Ben White Competition Time!
Here is an article by Ben White at Comment is Free in which he discovers – to his shock and amazement – that Hamas in power is brutal, misogynist and repressive.
See if you can guess why Ben White believes that Hamas is beating up mixed couples on beaches and insisting that women wear the hijab?
No peeking!
A number of recent reports from Gaza have given cause for concern about the direction the Hamas government is taking with regard to social freedoms and a religiously driven “virtue” promotion campaign. Specific incidents, coupled with public declarations by high-ranking officials, suggest a trend of increasing, forced “Islamisation”.
One high-profile case was the ruling by Gaza’s chief justice, Abdul-Raouf Halabi, at the end of last month, stipulating that female lawyers would be obliged to wear headscarves in court. Although this will not affect many, it was the principle of the order that disturbed both lawyers and human rights groups in the territory. Seven organisations issued a joint statement expressing their “concern” and the context of “a series of infringements upon public and personal freedoms in the Strip”.
This context includes a young woman accosted by Hamas police on the beach, who then roughed up her male companions. It has also meant the harassment of shopkeepers displaying mannequins and lingerie packets. The background is a “virtue campaign” organised by the religious affairs ministry, which, in the words of the Hamas deputy religious affairs minister, is intended to “keep [people] away from sin”.
While the rare incidents of physical violence are condemned by senior Hamas leaders, there is no doubting the pervasive atmosphere and policy direction. Government ministers from different departments have met to discuss a list of regulations to be implemented. As a piece in al-Akhbar noted two weeks ago, “women and the uses of technology seem to be the focus of the ‘yes for virtue’ campaign” whose purpose “according to Yousef Farhat, the general director of the public administration for preaching and guidance in the ministry, is to ‘fight the non-ethical occurrences in Gaza’.”
Since the PLC elections in 2006, and especially after taking control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas officials have insisted there will be no attempt to force a particular way of life on the 1.5 million trapped Palestinians. But the repeated stress on example and persuasion has sounded increasingly hollow – as a human rights activist put it, Hamas denials “contradict what we see on the street”.
But why is this happening now?
Why indeed? What do you think Ben’s explanation is.
Comments
| 10 August 2009, 6:46 pm |
presumably it’s the fault of those pesky israelis. altho i first heard this theory espoused on the bbc world service a couple of weeks back, so he’s a bit behind the times.
| 10 August 2009, 6:50 pm |
Obviously Ben White will blame it on the “Zionists”, and he’ll probably drag up some fake quote from David Ben Gurion, putting the blame on him too?
| 10 August 2009, 6:50 pm |
It can’t possibly be Israel’s fault, can it?!
| 10 August 2009, 6:51 pm |
Yes, yes, it is the fault of the Israelis, who “imprison” the Gazans by not giving each of the Palestinians a free plane ticket to Disneyworld every year. They feel so oppressed that start imaging that they are starving even.
So they get so angry that they shell with mortars their own sick people who were being transferred to Israeli hospitals.
Oh, Jews! Is there no limit to your demonic powers?
| 10 August 2009, 6:51 pm |
Israeli policies? The ‘occupation’?
Barely an hour ago I stubbed my toe on the curb while returning from the gym.
I blame Israel!
To judge from the negative (mostly) CIF comments, I believe the ability to buy into this whole line is waning.
I detect a turn-around by at least SOME of the people who once blamed Israel for every Mid-East probleme.
| 10 August 2009, 6:52 pm |
Aw. This is too easy.
| 10 August 2009, 7:04 pm |
What is peculiar about this piece is that Ben White appears not to have read any Hamas theology/political philosophy.
Neither does he have any inkling of the situation in other countries which are run as Islamist states. Iran, for example.
| 10 August 2009, 7:05 pm |
Yes it is too easy.
Next time give us something a bit harder and less obvious.
| 10 August 2009, 7:07 pm |
For Ben White as for so many others,
Ignorance is undoubtbly Bliss.
| 10 August 2009, 7:08 pm |
“But why is this happening now?”
