Professor Volokh today posts an excerpt from The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS)-Palestine. He makes a serious point, wondering how one can negotiate with a group so disconnected from reality. Me, I just wonder how certain groups become bees in the Hamas bonnet. Take, for instance, these bizarre accusations:

That is why you find [the Zionists] giving [attempts at liberalizing women] constant attention through information campaigns, films, and the school curriculum, using for that purpose their lackeys who are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs.

With their money [the Zionists] formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.

Hamas has always been a bit of a Janus organization. Suicide bombings against enemies are good, as are non-corrupt social services for allies. One can rationalize those positions if one tries hard. But either its constitution is an attempt at comedy--and this I doubt--or the organization is also what a friend of mine would characterize as "plain batshit crazy."

Thankfully, however much Lions or the Rotary Club members are tools of Jewish Hegemony, Inc., they're pretty mild-mannered about it. I mean, imagine what might have happened if Hamas had published some cartoons of prominent greedy Rotarians with sheckels in their eyes! We might have had mosques burnt down, the Iranian embassy stormed and hostages held, and all sorts of other things that I'd feel compelled to denounce. Fortunately, these folks have been pretty quiescent since 1988.