Democrats and their friends at Hamas

Something weird’s going on regarding a story that, as first reported, had secret meetings between Hamas and the Democrats. The weirdness is both about the reporting and about the implications of the Democratic conduct. Here’s what I know.

The first I heard of the story was at LGF:

Are officials of the Democratic Party holding secret talks with the Hamas terrorist organization? Sources for the Jerusalem Post say so: Hamas smuggled $66 million in 8 months.

Hamas officials have managed to smuggle more than $66 million in cash through the Rafah border crossing in the past eight months, a member of the Hamas-led government revealed Wednesday.

Meanwhile, sources close to the Hamas-led government claimed that Hamas representatives recently held talks with officials from the US Democratic Party at a secret location.

The link in the LGF story takes you to an article in Jerusalem Post. However, that article no longer contains the above quoted language about Hamas sources reporting secret talks between Hamas leaders and Democrats.

BizzBlog noticed this discrepancy, and blogged about it. Captain Ed also noticed the changed article and came out with a perfectly reasonably explanation for this change:

My guess at the time was that Hamas was shooting its collective mouth off, trying to pose as the more influential faction while Mahmoud Abbas tried to evict them from the government. I tend to believe that terrorists spend more time lying than breathing, and Hamas maybe more than most. I suspect the Jerusalem Post reconsidered their sourcing on the story and withdrew it without explanation, a poor journalistic choice on their part after a poor journalistic choice for including it in the first place.

That could have been the end of the story, but there’s more. In today’s YNet news, we learn both that the meeting did take place and that Hamas is trying to bury it. Thus, the story’s opening paragraph informs us authoritatively that:

The Palestinian news agency Maan, quoting a senior member of the Palestinian government, reported Wednesday that “ministers of the Hamas-led government recently held talks with European countries and with a delegation of the American Democratic Party.

While the article then goes on to report Hamas’ excitement about the European’s “getting it,” the facts about the Democrats vanish until the end of the article, when we learn why everything is so low key:

The source also noted that Hamas made some achievement on the American front thanks to a meeting held with senior members of the Democratic Party.He refused to elaborate on the meeting and where it took place, claiming that Hamas is not interested in harming the Democrats’ chances to win the 2008 elections.

In other words, the Democrats said things that Hamas was happy to hear, along the lines of “we’ll sell Israel down the river for you.” The Democrats, however, warned Hamas that most Americans think it would be unsporting to sell Israel down the river, not to mention that it’s bad form to negotiate with terrorist organizations. If these facts get out, they could spell trouble for the 2008 election. So Hamas, anxious to get those Israel-loving Republicans out of the White House and to get Democrats back in (presumably based on promises that the Dems will take the pressure of Hamas to give up its bloody ways), promises to keep silent. However, showing the value of Hamas promises, at least one person in the organization just couldn’t keep his mouth shut and had to boast.

Doesn’t the Democrats’ covert willingness to negotiate with terrorists put you forcibly in mind of Teddy Kennedy’s unilateral decision to join cause with the Soviets during the Cold War or John Kerry’s talks with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War? It also seems to be part of a pattern that has the New York Times revealing intelligence secrets. This is a democracy. If you’ve lost the elections, suck it up — don’t parlay with the enemy.

UPDATE:  The Democrats deny meeting with Hamas.  This denial may or may not be true.  As I noted above, the Dems have a habit of conducting “independent negotiations.”  But as John Kerry also shows, some of these negotiations are completely unauthorized, so these prominent Democrats may just have been noisy, pro-Hamas types who checked “Democrat” on their voter registration card.  Also, Hamas could just be lying, as I’m pretty sure it (or another Palestinian group representative) did when it claimed some wild and weird prayer session with George Bush during which they allege he was indiscreet enough to confide to them something along the lines of his believing that he was God’s chosen vessel, or whatever.

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