November 01, 2007 ... Through adversity to the stars?

As the Kenyan economist James Shikwati has recently commented, the best way to help the people of Africa is to stop helping Africa. Similarly, the best way to help the people of Gaza-cum-Hamastan is to stop helping Gaza-cum-Hamastan.

In the face of justified energy supply reductions from Israel, international and Gaza-cum-Hamastan representatives have yet again trotted out the usual condemnations: Humanitarian hardship will fall upon the innocent, Gaza-cum-Hamastan is democratically represented, etc.

However, as a vital component of Israel’s commitment to disengage from Gaza-cum-Hamastan, Israel has no moral obligation to support any democrats who have the destruction of Israel as their prime-directive, nor has Israel any moral responsibility towards any innocents of such a democracy. That moral obligation and responsibility must fall upon the democratically elected administration of Gaza-cum-Hamastan and its sponsors in terror: Iran, for example.

A primary feature of a democracy is that any elected administration can only maintain power by consent of the people. Therefore, since Hamas simply uses the democratic process in order to legitimise itself in the eyes of questionable others, it must fall to a suitably motivated electorate to divest itself of Hamas’ rule. By incentivising all the people of Gaza-cum-Hamastan including a reduction of international support, they may, in their time of struggle, come to the rational conclusion that there is no virtue in democracy except for when democracy is simply the expedient which enables one’s self-interest to be more easily facilitated without impinging on anyone else’s self-interest. This however, is the foundation of Israel’s western culture, and its commitment to not interfere in others’ development.

To help them shoot for the stars instead of shooting rockets into Israel, it is vital that the citizens of Gaza-cum-Hamastan are now weaned off a counterproductive dependence on Israeli resources so that they can divert a scarcity of donor funds towards productive and civilised lines of activity.