Because I do not consider myself Hamas but I can understand why some are?
| 10 August 2009, 7:22 pm |
sigh, can someone pls point him at the Hamas Covenant before he makes an even bigger fool of himself?
| 10 August 2009, 7:26 pm |
Just think, those of you who bought The Observer helped fund this petty man-child’s fees.
| 10 August 2009, 7:34 pm |
“What is peculiar about this piece is that Ben White appears not to have read any Hamas theology/political philosophy. “
Strange, given that Ben White has just written an introductory text on the subject too?
His blurb says:
“Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer specialising in Palestine/Israel. He also writes on the broader Middle East, Islam and Christianity, and the ‘war on terror’.”
White’s new book contains various fake quotations and even a reference to the Holocaust denier, Roger Garuady, so you can imagine the breadth of his knowledge.
| 10 August 2009, 7:43 pm |
Ben White is the incarnation of the saying ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’. He is profoundly superficial. He has now read (presumably a synopsis of) Memmi’s ‘The Colonizer and the Colonized’ (without – I would put good money on it – reading Decolonization and the Decolonized’ or ‘Who is an Arab Jew?’). He will now glom on to these ‘fresh’ apercus for the next year or two.
I do not believe for one minute that he has only now just realised that Hamas is what it is. I think he is positioning himself to ‘prove’ that he is even-handed…
| 10 August 2009, 7:56 pm |
This is an Ummah question. The Ummah is like one of those Sci-Fi shared consciousness entities whereby every member is instantaneously connected to each other’s emotional and physical states.
In this particular incident an outrage ripple was created when a non-Muslim in a remote village accidentally drank from a “Muslim cup” and was beaten to death for it It really happened!). This created a chain reaction whereby the Muslims of Gaza sudenly became fearful that their cups might be contaminated by non-Muslims and such “infections” may lead anti-Islamic microbiological germs shaped like stars of David such that they can morph into a limitless number of shapes and living creatures, Molochs!
Hamas feared that this was going to create a Zionist Dr Manhattan who would rise from a Gaza slum and anihilate them. (see Watchmen)
They believed that such infections were preced by insurrections indicated by non-Islamic behaviours and their scientists stated that one way to defeat the micro-biological threat was to re-inforce Shariah principles and so act as an antidote. (a sort of Islamic Tamiflu).
Cont’d page 73…………..
Am I close?
| 10 August 2009, 8:03 pm |
Ben White is a waste of a carbon footprint.
| 10 August 2009, 8:19 pm |
FAvorite comment:
Moeran
10 Aug 09, 3:31pm (about 5 hours ago)
Spot on, Mr White
If you isolate a nation, deny it intercourse with the outside world, ration its food to the bare minimum, gleefully allow the sick to die….[etc.]
(Hamas denies men and women intercourse with each other because the people of Gaza are denied intercourse with the outside world.)
Also, does White blame Israel without ever explictly mentioning Israel?
| 10 August 2009, 8:20 pm |
Blaming the Jews is too obvious. However, to keep in the spirit of the Hamas Charter (“Bringing the Protocols of Zion to You Since 1988″), I’m going to go a little left-field and blame the Freemasons.
Do I win anything if I’m right?
| 10 August 2009, 8:22 pm |
Ben White thinks it’s the Israelis, simple thought process for the likes of him, anything bad in the middle east = Israel’s Fault, for them everything must be the Israelis fault.
The Perception of an ever increasing number of people in the ‘evil’ ‘imperialist’ west is that Ben White (and other assorted Hamas apologists) = The Left, which = appeasers, which = a problem, a very, very, big problem.
Now I know that the decent Left “get” what Hamas and all the other Nazi’s are about but lots of people don’t, lots of the ‘left’ are blindsided by their ideological bigotry and as a consequence lots of other people think the “Left” agree with these theocratic lunatics.
Therein lies the problem.
Someone told me to read a book once, it was called “I was an economic hitman”(I think), it was written by, what with a little research can confirm is a fantasist, now this person who recommended this book is a staunch ’socialist’ so imagine my surprise when he also advised me to read another book by a raving lunatic called Nicholas Hagger, who as far as I can see is the very essence of Nazi, a book recommended to me by a socialist, written by a nazi who really hates the Jews. Oh dear me.
