Israeli academic believes in “the new face of Hamas willing to work for peace with Israelis”

Paul T. writes:

Your readers may wish to take an antinauseant before reading Toronto Star reporter Mitch Potter’s story dated Oct. 13. And I hereby nominate Israeli academic Gershon Baskin for the Daniel Pearl Award For Utter Credulity:

‘New face of Hamas’ seen in Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap

WASHINGTON—Their official stance is peace never. Or not until Israel ceases to exist. That is Hamas in a non-negotiable nutshell, in the view of the overwhelming majority of Israelis.

But as the details of an epic prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit gradually emerge, one of the deal’s secret Israeli architects is expressing a rare measure of warmth for his Hamas counterparts in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli academic Gershon Baskin filled in some of the blanks of the blockbuster deal Wednesday, detailing his role in five years of secret back-channel negotiations that brought Israel and Hamas together on the same page.

Baskin’s off-the-radar contact with Hamas deputy foreign minister Ghazi Hamad went back and forth, again and again. And as their rapport developed, Baskin says he came to see Hamad as “a person who I trust and who trusts me and someone who is the new face of Hamas willing to work for peace with Israelis,” the JTA news agency reported.

Baskin, founder of the dovish Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information … (etc.)

LA replies:

Libs just have to be libs. Whatever the thing being discussed, they have to impose a liberal template on it.

See Jim Kalb’s recent comment at VFR about how liberals fit everything into liberalism, including Islam, and even including—as we see here—Hamas.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 14, 2011 08:30 AM | Send