The envelope please for most inane apologia in defense of Hamas this week ...
Even worse, this particular inanity comes from Thom Hartmann, a top-rated talker on the barren moonscape known as liberal radio. In response to a caller who took him to task for blaming Israel for the latest flare-up, Hartmann downplayed the peril posed by Hamas firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilians. (Audio after the jump)
CALLER: ... because I felt that you were kind of saying that Israel should stop and that Congress should get in there. I think Israel is retaliating. I think Israel would lay down its arms if Hamas wouldn't wipe it off the earth if, you know, given the opportunity ...
HARTMANN: But see, here's the thing -- Hamas has no opportunity. (Pay no attention to the countless rockets they've lobbed from behind the curtain). There's not been a single Israeli killed outside of this tit-for-tat that started inside Israel. (Once again, it's all their fault). In Gaza ...
CALLER: Ok, here's the thing -- Israel has captured the perpetrator of the people who killed the Palestinian youth.
HARTMANN: Right.CALLER: Palestine, if they found the people who killed the three Israeli teenagers (the ones Hartmann neglected to mention in his remarks that prompted the woman's call) would name a square after him.
HARTMANN: You don't know that.
CALLER: Oh, well, yeah, I think so, it happens all the time. They become martyrs and they become heroes ...
HARTMANN: I don't think so. I really don't think so. (Because I'm willing to ignore countless previous examples of this).
CALLER (crosstalk): ... that I feel where you're so right on all the time, I'm feeling that you're putting a lot on Israel when it's ...
HARTMANN: I am not saying that Israel should not respond when rocket attacks come in. I'm not saying that at all. (You just know there's a "but" coming). But they've killed over a hundred people. Those rocket attacks coming out of Gaza, these are people living basically in a prison camp and they're like throwing softballs. They haven't hurt anybody. I mean, this is not to say they're blameless (... which is as far as I'm prepared to go in condemning Palestinian terrorism), but they haven't killed any Israeli. But Israel has killed a hundred people in Gaza. They should stop already! (Israel, not Hamas. Hamas, continue firing at will). That's what I'm saying. ... And I say that, I've been to Israel a lot, I've spent probably a half a year in aggregate in Israel, I know the area really, really well, and I'm a supporter of Israel. (Some of my best friends are Israelis). I say this because I think this is harming Israel.
The nerve of those Jews -- building a missile defense system so effective that it has prevented Hamas' rockets from hitting their intended targets -- Israeli civilians. Yet another egregious example of Israel humiliating its Arab neighbors. When will it ever end ...?
Remember how liberals claimed George W. Bush should not have invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein's regime did not pose an "imminent" threat? How about an endless barrage of rockets hitting your country -- "imminent" enough? Not to Hartmann. He's unwilling to condemn Hamas until there are fatalities, despite the indisputable fact that this is clearly Hamas' intent -- to kill Israelis.
Once this inevitability occurs, Hartmann will fall back on the disparity in the death tolls. Is he even capable of seeing the difference between Hamas deliberately targeting civilians with its missile barrages -- and Israel responding in self-defense? And will Hartmann or any other liberal hand-wringer for Palestinian depravity ever point out that Hamas is launching its rockets ... from land relinquished by Israel in 2005?
By Hartmann's perverse illogic, the police officer who kills a murder suspect in an exchange of gunfire is the criminal because the cop survived and the criminal didn't.
