Those Peaceable Palestinians

As pretty much all sentient beings—and a few college students—well know, Hamas was the big winner of the recent Palestinian legislative elections. We can imagine that the lovable scamps in Hamas are celebrating their triumph with all manner of fireworks. Perhaps they’ll find some interesting way of painting the town red. (We wonder what they’ll use in place of red paint.) As the infidels in Kool & the Gang once warbled, it’s time to celebrate good times, come on.

For many pundits who don’t write for The Guardian, however, Hamas’ electoral victory is hardly worthy of plaudits. After all, this is a group that Reuters, when at its most flagrantly un-PC, calls “militant.” Which, for those of you who don’t speak Reuters, means “terrorist.”

To give you some perspective on the evil that is Hamas, need we remind you that its more “moderate” rival, Fatah, is run by a guy who’s doctoral dissertation is devoted to Holocaust denial? Palestinian politics is clearly more dysfunctional than Liza Minelli and David Guest’s “marriage.” (Or than Liza Minelli, for that matter.) Indeed, Hamas offers a brand of Islamofascist politics so reactionary that it seems only to appeal to Western progressives.

Interestingly, as far as we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” can intuit, a number of intellectuals are rather surprised by this recent turn of events in the Middle East. After all, who in their right mind would have thought that the peaceable Palestinians, when given the opportunity, would choose a terrorist group as their political representatives?

Not us, we can tell you; surely not us. In fact, we can’t think of one thing that would have offered the slightest clue. The 1948 War, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, sundry suicide bombings, the failed Oslo Peace Process, the intifadas, the cheering on 9/11—nothing at all leads us to believe that the Palestinians would prove so gosh-darn violent.

Actually, Palestinian support for Hamas has left us reflecting upon a handful of other age-old brainteasers:

1) Women appear to prefer men who make an awful lot of money.
2) As a group, Arabs are not big Woody Allen fans.
3) Tom Cruise is gay.

So who, you may or may not be asking yourself, is to blame for Hamas’ triumph? Why don’t we ask the Paper of Record? The January 27 number of the Gray Lady offers a staff editorial that addresses this very question. Entitled “In the Mideast, a Giant Step Back,” the piece excoriates Mahmoud Abbas for his ineptitude and “Israeli hard-liners” for their irksome insistence on the existence of Israel.

Are we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” the only ones who note that The New York Times left some people out? How about those peaceable Palestinians, who seem to adore terrorism even more than Ray Nagin likes dark chocolate?

Ah, but we wouldn’t want to commit a cardinal sin among our left-wing pals. No, not “blaming the victim.” We’re referring to “treating Arabs like human beings.”

After all, what’s more progressive than infantilizing Palestinians? There, there, little Achmed: We know you can’t help yourself. Did the big bad hyper-power upset you again?