“Nascent democracy is the reason that Afghans and Iraqis, alone in the Middle East, get up each morning and risk their lives to hunt down Islamic terrorists. For all the mess on the West Bank, it was only the free elections that brought in Hamas which offered the Palestinians the opportunity of self-expression. And now they alone suffer the responsibility to live with the economic and military consequences of their disastrous decision. Perhaps they may wish to reconsider next election.

Arafat’s pernicious façade of a “legitimateâ€? government that “sincerelyâ€? tried to rein in “rogueâ€? elements is now shattered in both Europe and America. After the Palestinians willingly voted a terrorist government into power, the Hamas politicians are simply fulfilling campaign pledges and doing what terrorists always do: rocketing civilians, murdering, and kidnapping. And now, since there is no more shady, so-called “Hamas,â€? but only the Hamas-led legitimate government of Palestine, there may be soon a conventional struggle at last, between two sovereign and legitimate states. Such are the wages of moral clarity that accrue from democracy.”

Well said.

http://article.nationalreview......VjYWVjYjk=

As far as I understand it, the Palestianian attack on Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit was unprovoked, with the exception of a long train of historic grievance.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the Israeli’s poisoned Arafat, his whole mystery illness and all. And Arafat came very close to being directly offed, being the duplicitous leader that he was; saying he was for diplomacy, had cut his ties with the terror in his past, but never actually purging radicals and (some say) secretly supporting them.

This Palestinian PM is the leader of Hamas, a party that has “the destruction of Israeli” in its charter, that continues to support a militant wing and its derivatives. To my knowledge, as of now, he has not been kidnapped. If anything, he is in hiding. And he should be for not confronting and squashing the militant ranks in his own party; something he could have started by renouncing terror, if he had done that.

If the Israeli’s decide to take him out, which becomes increasingly likely if Shalit dies, they will use their intelligence to mark his location, bring in the helicopter gun ships, and blow him up. It would be in Israel’s interest should he become a big enough enemy, morally culpable in Shalit’s fate. And given Palestinian stupidity over Gilad Shalit (the 19 year old Israeli soldier), I can’t see the official Arab world getting too bent out of shape over it either. The Arab world is probably wondering why the Palestinians didn’t just shoot Shalit, not kidnap him and announce it to the world.

That is quite a stretch to the conclusion that the PM is a combatant of war. And you have to keep in mind that this kidnapping is in response to a specific incident. If Israel truly believed what you wrote above, it would have kidnapped Yasser Arafat years ago.

“States can get away with targeted killing because they are states defending their interests, and they can justify targeted killing as the exterminaton of enemy combatants.”

This is hardly a targeted killing. The PM was kidnapped and is now being held for ransom in the same way that insurgents in Iraq kidnap Americans and hold them for ransom.

This sort of behavior can’t be justified simply because it’s Israel (a state) rather than Al Queda (a terrorist group) doing it.

But I suspect your question has more to do with the issue of targeted killing or assassination. In the case at hand, Israel has threatened to kill a Palestinian PM whose government has clear connections to militant terror groups seeking the destruction of Israel. Israel has threatened this PM because his government has not cut its ties with the terror groups immediately responsible for this crisis; for invading Israeli territory, killing Israeli soldiers, and taking an Israeli soldier hostage. And as far as Israel is concerned, this puts the Palestinian PM in the same camp as the terror groups he seemingly supports, the groups he shows no willingness to purge from Palestine. This makes the Palestinian PM an enemy of Israel and therefore a combatant!

States can get away with targeted killing because they are states defending their interests, and they can justify targeted killing as the exterminaton of enemy combatants. Stateless terror groups, because they are stateless, are simply criminals, except in the states that support them. And states that support terror groups are usually the enemy of other states threatened by those terror groups.

If this is the case, what is the difference between Israel and Al Queda?

This is exactly the reason why Western powers demanded that Hamas renounce terror and cut its ties with terror groups. But the reality is you can’t help people who genuinely don’t want help, preferring instead the destructive lure of hate.

This will most certainly signal the end of Hamas and perhaps “palestinina” national aspirations as well.