I am not accusing any one of anything you understand, just thinking out loud.
| 10 August 2009, 8:26 pm |
Is it because the Israeli government are passing that illicit chewing gum into Gaza, which, when consumed causes normally modest people to exhibit hypersexual behaviour, thereby requiring Hamas to patrol with more vigour and legislate for stricter modesty laws?
Though quite why Israel would wish to increase sexual behaviour in Gaza, which may lead to a higher birthrate which may, in turn, lead to more militants at Hamas’ disposal is quite beyond me. These Zionists never quite think these things through, do they?
| 10 August 2009, 8:26 pm |
It bears repeating yet again that Toad of Toad Hall is very tight with Ben White.
| 10 August 2009, 8:27 pm |
My money’s on Organized Jewery. The other “Sci-Fi shared consciousness entit[y] whereby every member is instantaneously connected to each other’s emotional and physical states.
Spectrum, you are very funny.
| 10 August 2009, 8:29 pm |
This is not purely Ben White buffoonery -this is politics disguised as journalism.
Note who Ben White quotes -none other than Dr. Eyad El Sarrej. Now there’s a match made in hell!
This psychiatrist is renowned for his political activity.
‘ “Hamas is strong and brutal but very good at governing,” Eyad Sarraj told the New York Times, which describes him as a British-trained psychiatrist and secular opponent of Hamas, After all, he continues, it’s distributing gas coupons, getting people to pay electricity bills, and keeping the city clean…
But Sarraj is no moderate. In 1999, he wrote that Palestinians were better off without the peace process. Refusing to recognize Israel had been a “nuclear weapon” and armed struggle a great asset. Giving these up was a mistake, Sarraj insisted, and might lead to ending the conflict without eliminating Israel.
..Sarraj, while a member of Gaza’s tiny left, advocated a strategy parallel to that of Hamas today. Perhaps that’s why he protested Arafat’s repression but now seems content to accept Hamas’s, however much he dislikes its Islamism. The continued extremism of mainstream Palestinian activist opinion makes Hamas’s rule seem an acceptable tradeoff because of its militancy.’
(Source: Barry Rubin, Global Research in Internaional Affairs, Herzeliya, 2008)
Incidentally, El Sarrej’s son Wasseem lives here in cloudy West Yorkshire and is (predictably) active in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Together with the local MP he presented a petition to Downing St. in February of this year, protesting the suffering of the people of Gaza and demanding the lifting of the blockade.
| 10 August 2009, 8:49 pm |
“displaying…. lingerie packets.”
Knickers. In a polythene bag. With the size written on.
The libertines!!!
| 10 August 2009, 9:01 pm |
Can he not give Hamas the credit for actually believing in something and wanting to use their power to implement it? Pathetic. For a movement suffering the effects of isolation, their policies are remarkably similar to those of Islamist movements in neighbouring countries. It must be a coincidence.
White will forever cite this article as evidence that he is a critic of Hamas, and omit the fact that he uses it to argue that even in their flaws they are victims of Israel.
| 10 August 2009, 9:36 pm |
Was the same with Hezbollah a while back. People like BW busy insisting ‘they’re not really baddies’ and ‘they don’t really mean it’. Then senior Hezbollah people explicitly told all these gullible Westerners that yes they ARE that bad, to widespread embarrassment. It’s not just gullible, it’s condescending. Or, in the above case, plain old Jew-hating.
| 10 August 2009, 9:38 pm |
Isn’t one of the reasons Hamas is Islamicizing Gazans insecurity? Gazans are fed up with, inter alia, the consequences of a “resistance” which Hamas (and Ben White) insists on pressing until the dissolution of the Jewish state.
Why now?
Well, the regime isn’t exactly secure at the moment. A lot of grumbling and dissent. Perhaps some at western pro-Hamas apologists like you, Ben (ditto re. Iranians and Ahmadinejad: I doubt they’d be fooled by your nouissimum volte face).
