Monday, February 04, 2008
All Hail Comrade Hirst
George Habash, murderer of dozens, dies and the admiration of David Hirst of the Guardian knows no bounds:
In his later years, George Habash, who has died of a heart attack aged 81 or 82, was often known as "the conscience of the Palestine revolution". He had been one of the very earliest founding fathers of that movement, which pioneered armed struggle and revolutionary violence as the sole means of liberating Palestine. Since it first emerged, in the 1960s, as a potent new force on the Middle East stage, the movement suffered all manner of vicissitudes, and its ambitions were eventually reduced, almost out of recognition, to an endless series of surrenders to the exigencies of Pax Americana.I feel bad encouraging anyone to actually make it through this post-revolutionary drivel, but the end of this just has to be read to be believed:
He stood down as PFLP leader in 2000, four years before the death of Arafat, and six years before the Islamicists of Hamas won their electoral victory. Pax Americana, meanwhile, continues to make paltry progress in its regional diplomacy, and many of those who now so grudgingly support it may well in due course conclude that the "conscience of the revolution" had always been right in opposing it - and the whole concept of Palestinian moderation.For the Guardian, the problem is always that the Palestinians, even the self-described terrorists among them, are just too damn moderate.
