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Heaven On Earth
Hamas and Menachem Begin
Michael Portillo, Conservative Member of Parliament for Kensington and Chelsea (UK) hopes that Hamas will change. He makes the following analogy in an Op-Ed piece in the London Times:
Terrorist organisations do sometimes metamorphose into law-abiding political parties. Anything is possible if Menachem Begin, once leader of the Irgun movement that carried out the murderous attack on British forces in Jerusalem ’s King David hotel, could go on to be Israel’s prime minister and a Nobel peace prize winner.
I heard this analogy many times (including by those who are strong supporters of Israel, such as Michael Portillo). Israelis were once terrorists and then changed. The same will happen with the Palestinians. My question is: is it a fair analogy?
i dont think this exactly a fair analogy. equating hamas with the irgun neglects several important distinctions, the most important of which is the fact that the Irgun never targeted civilians, unlike Hamas. Also, just a reminder, before the bombing of the King David, the Israeli ‘terrorists’ called the brits, told them their intentions and gave them time to evacuate, when is the last time hamas called up the israelis and told them they were sending a suicide bomber?
I notice that whenever anyone wants to cast the founders of Israel as terrorists, they refer to the King David hotel bombing. They never refer to any other incident. Meanwhile, Arab terrorist bombings number in the thousands.
Plus the distinctions mentioned in the previous comment.
It’s an absurd analogy, of course.
The King David was being used by the British military, and, as noted, warning was given and ignored. There’s also a matter of scale as also noted. The Irgun did not indoctrinate the youth in death and slaughter, and envisioned a far different kind of state than Hamas does. Begin was a democrat at heart, ready to change roles as his national liberation movement bore fruit — a movement with limited and realistic goals.
IRGUN AND HAMAS
Richard Landes and Pedro Zúquete of the inimitable Augean Stables blog have a question for us that they would like to get answered: Can we compare the Irgun – a militant Jewish group which eventually became the Likud party -…
There is yet another a-symmetry: Hamas is a paranoid apocalyptic group. They believe in the Protocols of Zion, they call for the extermination of Israel, they engage in a level of demonization and hate-speech on the one hand, and “indisicriminate” violence (I prefer targeting civilians) that cannot be compared to Likud a) in a straight comparison and a fortioriwhen we compare their situation.
When Likud operated as a “terrorist” organization, Jews had just undergone a Holocaust in which 6 million of their number had been wiped out and they faced another threatened one from the Arabs and abetted by the British occupation troops. Hamas may fantasize that the Palestinians are the object of a genocidal attack even as their population grows daily under the Israeli occupation, and sotto voce they will tell you they’ll soon win the demographic battle.
The better place to look for analogies to Hamas is not among groups which, even as circumstances force them reluctantly to adopt some of the marginal practices of terror (the King David was, after all, British headquarters), whose activities, even in those dire times was condemned by the vast majority of fellow Zionists. The place to look for good analogies is what happens when a terrorist group — a real terrorist group, one that creates a cult of death and aims repeatedly at civilians — takes power: Soviets, Nazis, Taliban.
Ironically, the most telling point about this false analogy of Hamas and Lehi is that it partakes fully of the even-handed fallacy, propped up by liberal cognitive egocentrism. Nothing illustrates the differences between the Palestinian nationalist movement and the Zionist movement than the timing, quality, and popularity of terrorism, and yet our experts in moral equivalence see them as so similar one can base policy on that comparison: trust Hamas to moderate, just like Begin did. No wonder we’re in so much trouble.
so true, so true!
The operative word in the entire Times article is the word ‘sometimes’ in the first sentence of your quote.
Sometimes terrorist groups change, but those of us tuned into reality know that Hamas won’t change.
I hear Hamas is looking elsewhere for aid and funding, I wonder where that ‘elsewhere’ might be. Hmm… curiouser and curiouser!
[...] 8212; PZ @ 2:50 am — Print This Post Neo-neo con and Peaktalk have replied to our question regarding the analogy that many make between Hamas and Irgun. Neo [...]