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Sunday, December 18, 2005

Old Excuses Don’t Die; They Just Fade Away

One of the early long-form articles on Dartblog was, “Zut Alors!” in which I wrote of a thoroughly entertaining (if disconcerting) confrontation I had with the French consul. Among other things, I asked Thierry Vankerk-Hoven why it was that France had refused to list radical Islamic organizations like Hamas as terrorist groups. At the time, a debate within the European Union—this was a time before the din of constitutional failure, when political issues were debated rather than the Union’s sheer existence—was flaring on the issue of Hamas. France’s refusal to call it a terrorist organization was a de facto veto of the Union at large adopting that stance. The United States, in contrast, had already listed Hamas as a terrorist group and was encouraging Western Europe to do the same.

To call a group a “terrorist organization” is no flighty pablum. The classification carries real consequences: financial, political, military, immigratory, and legal. Chirac, as he long has and seemingly forever will, soft-shoed around the delicate issue on a technicality: because Hamas has a militant terrorist wing as well as a political wing, it couldn’t be called a terrorist group. (Note to mafia hit men: If you just nudge the mark into the knife, he kills himself!) This is the excuse Thierry Vankerk-Hoven gave me. I suggested that perhaps his explanation was ridiculous. He disagreed. We shook hands jovially and he disappeared into a Town Car. I shambled home to write it all up.

That’s where France’s position remained. Hamas only attacked Israel, advocated genocide for its citizens, and spewed anti-American and anti-Semitic tripe on a daily basis. As long as the murderous ideology of Islamic Fundamentalism had an appendage capable of authoring editorials, one couldn’t say the terrorists are terrorists. And consequently, the European Union, even after the London subway bombings, couldn’t say the terrorists are terrorists. Nor in the wake of massive, deadly, and destructive riots of Muslims in and around Paris, which left the City of Lights with a tragically literal namesake, could a real response to mustered.

But through all of that chaos, as Islamism inched closer and closer to sundry European capitals, the “politics” excuse began to fade.

And there were more than attacks on Europe and Israel, of course. There have been real international nuclear threats. The Hamas movement’s most potent proponents have advocated for the destruction of Israel via atomic bomb and for the massacre of all its inhabitants. Through it all, the Gauls, like their Bostonian representative Vankerk-Hoven, had been whistling in the dark. Now, though, with the specter of a Hamas victory when Muslims next month go to the polls to elect a new parliament for the Palestinian Authority, the European Union is threatening to withdraw economic aid to the PA.

Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy head, said today that if Hamas wins, “It would be very difficult for the help and the money that goes to the Palestinian Authority to continue to flow. The taxpayers in the European Union, members of the parliament of the European Union, will not be in a position to sustain that type of political activity.” The EU currently gives the Palestinian Authority more than $300 million. International aid in aggregate comprises half of the PA’s annual operating budget.

Does not compute. The French consul had said that it was Hamas’ political wing that kept the organization in Paris’ graces. A few other EU constituents have used the same excuse. Now that Hamas is a politically viable entity with a likelihood of controlling the PA, and is no longer solely a gossamer front for anti-Israeli terror and anti-American rhetoric, Western Europe is paying attention and threatening to take action. Is it, then, that when Hamas threatens to hijack the outfit Europe has spent so much time and money supporting, it must be answered forcefully, but when it is merely an underground enigma bent on daily car bombings, RPG attacks, and missile deployments, its political wing must be respected? Is it that the cheap and tawdry excuse has died?

As Roger L. Simon said in reaction to the news, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Posted on December 18, 2005 12:50 PM. Permalink