The Racism Of The Cosmopolitans

How often do we see trivial newspaper reports by asinine journalists paid by their bosses to publish an anti-BNP article with the usual smears on the BNP such as 'the racist BNP' or one of the other trivial ad hominem attacks the retards of the media can dribble onto a keyboard.

Its so often it is boring.

The endless propaganda of the 'racist right' as being the primary source of racism in the UK is the staple myth of the leftist liberal idiot.

They cling to their facile beliefs like a drowning man will cling to any hope.

Yet note how the Liberal Left NEVER EVER seek to debate the racism of ;

1) Muslims against Jews and whites

2) The racism of the Left against Jews and Israel and the White Working Class

3) The racism of the liberals against Jews and Israel and the White Working Class

The entire debate on racism in the media revolves solely around white working class British people, as these are the last group in our society who anyone can be racist about and be allowed to be racist in the media, and the BNP.

This is because the idiots in the media are the real racists.

Just because the journalists that peddle the racist myths are predominately white and British does not mean they cannot be racist against the White Working Class British people.

Note the recent reports on the BBC trying to depict the strikers and the BNP as racist, when both the strikers and the BNP have stated that the strikes have nothing to do with racism but simply with discrmination against British workers.

These Cosmopolitans as I call them are the white British middle class who care more about poor Africans, the people of Gaza or the plight of ethnic minorities in the UK than they care about the interests of the White Working Class.

The Cosmopolitans may be born in the UK and they may be white but they do not give a damn about the British white working class, for the Cosmopolitans the white working class are sub-human chav scum to be despised and their mass deaths from alcoholism, drug abuse and obesity to be celebrated as a way to pave the way clear for millions of ethnics and immigrants to enter the country.

The Cosmopoltan has no loyalty to people, nation and culture - they care only about strangers, fashion and shopping in New York or holidaying in Dubai.

For the Cosmopolitan the only racism that matters is the racism of whites, and the racism of Muslims and Jews, the racism of the left and liberals and the racism of all other ethnic groups against whites such as in South Africa are to be either ignored or applauded.

The media never try and debate the internal racism of the Left and Liberals, the internal racism of the White Middle Class and the anti-white working class racism of the media itself.

The internal racism of the Cosmopolitans is the dirty little secret that they seek to hide by constantly attacking the BNP as racists.

The more the media and the Cosmopolitans can define the debate on racism solely by directing it at whites and the political right, the easier it is for them to minimise their own racism and the racism of the liberals and the left.

Every now and then one of the Cosmopolitans like Jonathan Freedland will make a public statement about the racism of the Cosmopolitans - but only to defend one of the favoured racial or religious groups of the Cosmopolitans like Jews, Blacks or Muslims.

Only very rarely will a Cosmopolitan defend the interests of the White Working Class, , though of course this has to be predicated with an attack on the BNP at the same time, even though the BNP are the ONLY political organisation set up to directly represent the interests of the British public in the multi-cultural system.

The Cosmopolitans will usually only ever use the media to direct public attention at the racism of the political right and the white working class, though of course when one section of the racist Cosmopolitans feels threatened by anything they will use the networks amongst the Cosmopolitans to air that issue.

But the day after the debate goes public the media will only be focused once again on the racism of the white working class and the BNP.

Read the article from Freedland here ;



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/04/gaza-jewish-community

As British Jews come under attack, the liberal left must not remain silent.

It should be perfectly possible to condemn Israel's brutal action in Gaza while taking a stand against antisemitism
Comments (540)
Jonathan Freedland The Guardian, Wednesday 4 February 2009 Article historyIn the immediate aftermath of the attacks on September 11 2001 and July 7 2005, a noble impulse seized the British liberal left. Politicians, commentators and activists united to say to their fellow citizens that, no matter how outraged they felt at the loss of civilian life they had just witnessed, they should under no circumstances take out that anger on the Muslim community. Progressive voices insisted that Muslims were not to be branded as guilty by association, just because the killers of 9/11 and 7/7 had been Muslims and had claimed to act in the name of all Muslims.

They urged Britons to be careful in their language, not to generalise from a few individuals to an entire community, to make clear to Britain's Muslims that they were a welcome part of the national life. One week after the 7/7 London attacks, a vast crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square to hear a call for unity led by then mayor Ken Livingstone, who said Londoners should not start looking for "who to blame and who to hate".

