The EU and Hamas

The EU wants to be more involved in the Middle East "peace process". So far, Israel has resisted this involvement. In the past few days, some documents have come to light that may explain why.

In June 2002, Alistair Crooke, then security adviser of Miguel Moratinos, then EU special envoy to the Middle East (and currently foreign minister of Spain), met secretly in Gaza with a Hamas delegation headed by the organizations then-leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

The veil of secrecy was broken, however, when the Israel Defense Forces seized a transcript of the meeting in November 2002 at the compound of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security Service in Gaza. The transcript has now been made available by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, based near Tel Aviv.

If a top EU official meeting with terrorist leadership is not bad enough, it is instructive to see Crooke's interaction with Yassin and the other terrorists.

Crooke: "We believe that the settlements are illegal. The European position on this matter is not vague. . . . The building of settlements must be brought to a complete halt. As for terrorism, I hate that word. I have spent some time in my life with freedom fighters like in Colombia. We were affected by the events of September 11. People cannot tolerate the sight of babies being killed, and that triggers an emotional response. When America reacted to the September 11 events, the Afghan people should not have paid the price for that."

This struck a responsive chord in Yassin: "Time will tell that . . . it was global Zionism that paralyzed the American security, so that war could be declared on the Islamic world and on Hamas. About 100-120 Zionist-American agents [knew about it] and did not report it. I do not rule out the possibility that they attempted to seduce Hamas [operatives] and other Islamic operatives [to do it]."

Crooke: "What Europe has done " [changing the subject:] We do not consider the political wing of Hamas to be a terrorist organization, and the same complaints were made regarding Fatah.'

For the EU, Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups are "freedom fighters", and all those dead Jewish babies are an inconvenience.