Some have said before now that the Muslim Brotherhood i.e. Hamas is indeed for one man, one vote. Once. Could they perhaps be being proven right?
Or are you going to find another way to blame this on “Israeli apartheid”?
Also, Albert Memmi was speaking of the colonized retreating into religion as a comfort or refuge, not about state regimes’ imposing it to crush dissent following the pursuit of disastrous jihad against a neighbouring state (though that happens too).
Perhaps you read what Memmi says about religion in Decolonization and the Decolonized i.e. like Gaza and Hamas:
[Sometimes a crisis erupts, triggered by an irresolvable contradiction, such as reconciling the importance of religion in Muslim life and republican secularism, or the ways in which the condition of women is addressed.]
And did you catch this Memmi quote, Ben?
[When Qaddafy visited France during the 1973 Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War to press the Arab oil
embargo and negotiate arms, the Tunisian-born writer Albert Memmi responded to Libya's invitation to
Jews in a personal address to Qaddafy:]
Is it true that you have said that the Jews have always lived at peace in the Arab
countries? And that you have nothing against Jews, only Zionists? …
The error which may have been made at Deir Yassine* is constantly being
thrown in our faces. Ali, but we have undergone a hundred Deir Yassines, a
thousand Deir Yassines!’ And not only in Russia, Germany or Poland, but also
at the hand of Arab people; yet the world has never been upset over it! …
…if you really wanted to avoid having us come together on this particular bit of
land, . . . Israel . . . , then why did you hound us and expel us from the regions
over which your power extends? …
Do you believe that the Jews born in Arab countries can go back and live in the
countries from which they were expelled, before being plundered and
massacred? …
… your constant affirmation [is] of the unity of the Arab nation…. When you come
right down to it, the Palestinian Arabs’ misfortune is having been moved about
thirty miles within one vast nation. Is that so serious? Our own misfortune, as
Jews from the Arab countries, is much much greater, for we have been moved
thousands of miles away, after having also lost everything. And today [we] are …
half the population of Israel…. And no one has the right to challenge our
possibility of taking in our past and also, alas!, our future survivors.[302]
Any chance of your adding this to your FAQs and bogus references in your Pluto pamphlet?
| 10 August 2009, 9:41 pm |
True, six million died. But you need to ask yourself why that happened.
| 10 August 2009, 9:46 pm |
“Any chance of your adding this to your FAQs and bogus references in your Pluto pamphlet?”
I think you’ll find its full title is:
Joined-up Writing: A Beginner’s Attempt
| 10 August 2009, 9:54 pm |
We know very well why that happened. It happened because blind, illogical hatred and racism became the order of the day and were afforded legitimacy by a society’s governing institutions. It happened because not enough people stood up and said ‘No’, even when they knew it was wrong. It happened because the victims had nowhere else to go and could not depend upon anyone else to defend them. And despite the best efforts of anti-Semites like Ben White and many others of the chattering ‘liberal’ intelligentsia, some of us are determined that it will not happen again.
| 10 August 2009, 10:36 pm |
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6788612.ece
“GUARDIAN MEDIA GROUP, the owner of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, lost £24m last year on botched currency trading as it tried to protect hedge-fund investments.”
With any luck, The Guardian will go bust
| 10 August 2009, 10:37 pm |
Ben White criticising Hamas????
Has he fallen under the spell of the shadowy Zionist Lobby and their control of the media?
| 10 August 2009, 10:54 pm |
‘What is peculiar about this piece is that Ben White appears not to have read any Hamas theology/political philosophy.’
He also appears not to have heeded other warning signs, such as the minor little upheaval in Gaza in June 2007, and the character of Hamas government as shown in C4’s documentary ‘Inside Hamas’ in February 2008.
Still, it’s no surprise, because Ben White rhymes with ‘Full of Shite’.
| 10 August 2009, 11:08 pm |
Yes, I had to admit – I am greatly concerned that Ben White has indeed become enthralled by Jew-Power.
