But I say to you, Love Your enemies

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1616171&page=2
Clever religious people might recognize the allusion from the header. Those who do and then follow the story will no doubt say, "huh?"
Which, coincidentally, is exactly what I am saying. Many current news articles have been criticizing Israel (and the U.S.) for their reaction to Hamas winning. Criticisms have been raised about "letting democracy take its course". And, to an extent, I agree...but there is such thing as taking ot too far.
The voting totals were overwhelming. The Palestinians made it clear who they wanted. They did so knowing full well the platform Hamas runs on, has always run on, and will continue to run on for the foreseeable future. That would be, Israel is evil, we will overthrow them with violence. We will accelerate the violence until we get our way.
With that being said, why is there ANY criticism whatsoever of Israel suspending funding them? Would you fund someone whose avowed goal in life was to kill you and your family? Would you give money to someone who had repeatedly bombed your house, shot at you, threatened you, and promised to continue doing so until you were dead?
That is the nature of politics...if someone does somethign you don't like, don't fund them. (Unless you have moral objections to some classroom instruction or to funding things you call murder...then you are required to fund them in our "free" country.)
I say good for Israel. Good job putting the money in escrow instead of keeping it. This shows that you are willing to help Palestinians interested in non-violent negotiations...as do the recent and future pull-outs from Gaza and the West Bank. Pull-outs, by the way, I actually find it unreasonable that people demanded. For those who have forgotten, Israel took those after they were attacked by people intent on destroying their existence. Right or wrong, this is the historically accepted method of nation creation and growth. It is no less legitimate and no more legitimate than the existence of Iraq, Iran, or any other country CREATED IN THE 20TH CENTURY. We are not talking about countries hundreds of years old with mass amounts of history and tradition behind them. We are talking about countries created after World War I under the League of Nations Mandate system in order to protect the "interests" of Britain and France, among others.
So, yeah, great, democracy worked and we saw that the non-extremist Palestinians prefer to be ruled by a group who professes nothing but hatred and aims for complete destruction. If I were Israel, I would probably not just suspend the payment of millions of dollars...I would not just ask the world community to work to modify the stance of working for their destruction...I would seriously consider cutting off electricity, too. Maybe I am too harsh, but if my neighbor swears to kill me, I am going to do everything possible to make that hard for him to do.