Peter Beinart, the $143,235 a year, one-day-a-week associate professor at the City University of New York, is back in the news. The Vineyard Gazette has a page-one interview with him, reporting, "He would like to see Obama take a stronger stand — giving support for example to a unity government between Fatah and Hamas."
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (hardly a pro-Israel bastion), Hamas's "founding charter commits the group to the destruction of Israel, the replacement of the PA with an Islamist state on the West Bank and Gaza, and to raising 'the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.'" According to the same source, "Hamas is believed to have killed more than five hundred people in more than 350 separate terrorist attacks since 1993."
Hamas in Gaza bans women from riding motorbikes, and it jails gays, according to this AP dispatch.
Separately, the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Clifford May, reports at National Review Online that Mr. Beinart lost his temper after a CNN appearance with Mr. May:
As soon as we were off the air he called me — at a high decibel level — a "bigot." I suggested it might be more persuasive were he to frame an argument for me to consider. Echoing Bloomberg, he replied that I should be "ashamed of myself."
To Peter's credit, he later apologized for "losing his cool."
If Mr. Beinart is looking for bigots he might keep an eye on Hamas, the guys he reportedly wants President Obama to support. Not only don't they like gays and women, they aren't big fans of Jews, either.