Having spread the libel that Hamas is imposing an intolerant Islamist social agenda on the people of Gaza, it is now clear what he truly is: a Zionist shill.
| 10 August 2009, 11:11 pm |
So, nothing to do with Hamas being an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood then? Whatever happened to ideology.
| 10 August 2009, 11:11 pm |
So, nothing to do with Hamas being an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood then? Whatever happened to ideology.
| 10 August 2009, 11:40 pm |
Well, hmm, yeah.
Now for something rather more alarming: your starter for ten:.
Who, according to “Russia Today” (ie the international TV station of the Russian state), are responsible for spreading the “birther rumours” about Obama?
See if you can guess? (Not the first time they’ve done this sort of thing, it must be said)
| 10 August 2009, 11:46 pm |
What a surprise! Remember back in 2008, when White declared:
Human rights abuses by Palestinian security forces should be exposed, even if they provide Israel with a public relations coup
Now White has found a way to blame Israel and draw attention to human rights abuses by Palestinian leaders. Great!
| 10 August 2009, 11:55 pm |
is it something to do with Zionist aphrodisiac chewing gum:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iflSn6wJWSpD_E55DV8LHxvldfiA
| 10 August 2009, 11:57 pm |
Suspect that if Ben White had been present in 1938 (the height of Stalin’s Purges) he would have written a similiar column about “reported human rights abuses” in the Soviet Union, but would have ended up blaming Western Imperialism for forcing such reprssive measures on good old benevolent Stalin.
| 11 August 2009, 12:08 am |
We can discuss all day/night about BW being an idiot, or we can actually discuss about the politics. Why have Hamas started this now?
zkharya has a good point about Hamas being weakened politically. This might also explain the rockets and mortars that were fired yesterday (or a couple of days ago) which to my knowledge wasn’t fired by Hamas but by another group and might show their weakening of control (don’t trust my word, I haven’t seen the news for a long time and am only saying from my memory).
The thing is, I’ve heard some reports of Gazans discontent with Hamas after Cast Lead but the majority of what I’ve heard is that Hamas got more support.
Has anyone from Israel watched what Ehud Ya’ari said about this on channel 2 news? He’s a nation-renowned news commenter for Arab stuff, a specialist who speaks fluent Arabic (I think in a couple of dialects because I saw him translate both Egyptian and Hezballah TV messages). Most of the time what he says is really logical (although during the beginning of the Iranian protests the news anchor would go to him for comments, which is a bit stupid although might have some sense into it, and I don’t really know if he ever corrected this error)
| 11 August 2009, 12:25 am |
“..What is peculiar about this piece is that Ben White appears not to have read any Hamas theology/political philosophy…”
Well why on earth should he? Who says that you have to know anything about what you are writing to get published on CiF?
This ignoramus has already made up his mind. The facts would probably blow what’s left of it.
| 11 August 2009, 12:38 am |
Isy – there has been a rocket today too, but don’t assume that even if another group is doing the actual trigger-pulling that it happens without Hamas knowledge/consent. Hamas are trying to walk a thin line between keeping the ‘cease fire’ going long enough to restock their supplies of weaponary and keeping the ‘resistance’ going -i.e. not looking soft.
Also, don’t forget that Hamas is competing with Hizbollah for funding from their mutual Iranian masters. A more obviously Islamic society with all the trappings of ‘modesty’ in the Iranian style is going to have instant appeal in Tehran and is a policy which it is much easier for Hamas to enforce as they have almost total control over a geographically small area, rather than Hizbollah who are only a faction in a whole country.
Then there’s the increacing competition from Al Queida affiliated groups within the Gaza strip, as the recent attack on the Dahlan wedding showed, and of course the need to discredit Fatah as being un-Islamic sell-outs and paint themselves as the true ‘resistance’.
| 11 August 2009, 1:18 am |
In “Families and How to Survive Them” (required reading for everyone in my undergraduate days) Robyn Skynner analyses paranoid behaviour in some depth. He explains that most of us resort to paranoid ways of thinking when we are under stress, but that extremists cannot leave that behind and return to normal behaviour.