It was the right reaction and I am glad that, writing on these pages, I shared it, denouncing the surge in Islamophobia that greeted either a terrorist attack or the revelation of a terror plot. Yet there's been a curious silence in the last few weeks. Once again many are outraged by the loss of civilian life they have witnessed - this time in Gaza. Yet there has been no chorus of liberal voices insisting that, no matter how intense their fury, people must not take out that anger on Britain's Jewish community.

It's worth stating the obvious - that Operation Cast Lead is not 9/11 or 7/7, that Israel is not al-Qaida - and noting that the silence has not been absolute. In a very welcome move, a group of leading Muslims wrote an open letter condemning apparent Gaza-related attacks on Jews. Meanwhile, Labour's Denis MacShane, in a passionate article for Progress magazine, urged those on the left not "to turn criticism of Israel into a condemnation of Jews".

Otherwise, it has been eerily quiet. Those who in 2001 or 2005 rapidly spoke out against guilt by association have been mute this time. Yet this is no abstract concern. For British Jews have indeed come under attack.

According to the Community Security Trust, the body that monitors anti-Jewish racism, the four weeks after Cast Lead began saw an eightfold increase in antisemitic incidents in Britain compared with the same period a year earlier. It reports 250 incidents - nearly 10 a day - the highest number since it began its work 25 years ago. Among them are attacks on synagogues, including arson, and physical assaults on Jews. One man was set upon in Golders Green, north London, by two men who shouted, "This is for Gaza", as they punched and kicked him to the ground.

Blood-curding graffiti has appeared in Jewish areas across the country, slogans ranging from "Slay the Jewish pigs", and "Kill the Jews", to "Jewish bastardz." Jewish schools have been advised to be on high alert against attack. Most now have security guards on the door; some have a police presence.

The threat is real, and yet barely a word has been heard from those who pride themselves on their vigilance against racism. But there is more than a sin of omission here.

Take last month's demonstrations against Israel. Riazat Butt, the Guardian's religious affairs correspondent, describes in a joint edition of the Guardian's Islamophonic and Sounds Jewish podcasts how at one demo she heard the cry not only of "Down with Israel" but "Kill Jews". An anti-war protest in Amsterdam witnessed chants of: "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas."

At the London events, there were multiple placards deploying what has now become a commonplace image: the Jewish Star of David equated with the swastika. From the podium George Galloway declared: "Today, the Palestinian people in Gaza are the new Warsaw ghetto, and those who are murdering them are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1943."

Now what, do you imagine, is the effect of repeating, again and again, that Israel is a Nazi state? Even those with the scantest historical knowledge know that the Nazis are the embodiment of evil to which the only appropriate response is hate. How surprising is it if a young man, already appalled by events in Gaza, walks home from a demo and glimpses the Star of David - which he now sees as a latter-day swastika - outside a synagogue and decides to torch the building, or at least desecrate it? Yet Galloway, along with Livingstone, who was so careful in July 2005, did not hesitate to make the comparison (joined by a clutch of Jewish anti-Israel activists who should know better).

The counter-arguments here are predictable. Some will say they take pains to distinguish between Zionists and Jews. Intellectually, that's fine; in the seminar room, it holds water. The trouble is, it doesn't mean much on the street - at least not to the man who saw a group of Manchester Jews leaving synagogue on January 17 and shouted "Free Palestine, you motherfuckers," before giving them the Nazi salute.

The liberal left should know this already. After all, when Jack Straw wrote his notorious piece about the hijab, full of qualifications, progressives understood that none of that would matter: it would be read as an attack on all Muslims. And so it was. For all Straw's careful phrasing, Muslim women whose heads were covered were attacked. Liberals warned Straw that he was playing with fire. Today's anti-Israel activists need to realise they are doing the same.

Besides, this business of distinguishing between good and bad Jews has a long history. Anthony Julius, author of a definitive study of English antisemitism, says that, with the exception of the Nazis, Jew-haters have always made distinctions. Christian antisemites accepted Jews who were ready to convert and rejected those who refused. A century ago, Winston Churchill drew a line between homegrown British Jews and those spreading Bolshevism. Now the dividing line is affinity for Israel.

But the logical corollary of this is that, if Jews refuse to dissociate themselves from Israel, then they are fair game for abuse and attack until they publicly recant. Liberals rightly recoil from the constant pressure on Muslims to explain themselves and denounce jihadism or even islamism. Yet they make the same implicit demand when they suggest Jews are OK, unless they are Zionists. The effect is to make Jews' place in British society contingent on their distance from their fellow Jews, in this case, Israelis.

