[tzs]

How about putting Hamas' feet to the fire? They have been condemned by human rights groups for widespread arrests, torture, and killing of their political opponents in Gaza.

They have simply been terrible for the Palestinian people. Besides suppressing political opposition, they also purposefully try to launch attacks from heavily populated civilian areas hoping that the civilians will end up acting as human shields.

[AtlasLion]

Same has been with Israel, there were more than 50 UN resolutions voted against Israel, all of them vetoed by the USA.

Edit: And if you want to quote talk about Human rights organisations, you should also talk about what they say about Israel. A sample: http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012/world-report-2012-israe...

[MichaelSalib]

So, Hamas is about average for governments that the US supports?

[tptacek]

Why is it so hard to say that one entity is bad without litigating the badness of every other entity? The military wing of Hamas is bad. They shoot rockets at civilians, deliberately, presumably in a bid to draw Israel into unrestrained conflict. They are killing civilians in order to start a war. That's bad. They're bad. Bad is practically their charter.

Are there worse entities? Sure. Now back to the matter at hand.

[MichaelSalib]

I guess I don't see why saying they're bad matter in and of itself.

Of course they're bad.

So what? We give weapons and money to lots of bad governments. Should we do so with Hamas? Just saying "they're bad!" doesn't really answer any interesting policy questions.

But hey, if you think foreign policy is about feeling moral superiority by saying "they're bad!" over and over, please don't let me stop you.

[tptacek]

Generally, no. I think we should tend to avoid giving money to organizations that fire missiles at civilians in order to purposefully start wars. I think that's a pretty easy line item for our foreign policy rulebook.