Hamas Quotes

Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.

War is insanity magnified, feeding off toxic madness which then excretes chaos completely indifferent to the slaughtered rhymes and screaming reasons of human beings.

I tell my story as well to let the Israeli people know that there is hope. If I, the son of a terrorist organization dedicated to the extinction of Israel, can reach a point where I not only learned to love the Jewish people but risked my life for them, there is a light of hope.

But Hamas was not alone in its cover-up and self-serving deceptions. Despite what it displayed on its own news footage, Al-Jazeera continued to broadcast the lies.

But blaming Islam is a simple answer, easier and less controversial than re-examining the core political issues and grievances that resonate in much of the Muslim world: the failures of many Muslim governments and societies, some aspects of U.S. foreign policy representing intervention and dominance, Western support for authoritarian regimes, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or support for Israel's military battles with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. (p. 136-137)

Israel attacked Gaza solely in response to hundreds of rockets sent by Hamas to kill as many Israelis as possible.

Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard and warder.

Palestinians no longer blamed Yasser Arafat or Hamas for their troubles. Now they blamed the Israelis for killing their children. But I still couldn't escape a fundamental question: Why were those children out there in the first place? Where were the parents? Why didn't their mothers and fathers keep them inside? Those children should have been sitting at their desks in school, not running in the streets throwing stones at armed soldiers.

Those primarily responsible for the current desperate situation of the Palestinian people have been their own leaders, from Haj Hussaini (the late Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) to Yassir Arafat, to the leaders of Hamas and the other terrorist groups. These leaders have placed a higher priority on the destruction of Israel than on the construction of Palestine.

Arab nationalism in its traditional form was the way in which secular Arab Christians like Edward had found and kept a place for themselves, while simultaneously avoiding the charge of being too 'Western.' It was very noticeable among the Palestinians that the most demonstrably 'extreme' nationalists—and Marxists—were often from Christian backgrounds. George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh used to be celebrated examples of this phenomenon, long before anyone had heard of the cadres of Hamas, or Islamic Jihad. There was an element of overcompensation involved, or so I came to suspect.

Then I read this: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). That’s it! I was thunderstruck

The fact is, few Westerners can come close to understanding the complexities of the Middle East and its people.

we must love people—on all sides of the world—unconditionally.

The entire Hamas Charter, from its preamble to the last article, pursues only one purpose: the violent elimination of Israel.

attacking Hamas was like scraping away the pus from a gangrenous limb. Iran was the sickness, and Hamas and its attacks on Israel only the putrid symptoms.

Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.

The houses were not Hamas. The kids were not Hamas. Their clothes and toys were not Hamas. The neighborhood was not Hamas. The air was not Hamas. Our ears were not Hamas. Our eyes were not Hamas. The one who ordered the killing, the one who pressed the button thought only of Hamas.

Anyone who knows the basics of what is happening in Gaza knows that the more people you kill, the more you play into Hamas's hands. They flourish on this shit, after each war, they get more money & more recruits

I am not one of those who believes—as Obama is said to believe—that a solution to the Palestinian statehood question would bring an end to Muslim resentment against the United States. (Incidentally, if he really does believe this, his lethargy and impotence in the face of Netanyahu's consistent double-dealing is even more culpable.) The Islamist fanatics have their own agenda, and, as in the case of Hamas and its Iranian backers, they have already demonstrated that nothing but the destruction of Israel and the removal of American influence from the region will possibly satisfy them. No, it is more the case that justice—and a homeland for the Palestinians—is a good and necessary cause in its own right. It is also a special legal and moral responsibility of the United States, which has several times declared a dual-statehood outcome to be its objective.

Although more Palestinian civilians died than Israeli civilians, Israel was acting within the law of war while Hamas was not. War crimes are not proved merely by citing casualty statistics but by evaluating and understanding the reasons for casualties.