Nor is it good enough to say that most Jews support Israel. Yes, most have a strong affinity and family ties to the Jewish state. But that doesn't mean they support every policy, including the one that led to such mayhem in Gaza. And do we think that those who kicked the man in Golders Green first stopped to ask his opinion of the merits of Cast Lead?

I know that some will say that even raising this is an attempt to divert attention from the real and larger issue, Israel's brutality in Gaza and the colossal number of civilian deaths that entailed. I won't accept that. Regular readers know that I denounced Cast Lead from the beginning. But I shouldn't have to say that. These two matters are separate. It is perfectly possible to condemn Israel's current conduct and to stand firmly against anti-Jewish prejudice. And it's about time liberals and the left said so.

freedland@guardian.co.uk

Nazis, Stalinists and Islamists For Gaza

Interesting story on Neo-Nazis marching in Calgary with Islamists in support of Hamas in Gaza.

The story on the actual Nazi / Stalinist / Islamist Love Fest is here ;


http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/01/neo-nazis-join-pro-hamas-rally-in.html




I thought for a bit about just why Neo-Nazis would march alongside Stalinists and Islamists ( apart from the fact they are idiots ) and then this little note below from the Wikkipedia article about the Aryan Guard rang a bell ;



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Guard

As the demonstration wound down, members of the Aryan Guard were escorted to a waiting school bus by police and evacuated from the scene. An unknown number of anti-racism protesters, who had been under video surveillance during the demonstration, were detained as they left and forced to have their identification recorded by police.[15]


How useful it must be for the police and government to have the twenty Neo-Nazis all standing around in the street waving Swastikas for the camera's to record their names and faces, whilst the presence of the Nazis on the street then draws in mobs of leftists who oppose them and who can then also be filmed by the police.

In one go everyone gets to get their own police file !

The fact that Nazi's are willing to march alongside Islamists and Stalinists shows us the reality behind the Liberal media propaganda.

The White Nationalist Movement is a Nazi movement and it is aligned with the Islamists and the Stalinists because they are all anti-semitic movements.

The Nationalist Movement is a national independence movement which regards Gaza as an issue solely for Israelis and Palestinians. The nationalist movement regards anti-semitism as a diversionary tactic for the guilty amongst our own people, the inner enemy who have sold our people out, which is used to evade guilt for their own crimes.

By perpetuating the mythical spectre of a global Jewish conspiracy, the inner traitors of our own nations can escape being blamed for their own actions. Our nations and our people were sold out by our own people - it was our own blood who voted for the governments that passed the laws that destroyed our nations. The only treason is the inner treason of our own people. Blaming the Jews and supporting the pernicious myths of anti-semites is merely perpetuating the social, political and legal controls that the inner traitors hold over us.

If we do not see the enemy, then how can we ever fight the enemy.

By following like donkeys the rancid carrot of anti-semitism on the end of the stick is to do just what our slave masters want is to do.

A donkey led by a carrot must be the dumbest animal on the planet - apart from Stalinists, Nazis and Islamists it appears.

Anti-semitism and the myth of the global Jewish Conspiracy are the tools of the criminal elites in our nations and people who are really to blame for our plight.

The Nationalist movement would never sully their honour, or their loyalty to their race, folk and nation, by marching alongside Islamists or Stalinists in support of Islamist terrorists in Gaza.

Stalinists and Islamists are the mortal enemies of everything we as a movement hold dear - anyone who supports either the red flag or the black flag are our enemies.

Those amongst our ranks who march with the enemy, are the enemy.

The White Nationalist Movement is now just a pathetic joke, run by the police and the state and used as a front to recruit angry impressionable kids who can then be used by the corrupt, stupid and demented fools that 'run' the White Nationalist movement.

The moral of this story is that the next time a Nazi, a Stalinist or an Islamist asks you to goosestep alongside the Islamists and Stalinists for Gaza and Hamas think twice !


P.S for the upset Nazis that will read this article heres how it is ;

The issue for White Nationalists has never been about Jews, the issue was always simply Zionism.

The problem is that most White Nationalists are thick or as mad as a bunch of monkeys on LSD.

White Nationalists dont do complicated ideological politics. Keep it simple is their motto.

