The Hamas "Coup" and Bizzaro World

Here is another article I wrote about the so-called Hamas "coup" in Gaza:

Media coverage of the Arab/Israeli conflict often offers us a glimpse into Bizzaro World, and this Reuters article is no exception. You see, in the Bizzaro World of the so-called Palestinian Authority, the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip earlier this year was, in the words of Husni Mubarak, a "coup against legitimacy." Palestinian "President" and Holocaust Denier (we'll deal with that another time) Mahmoud Abbas called on Hamas to "end its coup in Gaza," calling Hamas "an 'illegitimate party.'"

Of course, anybody with short-term memory will surely realize that what Hamas did in Gaza was not a coup -- in fact, it was quite the opposite. While Hamas is an evil, mass-murdering terror gang, the fact of the matter is that they won the PA elections in January 2006 overwhelmingly. No less of an authority than the great Jimmy Carter himself signed off on those elections as legitimate.

The problem was that Abbas's Fatah guys didn't like the results of that election and refused to give up their offices. So after numerous attempts at negotiations and intermittent violence, Hamas basically decided earlier this year to simply seize the power they'd won in the election by force. Whatever that is, it's certainly not a coup since it involves the (apparently) legitimately elected government seizing the very power it had lawfully won.

The problem is that the US and the West in general, having preached the virtues of democracy in the Arab world, were taken aback by this result. They sought to do whatever they could to keep Abbas and his particular terror gang in power since they are the "moderate" good Jew-killers who will bring peace in our time (as opposed to Hamas, who, as everybody knows, are the "radical" bad Jew-killers).

So the US is only too happy to put forth the Bizzaro World scenario where Abbas and Fatah are the "legitimate" rulers of the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas is unlawfully pulling off an insidious coup. It's as if those 2006 elections never happened. That way, you can pretend Abbas is the spirited leader the PA carrying the flag of peace while Hamas is the "fringe" extremist group obstructing peace with their dastardly coup. Quite brilliant, really.