of West Bank liberal intellectuals, it seems has finally come to this: after being instrumental in selling out the rights of Palestinians in Israel to full equal citizenship by acquiescing to Israel's demand to be recognized as a racist Jewish state, and the rights of the diaspora and refugees to return, they have now sold out the rights of Palestinians in Gaza to food and electricity, and all of this so that the West Bank can be ruled by a collaborationist authority that allows them open access to Johnny Walker Black Label (their drink of choice, although some have switched to Chivas more recently). In this context, how could Israel be anything but a friend and ally who is making sure Hamas will never get to ban whiskey?...

This is scholarship?