White Nationalists, like Stalinists and Islamists, are too stupid usually to understand complicated issues.

The odd clever White Nationalist in the leader of the White Nationalist movement is usually renowned for being a lunatic, a misognynist, a homosexual arse spanking nazi fetishist or a paedophile who also likes fires and big explosions. Usually it is a combination of all these groups.

The ones who are not of the above list are usually working for Searchlight or the Police or they are simply crooks who can make a few quid out of the movement.

The sincere ones are usually driven out of the white nationalist movement due to them getting sick and tired of the nutters, the idiots, the thugs and the crooks.

What you will find is that this situation is also mirrored exactly in the ranks of the Islamists and the Stalinists.

The biggest turd, as they say, always rises to the top in the ranks of the White Nationalists, Stalinists and Islamists.

The issue is Zionism and Zionists simply because they both place the interests of a foreign nation, Israel, above their loyalty to their race or nation.

Most Zionists are in fact not Jewish.

Most Zionists are in fact White European Christian dickheads who believe that Jesus is going to return, convert or kill all the Jews, destroy the world, kill all non-fundamentalist christians and impose a Fundamentalist Christian Fascist Theocratic Dictatorship over the entire planet that would make the fucking Taliban look like the Telly-Tubbies.

Zionists are primarily the inner traitors of our own people.

Zionism crosses all political boundaries, includes all ethnic groups and racial groups and is present in all nations and classes. It is a political project.

By perpetuating the myths of the anti-semitic scum that are paid to peddle anti-semitic myths, or who profit from peddling them, all the White Nationalists do is allow the real enemy of our people to hide.

Anti-Semites are reactionary tools who facilitate the power of the criminal elites that control our present political system. By speaking their anti-semitic nonsense they merely allow the State and governments to pass ever more anti-free speech Hate Crime laws that remove our right to free speech.

The more the Nazis, Islamists and Stalinists shout their nonsense - the faster the government can pass ever more laws to close down debate on issues such as immigration and multi-culturalism.

Anti-Semites are not just wrong, they are actively working against our interests as a community, a political movement, a civil rights movement and as a cultural movement.

Gaza - Its Your Fault.

The people responsible for the killing of Palestinians in Gaza are ;

1) Israel

2) Iran

3) Hamas

4) The white liberal elite of the West.

This is because the reason why Gaza is being hammered by the Israelis is because the white liberals in the West all ensured that Israel could not direct military action against Iran.

Therefore Israel had to disinfect Gaza, and probably Lebanon next as regards Hizbollah, of Hamas.

The white liberals used their power and influence in the media, politics and internationally to ensure that the US did not give the green light to an attack on Irans nuclear facilities.

Therefore Israel has undertaken the only other option it had left which was to sterilise Gaza of Hamas and remove Iranian influence from its borders.

Once Iran has its nuclear weapons then Israel is checkmated - and the rise in Arab demographics, Russian supplies of missiles and weapons to Iran and assymetric warfare will ensure Israel is under constant attack on its borders.

Once Iran has its nuclear weapons then it will use them to sign accords with other nations with a ' joint response ' deal, where nations such as Lebanon will be used as bases for terrorism and if Israel attacks them then Iran can deploy its conventional forces against Israel.

Israel will not be able to defeat a combined Arab army with modern Russian weapons, and if Israel used its nukes against any arab armies then it woul allow Iran to retaliate in kind - and just one nuclear bomb will destroy Israel whilst 10 nuclear bombs would barely make a dent in the number of Arabs and merely create a few million 'martyrs' whose deaths can be used as justification to destroy Israel in the future.

The whining, hand wringing liberals have no idea of political and military necessities so that nations can survive when faced with existential threats - they believe in such vapid ideals as 'negotiation' and rationalism when faced with forces that regard death as liberation and any form of comprimise as weakness and surrender.

The true enemies of the West are not the forces of Islamism. Islamic terrorism in the West is merely a symptom of the problem, it is not THE problem.

Islamism has taken root in the West because the inner enemy, the white liberals, the Zionist network and the rest of the delusional Dhimmis, have surrendered our nations to them.

A nationalist government could eradicate the Islamist threat in a month with a mixture of emergency trials, capital punishment, internment and deportations.

It is only the fact that we are controlled by traitors and criminals and our nation run by weaklings, fools and delusional cowards that the inner enemies of Islamism and Zionism have managed to take hold in our nation.

