Their Own Fault, Eh?

Larison is wary of "holding responsible" Palestinians for voting for Hamas:

The vital distinction between people and government will usually be blurred or erased for one of two reasons: the state needs to use the people as a shield against criticism, or a foreign state needs to reduce the population to an extension of the state in order to make war on it more completely. Realizing this should make us even more wary of rhetoric that invests democracy and elections with some moral significance. It should also warn us that the natural complement to valorizing popular sovereignty and democratic government is the demonization of entire peoples by identifying them with their political leadership in an indistinguishable mass.