If It Wasn't For All Those Dead Jews...

There's nothing like a dead Jew to ruin an otherwise perfectly good time. Just recently the media were celebrating that Hamas had agreed to recognize the State of Israel. Champagne was being uncorked in the halls of Washington D.C. and in the New York Times building. Everyone was cheerful. It was just like Christmas.

For months Hamas had painfully frustrated the numerous bureaucrats and eurocrats, talking heads and columnists, when they refused to fall into line. Not fall into line by ending terrorism and living in peace with Israel. No, they refused to lie and pretend to agree to peaceful co-existence and a two state solution.

The international community was baffled. They'd had a good run with Arafat playing it just this way. Hell Arafat had even invented the game. While Fatah terrorists shot a few Jews or blew up a pizzeria full of them, Arafat would celebrate the terrorists as martyrs for his own people, hold a press conference blaming Israel for the whole thing and then tell the White House that Israeli pressure was making him lose control over the extremists and he needed more money and breathing space to train his own Fatah terrorists to "police" them.

Even as the cemeteries of Israel expanded, Arafat appeared smiling and jolly at press conferences talking about peace and pretending the PLO really intended to settle down with Israel side by side. They miss those days in D.C. They miss them in Oslo and Brussels. It all worked so well because the Palestinian leadership wouldn't stop lying and wouldn't stop killing. Hamas won't stop killing but it won't lie and that has driven the international community batty.

How are they supposed to pressure Israel into making concessions for peace, when the other side keeps saying it has no interest in peace. Like frustrated children trying to get a ball down from a tree, the press and politicians have been jumping up and down to find any smidgen of evidence that Hamas was willing to negotiate a final solution with Israel.

First they began claiming that Hamas had moderate and extreme elements and the moderates wanted peace. As their argument went, if we just roll over for Hamas, its moderate wing will take over. Unfortunately though they looked high and low, checked the swamps and the lakes, they couldn't find any members of Hamas who would agree to negotiate with Israel for peaceful co-existence in a two-state solution.

There was sadness then in the halls of D.C. Hardened State Department aides wept openly at taxpayer subsidized lunches at expensive French restaurants. There was no joy in Brussels. America and Europe were forced to make frowning faces at the Palestinians, even as like jilted women they pleaded with them secretly to relent.

"Just accept Israel. We'll give you money. We'll give you guns. We'll give you land. We'll give you anything you want."

But the Hamas terrorists just folded their hands and shook their heads. They hadn't gotten to where they were today by recognizing Israel. After all Israel was already withdrawing without negotiations. Iran and the entire Muslim world was sending them money. What did they need the hated Great Satan for?

The diplomats promised them international recognition and lucrative business deals but Hamas prefers the recognition of Iran and Osama to press conferences in the Rose Garden with George and Tony. And as for lucrative business deals. Terrorism is the most lucrative business there is. You supply the suicide bombers and the devout Muslims of the world will supply the cash. All it takes is a steady supply of teenagers willing to blow themselves up. Deal? Deal.

True Hamas had made some concessions. They hired an image expert. They began pretending there was a distinction between Hamas's "military wing" and "political wing." Which is much like the distinction between the hand that holds the pistol and the other hand that reloads it. Then they offered up a truce.

Instantly the press and the politicians went wild. "PEACE," they cried. "PEACE. PEACE. PEACE!"

"No," said Hamas, "we said truce. You know the kind of thing where we pause to reload, shore up the infrastructure, ship in new weapons from Iran and then attack when we're ready."

"PEACE, PEACE," the international community cried in response, "YOU SAID PEACE. WE HEARD YOU."

After that Hamas stopped talking to them and the diplomats and the reporters slunk off sullenly, but still insisting there was a truce. Every time Hamas terrorists struck the media whistled looking in the other direction where there were much more interesting things to see like daisies or root canals. Every time Israel fought back, they would climb up on their high chairs and shriek.

"NO FAIR, TRUCE, YOU BROKE THE TRUCE. CHEATERS. YOU'RE MURDERING PALESTINIAN BABIES."

Finally their crowning moment came. Abbas, their little murderous lying hope, had come up with a ploy to produce a document in which finally Hamas would recognize some things. The details of what they recognized though were a little unclear. Fortunately Hamas was there to clear them up.

"You will not find one word in the document clearly stating the recognition of Israel as a state," said Abdul Rahman Zidan. "Recognizing Israel's physical existence is different from recognizing its legitimacy. Furthermore, the document does not renounce violence as a political tool, as demanded by the international community. Instead, the document says it will 'focus resistance' on the occupied territories."