With Hamas now in control of the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed a full-blown siege. Goods entering the strip were reduced to a bare minimum; regular exports were stopped completely; fuel supplies were cut; and leaving and entering Gaza were only rarely permitted. Gaza was in effect turned into an open-air prison, where by 2018 at least 53 percent of some two million Palestinians lived in a state of poverty,24 and unemployment stood at an astonishing 52 percent, with much higher rates for youth and women.25 What had begun with international refusal to recognize Hamas’s election victory had led to a disastrous Palestinian rupture and the blockade of Gaza. This sequence of events amounted to a new declaration of war on the Palestinians. It also provided indispensable international cover for the open warfare that was to come.

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories—required under the rules of American journalism—although we know they are untrue.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a 'warrant for genocide' forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test.

Traditional Muslims stand at the foot of the ladder, living in guilt for not really practicing Islam. At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur’an. Moderates are somewhere in between. A moderate Muslim is actually more dangerous than a fundamentalist, however, because he appears to be harmless, and you can never tell when he has taken that next step toward the top. Most suicide bombers began as moderates.

If my mother was Hamas—unpredictable, impulsive, and frustrated at being stifled—my father was Israel. He’d refuse to meet her most basic needs until she exploded. Then he would point at her and cry, “Look at what a monster she is, what a terror!” But never once did he consider why she had resorted to such extreme tactics, or his role in the matter.

Di dunia ini, nggak ada anjing yang jahat. Mereka cuma ketakutan. Itu pun bukan salah mereka. (Kaori Minato - Happy!)

And (HAMAS) instead offered alternative ideas on how to both confront Israel without surrendering and govern the Palestinians without corruption.

The United States allegedly presses for democratic change in the region, and when it happens, democracy brings to power anti-US parties.

For these women, Hamas’s view of women was laughable. And since they couldn’t hear the appeal of such views themselves, they were deaf to the appeal they held for their students.

Hama today is nearly without men. There are only women and old people. My sister calls it “the Widow City.

I don’t know if it is going to be a tsunami, a meteorite, or what, but God had Gaza evacuated because of the upcoming destruction, only to give it back to Israel after Hamas is destroyed.

Hamas, on the other hand, Islamized the Palestinian problem, making it a religious problem. And this problem could be resolved only with a religious solution, which meant that it could never be resolved because we believed that the land belonged to Allah. Period. End of discussion. Thus for Hamas, the ultimate problem was not Israel’s policies. It was the nation-state Israel’s very existence.

Hamas repeatedly and continually used protected civilian sites for military attacks, rendering them legitimate military targets. An IDF study shows that Hamas fired rockets from amusement parks, first aid stations, U.N. facilities, playgrounds, hospitals, medical clinics, and schools.28 Consequently, Hamas, not Israel, is the party committing war crimes. Incidental or collateral damage on both sides

Overall, Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and dragged more than 240 hostages and back across the border into underground tunnels in Gaza. It was the deadliest attack in Jewish history since the Holocaust.

I asked myself what Palestinians would do if Israel disappeared—if everything not only went back to the way it was before 1948 but if all the Jewish people abandoned the Holy Land and were scattered again. And for the first time, I knew the answer. We would still fight. Over nothing. Over a girl without a head scarf. Over who was toughest and most important. Over who would make the rules and who would get the best seat.

Truth and forgiveness are the only solution for the Middle East. The challenge, especially between Israelis and Palestinians, is not to find the solution. The challenge is to be the first courageous enough to embrace it.

I don't stand with Hamas, I am Hamas, just like, I don't stand with Ukraine, I am Ukraine. Russia stops fighting, war ends - Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends.

What the West does not understand about Islamism is that Jihad is very systematic. It has stages. If Muslims have the upper hand, then Jihad is waged by force. If Muslims do not have the upper hand, then Jihad is waged through financial and political means. Since Muslims do not have the upper hand in America or Europe, they talk about peace in front of you while supporting Hamas and Hezbollah in the back room. The whole idea of Islam being a peaceful religion emanates from that silent stage of Jihad.

As long as we continue to search for enemies anywhere but inside ourselves, there will always be a Middle East problem. Religion is not the solution. Religion without Jesus is just self-righteousness. Freedom from oppression will not resolve things either. Delivered from the oppression of Europe, Israel became the oppressor. Delivered from persecution, Muslims became persecutors. Abused spouses and children often go on to abuse spouses and children. It is a cliché, but it’s still true: hurt people, unless they are healed, hurt people.

