I recently created a blog on the Jewish Chronicle website. It has been enlightening to read the posts and comments of a couple of dedicated anti-Israel bloggers. Some lively exchanges take place.

The anti-Israel faction on the JC blogs have been challenged in their support for an anti-Semitic, misogynistic, fanatical organisation who throw their opponents off 15 storey buildings and believe in an extreme form of Islam. Namely Hamas.

When the Hamas charter is quoted, they dismiss it as ‘a bit of paper’ or, when challenged, just don’t answer at all.

Here’s a flavour of the Charter or Covenant from mideastweb.org; see if you think this is ‘a bit of paper’:

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. “

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree,  would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).

It’s very strange that the extreme left espouses, with such fervour, the murderous Hamas. The Hamas are ‘freedom fighters’ just ‘trying to liberate their country’, they are just ‘defending themselves’. Yet the left insist on demonizing Israel and ignoring the egregious Hamas.

A Lib Dem MP, David Ward, (and we have to add many Lib Dems to the far Left these days) in a Gaza debate in the House of Commons declares:

The firing of rockets from Gaza into the south of Israel presents a menacing and deadly threat. It is completely wrong and it needs to stop because it is taking innocent lives. It is wrong because it provides the justification for Israel’s retaliation, although not for its disproportionate response, which is merciless at times.

Did you see what he did there? The firing of rockets is only wrong because it provides justification for retaliation.

Israel must not be given an excuse to protect itself.

But he then immediately contradicts his first fig-leaf sentence.

So what is he actually saying? Is it wrong or not? See how the left ties itself in knots. Sometimes the double-think gets out through their mouth.

Then he equates Hamas with Israel:

Yes, Hamas is proscribed, but why is the state of Israel not proscribed?

Here is an MP in the UK parliament actually saying, in effect, if you follow what passes for logic, that either Hamas should not be proscribed or that Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, should be ‘proscribed’. He then rants about boycotts and ethnic cleansing. He’s some newbie Con-Dem MP who gets his information from Press TV.

Oh, and by the way, he is MP for Bradford East. Wouldn’t you just have guessed; a constituency with one of the largest Muslim populations in the UK. Playing to the gallery were we, David?

Barry Rubin, on the other hand, sees it a bit differently.

Here’s his quote from Gaza TV (this is what keeps them all glued to the box whilst we, poor infidels, watch Coronation Street or find out how much it costs to move to Shepton Mallett):

Whoever believes that our battle with the Jews and the Crusaders has subsided or is dormant is living in delusions….The Jews…annihilation and the destruction of their state will only be achieved through Islam, by those who bow before Allah….

So you poor gentile ‘anti-Zionists’, you are the said ‘crusaders’ and you ‘anti-Zionist’ Jews, well you are Jews whether you like it or not. And we Zionist Jews and lovers of real freedom, we are also ‘Jews’, of course and all of us together, the Zionists and the anti-Zionists, Jews and Gentiles, those who love Bibi and those who fancy Hanan Ashrawi, we must all become Muslim or perish (according to Hamas).

And did those sceptical lefties who think the Hamas charter is ‘a bit of paper’ rather than a declaration of intent, did you see that bit about annihilating the Jews and destroying Israel?

Or is it just Gaza TV’s version of a Monty Python sketch?