Hamas’ paranoia has resulted in extreme lunacy in order to help its leaders feel comfortable – the paranoid behaviour is carried to extremes to scapegoat others in order to make the ruling elite feel better.
The more powerful Hamas becomes, the more it loses contact with reality. The worse it gets the more it will feel threatened by any diversity it hasn’t created itself because these show it that it isn’t omnipotent. Hence the introduction of sharia which is an attempt to subvert expression of individuality, and the hatred of anything which is different and the need to destroy it.
But whatever it does can never be enough to keep it comfortable for long because it too afraid of its own demons. Deprived of opportunities to act out its hatred of Israel it has to find more and more dissenters within its own camp and punish them in order to believe that it is omnipotent.
Even if Hamas were to succeed in conquering Israel and imposing sharia in the whole area – or, in this case, because it cannot act out its hatred of Israel because Israel has neutred it, Hamas is becoming increasingly paranoid and getting more and more divorced from reality. Its demons are multiplying and it will mete out death and destruction on a large scale upon its own people because there is no-one else to fight. Ultimately it will kill off its own members and leaders.
And Ben White will probably blame Israel for that, too.
| 11 August 2009, 3:09 am |
I’m having flashbacks:
Interviewer: Stig, I’ve been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.
Stig: No, no. Never, never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to give his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.
Interviewer: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.
Stig: Oh yeah, well – he did that, yeah.
Interviewer: Why?
Stig: Well he had to, didn’t he? I mean, be fair, there was nothing else he could do. I mean, I had transgressed the unwritten law.
Interviewer: What had you done?
Stig: Er… Well he never told me that. But he gave me his word that it was the case, and that’s good enough for me with old Dinsy. I mean, he didn’t want to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. There’s nothing Dinsdale wouldn’t do for you.
Interviewer: And you don’t bear him any grudge?
Stig: A grudge! Old Dinsy? He was a real darling.
Interviewer: I understand he also nailed your wife’s head to a coffee table. Isn’t that right Mrs O’ Tracey?Camera pans to show woman with coffee table nailed to head.
Mrs O’ Tracey: Oh, no. No. No.
Stig: Yeah, well, he did do that. Yeah, yeah. He was a cruel man, but fair
Who’s been giving Ben White the Monty Python discs?
| 11 August 2009, 4:28 am |
I wonder if Ben White would buy the old “the Jews ate my homework” excuse? I expect so.
| 11 August 2009, 7:25 am |
Hey, give Ben some credit – he managed to write an article using the word “Israel” only twice. What isn’t clear is whether he wrote it in Sao Paolo or London. Actually visiting the area might affct his objectivity.
| 11 August 2009, 7:28 am |
On the positive note;
Benny did not specifically attribute the Talibanization of Gaza to the separation wall.
Nor has he spent Christmas with Hamas yet …”Cruxifiction good”…
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230111707087&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
| 11 August 2009, 9:20 am |
What a joke Ben White.
Someone alluded to his ‘book’ being sold on Amazon for a ‘fiver’.
Not very flattering. Some ’specialist’ toilet rolls cast less.
| 11 August 2009, 9:35 am |
You are all so unfair to that sweet boy. Just look at his pic. It is clear that he is suffering from terminal naivety and just guess whose fault it is. Now, don’t you feel awful for saying all those things?
| 11 August 2009, 10:34 am |
See if you can guess why Ben White believes that Hamas is beating up mixed couples on beaches and insisting that women wear the hijab?
Actually the reports from the very first days of Hamas rule were that they were beating women to death on the beaches for being seen with men… There were two women mentioned in one report (that turned out to be married to the men they were with – the thugs didn’t believe their story and killed them on the spot anyway), and another story mentioning one woman.
Actually the report was too delicate to say exactly how the women died at the beach, only that the doctor said that what was done was too horrible to contemplate. Perhaps they were tortured, perhaps they were raped, the reporter didn’t feel free to divulge.
| 11 August 2009, 1:46 pm |
I poured milk in my coffee this morning and it was curdled. Jews did that.
Lemme guess. Them Zionists make them do it.