Every year at this time, Hamas marks its birthday with celebrations and festivities focusing on a leadership said to have no flaws. This year it turns 29, and as always at this time, it is boasting of its "successes." Last year, it published a list of such "successes" that included, but were not limited, to: 16,377 rockets fired at Israel, 86 suicide attacks, 36 stabbing attacks, 500 infiltrations into Israeli territory, and 26 abductions of living or dead Israelis. These were the atrocities that Hamas chose to publish in commemorative pamphlets. They do not take into account the past 12 months. When Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom meets with representatives of the Palestinian Authority this weekend, I am curious to see if she brings up any of these activities, claimed and celebrated by Hamas. She is said to be excited to discuss the building and betterment of the Palestinian Authority and state, as well as moving forward in the peace process between Israel and Palestine. This has to be a somewhat one-sided talk, however, as Wallstrom is famously unwelcome in Israel after her anti-Zionist tic acted up to an absurd degree throughout 2016. But the focus on the PA may allow her time to ask some pertinent questions. When Wallstrom, the foreign minister of a country claiming to be a "humanitarian superpower," meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- who is starting the 12th year of a four-year political term -- she should question some of his choices. Such as how a man who presides over 2 million mostly impoverished people gives himself a monthly salary of $1 million, money that is given to the Palestinian Authority in aid by many Western countries. She could also bring up the fact that large telecommunications contracts are given directly to Abbas' sons; that the Palestinian Authority in 20 years of existence has failed to build any sustainable or successful governmental institutions; that Abbas spends aid money on terrorism as well as on a private palace in Ramallah; and even that Abbas forgoes visits to and work for the many PA-controlled cities around the West Bank for fund-raising trips to Europe, where he speaks skillfully about his passion for his people's plight. She could ask all that, and she should. But as a key representative for a country that took one party's side in the world's most tainted conflict by unilaterally recognizing Palestine, that is hardly in her interest. The Swedish government made a big mistake in recognizing Palestine. Recognizing a state means, by any logic, that it is time to treat it like a grown-up. A state needs to be responsible, rather than acting out selfishly. To Sweden, this is a headache, as it likes to engage in its particular strain of progressive orientalism, in which the poor Palestinians are treated as lesser-abled beings who should not be held to the standards of others, enabling enlightened Swedes to talk down to them while patting each other on the back for a job well done. As for Fatah and Hamas, they relish in such patriarchal and colonialist behavior because that is what fills their coffers and enables Abbas to rack up those frequent-flier miles. As long as the Palestinians are treated like children, they can act like hoodlums, and enrich themselves without paying any real price. The Swedish government, which coddles terrorists in the name of peace, gains international good will for zero political cost. Hamas is a 29-year-old still living at home, taking no adult responsibility, because, like an over-indulged, delinquent child it is well-fed and paid, and is praised for doing nothing, out of fear that it may do even less. And another birthday will pass, without much change or personal growth. As for the regular Palestinians under this tyrannical rule? Well, let them eat cake. Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is a political adviser and writer on the Middle East, religious affairs and global anti-Semitism. Follow her on Twitter @truthandfiction
Happy birthday, Hamas
מערכת ישראל היום
מערכת "ישראל היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
