play nice, Hamas

There's hypocrisy. And there's mendacity. Then there's hypocrisy layered over mendacity. Like high-fructose-corn-syrup-brown-Smuckers-goo smooshed into lurid-purple-Welch-pseudo-grape-glop. Clapped together between two slices of white-putty nothing-bread.

That about sums up Bush, Blair, and Nato leaders on the Hamas victory in Palestine's elections yesterday:

With democracy goes renunciation of violence.

You cannot govern and call for the destruction of another country.

And so on, ad nauseum.

The hypocrisy lies in the leaders who have, over the last 10 years, intiated and visited upon the civilian population of Iraq the most comprehensive and devastating campaign of violence in history, aka Desert Storm and Shock and Awe, urging Hamas to become the collective Dalai Llama.

The mendacity beneath this platitudinous pap is the implication that the Palestinian resistance is denying itself a seat at the negotiating table, by choosing suicide bombings over diplomacy.

Fact: Israel has, over the past 5 years, repeatedly violated even the most minimal ceasefire agreements in occupied Palestine. Six million Palestinians live in a state of virtual imprisonment, subject to Israeli military control over their most basic movements and activities, curfews, destruction of their homes, seizure of their land, arrest and detainment without reason or trial, random murderous gunfire.

Yesterday, as Israel's cabinet went into emergency session over the Hamas victory, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 9-year old girl in the Gaza strip. They claimed she was carrying "a large bag, and ignored warning shots." What's the protocol for a 9 -year old in response to warning shots?