Fortunately as far as Hamas is concerned all of Israel is Occupied Territory. While Westerners misread this as a statement that Hamas will limit its murdering to the more acceptable area of the territories where UN Resolutions 04654645 and X456464 have agreed it's more acceptable to murder Jews in, what Hamas is actually saying is it will go on killing Jews any place in Israel it darn well pleases.

"We accept a state in [territory occupied] in 1967, but we did not say we accept two states," said Salah Bardaweel, the Hamas Parliamentary leader.

So while the media crowed that by accepting a state in 1967 lands, Hamas had given up on the rest of Israel, Hamas was helpfully pointing out that it had done no such thing. It was taking the 1967 territories as a starting point.

Abbas' maneuver had been pure Arafat, a clever gambit meant to play both the Palestinians and the West. While the Palestinians would be signing on to a continuation of terrorism, the West would hear the joyous bells of peace and reconciliation. Arafat had pulled that trick many times and Abbas thought it would work once more. It almost did too.

The moment the declaration was signed the media insisted on hollering that peace was at hand. PEACE, PEACE, they began crying heedlessly again, HURRAY FOR PEACE. They wrung their hands over the Israeli tanks heading into Gaza, seeming utterly baffled that Israel would want to rescue its own citizens and soldiers held in enemy hands. Yet again dead Jews were ruining a perfectly good time for the diplomats and the politicians and their press corps.

It was a recurring motif for them. No sooner had they cooked up a new plan to carve up Israel, then the Palestinians would inconveniently bomb a bus in Jerusalem and Israel would retaliate. The lovers of peace, those men and women with such sensitive hearts that they bleed when a terrorist gets a hangnail but feel nothing when Israeli children are blown to pieces, found the dead Jews fantastically inconvenient. They called them Casualties of Peace and began referring to them as 'Dead Settlers' and 'Dead Soldiers' where Palestinian terrorists were 'Deceased Youths' and 'Slain Activists.'

Where Palestinian terrorists had families that would be interviewed holding up their pictures, Jews usually had none. The Jewish victims seemed to have been spawned from the sea. Sometimes they had names. Usually they didn't. Mostly they were just "20 Israelis killed in bus bombing" or "5 Settlers Dead in Roadside Shooting." To the media the Palestinians were human and eternally suffering. The Jews no more human than they were to the Nazis. A species of weed with subspecies like Settler and Soldier, who sometimes die, but are unmourned and whose primary nature is to be the weed that obstructs the growth of peace.

Now the media weeps again. Not for the dead but for another dream lost. Everywhere Hamas spokesmen insist on declaring to reporters that they have not recognized Israel. That they will never recognize Israel. That there will be no two state solution. Ever.

Like jilted lovers the reporters and diplomats retreat again to their IMacs half-heartedly trying to pound out copy insisting Hamas has recognized Israel and an era of peace would be at hand if only Israel pursued a diplomatic solution with the kidnappers.

In their hearts is a dying dream. A dream of a dismembered and eventually dismantled Israel giving way to the Palestinian utopia, which they are certain will form in its aftermath. And then Arabs and Muslims will no longer have any reason to resent Westerners. That Islamic extremism which takes the form of doing as Mohammed did unto others, will pass away, and the citizens of London and Paris, Oslo and Brussels will live in happy harmony with the millions of Algerians and Moroccans they imported for cheap labor, crowded into housing projects and forgot about until they start burning cars in Paris.

As they look now out their windows, to the east, towards Jerusalem, they can almost see it. And yet one thing frustrates their dream. The Marxist terrorists of Fatah, their first love Yasir, their Arab Che's fighting for socialism, dirty liberation movements in dirty Keffiyahs overturning the capitalism and globalization of the West have given way to Osama's and Hamas'. To Islamists who aren't killing in the name of socialism but in the name of Islam. Men with beards who have no interest in their recognition or their love or their aid. Only in murder and death.

They have been spurned. Harshly spurned and yet they struggle on blaming America and Israel, blaming the War on Terror, blaming everyone but the terrorists themselves. They mock the flag, the sue the anthem and still no swarthy dark eyed Muslims romance them with assurances of a common struggle against the Great Satan. And yet they cling still loyal, still bitter, still certain that their romance with the murderers of the Middle East would blossom, if only it wasn't for all those dead Jews.