21-Apr-08: Yet another day's work

Most people tend to assume that, when this government or another is being discussed, the things they do are more or less rational, more or less compliant with international norms and standards.

This, of course, has no relevance at all when we're speaking of the world's jihadist regimes, a growing cluster of national governments fully engaged in hate-driven murder on a daily basis. Like the democratically-elected government of the Palestinian Arabs, for instance.

A Hamas militant on Friday [i.e. today] was killed and two others were wounded in an explosion apparently caused by a "work accident" at a training camp run by the militant group in Gaza. On Thursday, a similar incident occurred when two members of Hamas' armed wing died and another was wounded in a blast at a training base in the central Gaza Strip, after the men had been handling explosives. The militant group, which controls Gaza, had initially claimed that the militants were killed in an Israel Air Force strike. Hamas later said there had been no attack. More...

A Chicago pastor, recently famous for ministering to one of the Democratic Party's leading contenders for president of the United States, evidently thinks Hamas is decent enough, religious enough, acceptable enough to get pride of place in his church's newsletter.
The July 2007 pastoral newsletter of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.'s Trinity United Church of Christ has its entire "Pastor's Page" devoted to the words of the unspeakable Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, laconically identified in the newsletter as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas". (The Marzook article ran originally in the Los Angeles Times. The text is here.) Marzook is, in fact, a notorious terrorist ringleader, the founder of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a US-based organization whose assets were seized in 2001, three months after our daughter's murder at the hands of Hamas, by the United States government because they were funneling money to terrorists. The U.S. deported Marzook to Jordan in 1997.

The Hamas manifesto published in the Chicago church's letter (extract pictured above right) defends terrorism as legitimate resistance, refuses to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compares the terror group's official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America's Declaration of Independence.

Melanie Phillips asks (yesterday in the pages of The Spectator) what seem to us to be some pertinent questions: Did Barack Obama, as a worshipper at the Trinity church, receive this bulletin through his letter-box? Did he read this article? Did he agree with it? How can he so brazenly continue to affirm his commitment to such a pastor and such a church?

As we've learned to our sorrow, you'd be surprised how many people think the same way the reverend Mr Wright does.


Mr Obama and the Reverend Mr Wright