Arafat is Dead, Long Live Chaos!

Well, you heard it here first, folks. Hamas soundly trounced the rational parties, the parties of logic and corruption, in all but their home territory: Ramallah. And now that terrorism has won, the Palestinian counterparts to the Israeli rats are leaving the sinking ship, to founder independently or join whichever horse seems to be winning. (Sounds like the Democrat defections in the late '90s.)

Now the proof is in the eating of the pudding: will Hamas do what no other terrorist group since the Israeli pre-state cells have done, and 'go legit?' Begin and Shamir were proof that terrorists can become legitimate statespeople, better than either professional politicians or mainstream military leaders.

Sadly, I don't think it's that balanced a question. The pre-Israel Jewish cells were founded on the idea that killing civilians was abhorent with notable exceptions, unfortunately, in the King David Hotel bombing, Deir Yassin, and assassination of Count Bernadotte. carried out by the Haganah (the IDF's predecessor) Etzel and Lehi, and Lehi respectedly. The mere fact that I can name those exceptions, and Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad have taken random killings of civilians into the realm of blase reportage points up the gulf between these groups. I trust only that terrorists who target, and peoples that celebrate, the killings of civilians en masse cannot be trusted with running their own affairs, let alone conducting themselves as a Nation of the World.