I cannot stop sympathizing with Palestinians

I know some of them supported Saddam and Zarqawi. I still cannot stop sympathizing with them. I cannot ignore the injustice of their plight. Many Iraqi Shia, including my parents, feel this way, despite the fact that some Palestinians will not stop praising Saddam. It bothers me (and most Shia) that Palestinians in general seemed to side with the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, but it is not surprising, given that most Palestinians are Sunni. It bothers me that hardcore Baathists make the Palestinian cause the number one cause for Iraq, and some of the most passionate supporters of Palestine are some of the biggest jerks in the world. This doesn't change the fact that Palestinians have been victimized in the last 60 years. The injustice continues, and people continue to write about it.

Through an exchange with a fellow Iraqi Shi3i, I came across the article below. I find it interesting that many of the great writers who expose the injustice are Jewish, and yet many American Christians disbelieve them or dismiss them.

'Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’

'It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.

...Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida. "In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better." '