I think the value in dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood is the possibility of establishing personal relationships between our foreign service professionals and its influential members. Those ties will make dealing with the MB a lot easier should they come to power - and will provide us with some fair warning of their intentions should they think about committing to a course of violent actions. We can safely ignore their rhetoric, although pointing out that it is painful and embarassing to us. Trying to censor the discussion outright, on rationalist Western terms, won't have any effect.

However, I don't believe that providing financial or material assistance to Hamas (or a Hamas lead Palestinian Authority) is a wise course of action. Hamas is involved in active violence against a long standing US ally. Every dollar we give to them, even if it isn't spent on weapons, frees up another dollar for them *to* spend on weapons. The whole point of money is that it's fungible, after all. Similar logic applies to humanitarian relief - if we're shipping over antibiotics, that's money they're free to spend on high explosives.

We support elections, and a representative Palestinian government. However, that government has decided to make statements and take actions overtly hostile to the United States of America. While declaring war on them isn't in our interests, neither is it in our interests to *give* them weapons with which to clobber us. The Palestinians had a choice between a Fatah lead government that would placate the United States and Israel, and a Hamas lead government that would clear up the endemic corruption in the Palestinian state. That's a crappy choice, but they made it. Continuing to fork over money and aid to Hamas is basically paying them not to hurt us - a strategy that will not succeed. Cutting them off, on the other hand, is treating them as a peer - a fellow nation - and not some helpless bunch of refugees whose words and actions have no meaning for us.