TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS OR SOCIO-POLITICAL ENTITIES?

Journalist, blogger, best selling author, anti-Israel crusader and Macquarie University Centre for Middle East and North African Studies board member Antony Loewenstein again proves he doesn't have a clue:

Ever since the Hamas win in Palestine in late January this year – and the international community’s shameful shunning of it, since the “wrong” party had gained power – we are told that Hamas is unwilling to negotiate with Israel and continues to want the Jewish state’s destruction. I don’t doubt many Hamas members may well want this, but the group’s public statements suggest otherwise. In late November, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, on the eve of his first foreign tour, said he could conceivably imagine a Palestinian state outside Israel’s 1967 borders, putting in doubt the organisation’s long-held commitment to a Palestinian state in all of Palestine, including Israel. This information simply doesn’t get reported in the Australian mainstream press.

Haniyeh in today's Independent:

"We will never recognise the Zionist government. We will continue the jihad until Jerusalem is liberated."

The Hamas leader added after meeting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline Iranian President: "We support the Palestinian people's right to resistance and its right to cancel the cruel agreements that we signed in the past with the occupation regime."

In the same article:

Hamas has threatened to resort to violence if Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, calls early elections after the breakdown of negotiations for a national unity government between the Islamist party, which won a surprise parliamentary majority last January, and his more pragmatic Fatah.

Regardless, Loewenstein doesn't see Hamas as a terrorist organization:

A growing number of media organisations want us all to define groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah as simply terrorist organisations. They are not. Indeed, I wouldn’t define either as terror groups – though both have engaged in terrorist acts – but rather socio-political entities.

Socio-political entity supporter certainly sounds better than terrorist supporter.

Update: For the latest, go here.