The liberals and the rest of the delusional fools that have run our nations for generations have failed in their primary duty - which is to protect our people.

They have allowed the tentacles of Zionism to take control of our media, they have allowed the money power of Islamic oil money to strangle our economic systems, they have allowed Liberalism to infect and poison our schools, universities and create the Servile State and they have allowed capitalism to corrupt and undermine our culture and political systems.

The BBC, and its anti-Israel stance, is anti-Israel because it is the main bastion of liberalism.

The printed press and other media are dominated by the pro-Israel lobby.

The NUJ are dominated by anti-Israel Liberals.

Not one of these institutions stands for Britain, British Nationalism and the British people - they all focus on immigrants, foreign nations and internationalism.

The Zionists that control the media do not care whether Britain becomes an Islamic republic, simply because the Jews in the UK will then be forced to flee to Israel - thereby bolstering the Zionist state itself. France has seen thousands of Jews flee the country and go to Israel because of the same thing. The non-Jewish Zionists, obsessed as they are by theological dogma or simply because they are bought and paid for, also do not care about the interests of British Jews.

For the Jewish Zionists, and the Non-Jewish Zionists, what matters is simply Israel - not Britain, the British people and British Jews.

Having a cabal of Zionists representing patriotic British Jews is like having the British wing of the German Nazi Party representing patriotic British Germans in Britain during World War Two.

The Leftists and their Jewish fellow travellers also do not care for British Jews, simply because for them their loyalty to the ideology of liberalism is simply based on the belief that immigration, multi-culturalism and the undermining of nationalism as a social and political force is good for them and their leftist / liberal ideology.

At each turn our nation is betrayed, surrendered and undermined by those that control the very functions that should ensure its survival.

If the Liberals in the media want to know who is to blame for Gaza, then it is them.

It is they who have refused to acknowledge and accept the political realities of nations, as they are against Nationalism as a concept.

For the leftists and the liberals Israel is the enemy simply because it is a nation that puts the interests of itself and its own people first.

If the British Jewish community want to know why mobs of screaming Islamists are rampaging through places like Golders Green and attacking Jews, it is because the Zionists that represent British Jews have supported mass immigration, the importation of Islamism and Islamists into the UK and because their Zionist leaders have supported the political parties that support political correctness, multi-culturalism and who rely on political donations from big business linked to Middle East Oil.

The world is the way it is because you allowed it to be.

You voted for them, you supported them and therefore it is your fault.

The BNP has only ever been the solution and not the problem.

Johhny Rotten of The Sex Pistols so eloquently said it best on the 14 January 1978, during the bands final date of their US tour at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.

As he sneered at the crowd after singing just one song , this being a cover of The Stooges ' No Fun', Johnny Rotten looked down at the seething crowd below the stage and said " Ever got the feeling youv'e been cheated. Good night ", then threw his microphone on the floor and walked off stage.


Do you ever get the feeling that youv'e been cheated ?

Hamas and Anti-Nationalism

There are few people more stupid than some of the idiot so called 'white nationalists' that support Hamas and despise Israel.

The excellent article below explains why Hamas are in fact an Islamist imperialist force that are anti-Nationalist.

Therefore any so called White Nationalist that supports Hamas, simply because Hamas like them are anti-Israel and anti-semitic, are a pathetic joke.



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5477420.ece

January 9, 2009

No way forward while the Hamas hydra lives
For Islamists in Gaza, Palestine is part of a global religious struggle not a battle to create an independent stateAmir Taheri
The conflict in Gaza has been triggered by Israel's belief that the status quo has become intolerable and should be overturned.

There are several reasons why Israel felt it could not live with the situation in Gaza. The most immediate is the rocket attacks by Hamas that have made life for nearly a tenth of Israelis an exercise in anxiety. Also a factor is that Hamas, since it staged its putsch two years ago, has closed Gaza to all Palestinian groups that have accepted a two-state solution. This makes it impossible for Israel and the administration of President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in the West Bank to restart negotiations that could lead to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

More importantly, perhaps, Hamas has forged an alliance with Iran based on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's strategy of “wiping Israel off the map”. Tehran's investment in Hamas is large enough to have given it a decisive say in shaping the group's strategy. Israelis see Hamas as one of the two arms of a pincer, along with Iranian-funded Hezbollah in Lebanon, that Tehran is building against them.

