Boy, it's hard to be a Progressive Israel supporter these days. Since the insane neocon right has taken Israeli interests to what passes for their hearts, the left has chosen to camp out with the terrorists. Somebody needs to tell the Left (let's start with me) that it's okay to support Israel without turning into the foul John Bolton.

The right likes Israel because they support a bizarre and otherwise marginal fundamentalist Protestant reading of the Bible that informs them that Israel will come to take back the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and then the Rapture will start and all the Jews and Muslims and Catholics and other non-Them will burn and They will all go to Heaven immediately. It's a nice vision, if you're Them. And it's really nice if you are pandering to Them without believing a word of it - like the Junta.

The Junta wants Israel to dominate the region because the conflict keeps Arab nations weak and (in the post-Soviet era) dependent on the US to keep Israel from invading or nuking them all.

So Junta policy is to support Israel to keep lunatic religious creeps happy and Arab states weak and afraid. But that doesn't make their policy wrong - it just makes it right for all the wrong reasons.

The Left, meanwhile, has set itself up as the champion for Palestine. When they look at the region, they see a nation of Palestinians who are wrongly tarred with the mark of terror, and who suffer unjust limitations imposed by Israel. They are, in this view, innocents trapped in refugee camps who have done nothing to earn their fate but be born to the wrong parents. They only require support and the world's largesse to become happy productive citizens.

That's clearly Jimmy Carter's outlook in this shameful editorial in today's Washington Post. His point is this: it's wrong to cut off funding for Palestinians and for Israel to withhold taxes collected for Palestinians, because the mechanisms of the Palestinian governmental structure are such that the Hamas government won't be able to do bad stuff. Normal Palestinians shouldn't suffer because of the political tie-ups and the only way to peace is a negotiated two-state settlement.

Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy.

It's hard to know where to start. First, who cares how the Palestinian legislature works? Hamas is the government. Hamas is dedicated to the violent overthrow of Israel and the genocide of Israeli Jews. And Israel is supposed to pay them? Mahmud Abbass is set up as the moderate peacemaker in Carter's world, but Abbass has been entirely ineffective. He even lost this election - something the widely reviled (even among Palestinians) Yasser Arafat never did. Abbass is a fifth wheel, and everybody knows it.

Let's get past the idea of Israel doing anything to help Hamas - even if just for reasons of internal politics. Israel is a real democracy (just like Canada - the only true democracy on the continent) and no Israeli politician is going to do anything favouring genocidal baby-killing Hamas.

Should the US support the Hamas government? Why? What's in it for us? The Palestinians had every right to democratically vote for their chosen party to lead their government. America (and every other country in the world) has a right to not deal with grandmother-killing terrorists. It takes nothing away from the Palestinians' right to choose murderers as politicians. Just like a business can choose to put Charles Manson in as CEO. Sure it's their right - but nobody will buy their products.

Carter makes the feeble argument that the embargo will hurt moderates and help extremists. He says:

"This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies."

What would be an inducement for them to moderate their policies? A pile of dead Jews left on their doorstep every morning? These people are extremist murderers. They won't be moderated. If "private citizens" are 'punished' for voting in murderers, so be it.

The mistake would be to reward them for their votes. If it was 'business as usual' with the Hamas government, that would be conclusive proof of the effectiveness of murder. It would tell them conclusively that Hamas' tactics work. You want something? Go kill some Jewish kids and you'll get it.

If Germany elected a Nazi government his year, what would the world reaction be? Would people have the right not to deal with them? Should governments sanction them? Would anybody question the backlash to that vote? Of course not - so why is this any different?

Carter finishes by digging up the body of the Oslo accords, which is the case that destroys his own argument.

"It was under this umbrella [the PLO] and not the Palestinian Authority that Arafat negotiated with Israeli leaders to conclude the Oslo peace agreement."

And it was by making the butcher Arafat think that he won the Oslo compromise by terroristic murder that made the Oslo agreement fail. When you dance with the Devil, he will inevitably kill you. He is the Devil. That's what he does.

What Carter and other liberals must realize is that there are no 'moderate Palestinians' anywhere but in their imagination. Now is the time for a wall and a period of unilateralism. Israel must do what it needs to for its own protection. You can't negotiate when the only people to talk to want to kill you and your family and your neighbours and your whole country and steal your possessions and dance on your mass grave.

Yes, John Bolton is crazed, but we can't let that stop Progressives from supporting Israel. Little George's wrongness does not mean that we must embrace terrorists.

America cannot support a Hamas government, and cannot allow others to do so. Making the case that Jimmy makes just forces people to see Democrats as 'weak on terror.' It doesn't play domestically and it doesn't play internationally.