Hamas and hatred

"To say you hate them is not to say they’re monsters. But their politics is the death of politics; the violence they use confiscates all other possibilities in Palestinian society. You can’t object to it because you might die; if you support them you just risk creating another martyr. It’s a total nightmare. It will take enormous courage for the Palestinians to get up and say ‘This is not the way’. But until they do, Hamas is leading them right over a cliff."

This is from an interview with Michael Ignatieff, now the deputy leader of the Canadian liberal party, which he gave during his stint in Edinburgh in 2003, where he was delivering the Gifford lectures at the university. Ranging over Hamas and the West Bank, Iraq, the war in terror, the importance of American foreign policy, and Christopher Hitchens' conversion to Liberal Democracy - "I'm glad he's on the train, but frankly he's a bit late" - it's an interesting read.

Click on the link to read the article from The Scotsman: Sense in liberal proportions