Thus, Israel's war aims are clear: end the rocket attacks, reopen Gaza to other Palestinian parties and eliminate the Iranian presence. This means creating a new status quo in which Hamas is not the dominant party in Gaza.


Some commentators have claimed that the cause of the current war is Israel's occupation. But Gaza - until last weekend - was the one bit of Arab territory nominally under Israeli occupation that was free of Israeli settlers and troops. Yet, most of Israel's troubles, in the form of rocket attacks and suicide operations, came from Gaza. At the other end of the spectrum, the Golan Heights, under Israeli occupation since 1967, have been as quiet as a churchyard despite the presence of large numbers of Israeli settlers and troops.

Hamas, as its charter and political literature make clear, does not want an end to Israeli occupation. It wants the end of Israel. That is because Hamas is part of a pan-Islamist movement with global messianic ambitions. Creating a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank is not its aim. A branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas dreams of world dominion for its version of Islam rather than a mini-state in 5,000 square kilometres of barren land in a geopolitical backyard.

Although officially created in 1987, Hamas's roots go back to the 1930s when Haj Amin al-Hussaini, the Grand Mufti of Palestine under the British Mandate, allied himself with Hitler and dreamt of reviving the Islamic Caliphate with himself as Caliph.

That Hamas cares little about Palestine as a would-be nation state is clear from its name and charter. Hamas is the Arab acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement”, making it clear that the movement regards Palestine not as a nation in its own right but as a small part of the ummah, the community of believers. Hamas is the only significant party in Palestine whose name does not include the words Palestine or Palestinian.

To Hamas ideologues, such as the late Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, love of Palestine as a nation is a form of sherk, that is to say false worship or idolatry. Hamas sees Palestinian nationalists such as Abu Mazen as traitors to Islam.

To Hamas, Palestine is part of a cause rather than a political project. One cannot negotiate with a cause that claims celestial benediction, especially when it rejects the very legitimacy of one's existence. A political project, however, is negotiable because it is about worldly problems such as territory, borders, security, exchange of populations and joint administration of certain areas, which could have worldly solutions.

For decades, Palestinians suffered because their leaders - starting with the Mufti and ending with Yassir Arafat - linked the problem of Palestine with big power rivalries in which Palestine was a slogan and a pretext. It was only in the 1990s that the Palestinian leadership, led by Fatah, managed to redefine Palestine as a territorial conflict between two neighbouring nations, rather than as part of a clash of civilisations. That redefinition led to the Oslo Accords and the creation of a Palestinian administration - the first step towards statehood.

Hamas, however, rejects that redefinition and is trying to recast Palestine as a religious issue in Islam's global struggle against the “infidel”. Many Palestinians see this as a betrayal of their national aspirations. They do not wish to be the sacrificial lamb of pan-Islamist global ambitions as they were for pan-Arabism in the 1960s.

Cutting Hamas down to size would be good not only for Israel but also for the Palestinian people, more specifically the people of Gaza, who have become captives of a one-party state mired in corruption and incompetence.

That, however, is no easy task. Hamas is a many-headed beast. One head represents the part of Hamas that deals with welfare, health and education. It imposed its domination in that field by driving out more than 200 NGOs, seizing control of the running of independent clinics and schools and infiltrating its people into the running of international aid agencies.

A second head is represented by Hamas's political network that managed to win 46 per cent of the votes in the only free elections held in the territories. Although the Hamas political machine remains strong, it is not at all certain that it could deliver that many votes in the next elections.

A third head of Hamas consists of its network of business concerns. Through a mixture of patronage, judicious investments and intimidation it has gained control of the Gazan economy - everything from barber shops to textile workshops. It also runs a protection racket and a contraband network. As a business concern, Hamas raised its profile when it seized control of more than 600 companies controlled by Fatah and the Arafat clan.

Finally, there is Hamas's terror machine, a paramilitary force of about 20,000 men and women, answerable only to their own command structures. It is that part of Hamas that Tehran is trying to buy and control through figures such as Khaled Mishal, head of the Hamas political bureau.

Later this year Palestinians are due to vote for a new parliament and president. Divided into a Hamasstan in Gaza and Fatah-land in the West Bank, they would have little chance of creating a unified government capable of pressing for a Palestinian state. A change of status quo in Gaza could give them a chance.

Amir Taheri's latest book is The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution, published this month by Encounter Books