In all the media coverage of militias and militants, Hamas, Fateh, and the Israeli army, one forgets that they operate in the midst of these large numbers of innocent people, crammed into 360 square kilometers, an area “slightly more than twice the size of Washington, DC.

America must signal its zero tolerance for jihadists by investigating U.N. ties to terrorists, including the U.N.’s inexcusable actions in Gaza, such as allowing Hamas to store rockets in U.N. buildings, booby-trap U.N. facilities, and build terror tunnels from U.N. structures.

Hamas leaders have made it repeatedly clear that they would accept a two state settlement in accord with the international consensus that has been blocked by United States and Israel for 40 years. Ceasefires have been regularly observed by Hamas until Israel violate them with violence

Mi innervosisco facilmente quando penso troppo, ma non voglio smettere di pensare. La mia testa è il solo posto dove non un soldato di Tsahal, non un tizio di Hamas, né mio padre né mia madre possono entrare. La mia testa è casa mia, l'unica casa che ho, troppo piccola per tutto quello che ci devo mettere ed è per questo che mi sono messo a scrivere.

Hey, Wien!", brüllt sie in die Stadt raus. "Guck mal, wer hier ist!

As long as we continue to search for enemies anywhere but inside ourselves, there will always be a Middle East problem.

Our enemies are ideas, and ideas don’t care about incursions and curfews.

Hamas’s assertions of positive plurality were strongly contested, most scathingly in a report issued by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, which accused the Executive Force and al-Qassam of a wide range of human rights abuses, including attacks on journalists, policing of public spaces, illegitimate arrests, torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners, and intimidation of civil servants.

I hear all the time that peace activists are naive, that it is impossible to talk to extremists--people who have no regard for the lives of innocents... But in my experience in conflict zones the world over, there are always people to talk to. From members of Hamas in Gaza to Baathists under Saddam's Iraq to the Taliban in Afganistan to government officials in Iran, it is a major blunder to label all our perceived enemies as extremists incapable of rational conversation. People join militant groups for many reasons--religious, family, social pressure, revenge for some wrong they experienced, political ideology, poverty. With such diversity of motives, the are always some people who can be enticed to talk about peace. Our goal should be to seek them out, to strengthen the moderates. Unfortunately, our actions have only served to embolden the extremists.

Hm?" Sie runzelt die Stirn. "Ein was? Ein Stativ?" "Was hat er gesagt?", fragt Hama durchs Handy. "Ob er ein Dativ ist? Dem Tariq, dem Tariq, was redest du da?" "Sei still" sagt Maya zu ihrer Freundin und wirft mir dann einen verwirrten Blick zu. "Wie meinst du das?" Ich hab das Gefühl, jede Eigenschaft, die man mir als Mensch zuschreibt, dient eher anderen Menschen als mir. Ich fühl mich halt nie angekommen, egal wo ich bin. Ich habe keine Ahnung, wie ich das meine, ich bin einfach verdammt müde.

Israeli intelligence, on the other hand, relied mostly on human resources—had countless spies in mosques, Islamic organizations, and leadership roles; and had no problem recruiting even the most dangerous terrorists. They knew they had to have eyes and ears on the inside, along with minds that understood motives and emotions and could connect the dots. America understood neither Islamic culture nor its ideology. That, combined with open borders and lax security made it a much softer target than Israel.

The Fatah mutiny was bitter and costly and intensified the concern of ‘Arafat and his colleagues about the emergence of rivals, especially those under the influence of hostile regimes. The concern was well founded, given the efforts by the movement’s adversaries to create alternatives, such as the village leagues in the Occupied Territories. Notably, Hamas, founded in 1987 (and initially discreetly supported by Israel with the objective of weakening the PLO19), was already beginning to develop into a formidable competitor.

Many people in the West who stereotype all Muslims as terrorists don’t know about the side of Islam that reflects love and mercy. It cares for the poor, widows, and orphans. It facilitates education and welfare. It unites and strengthens. This is the side of Islam that motivated those early leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, there is also the other side, the one that calls all Muslims to jihad, to struggle and contend with the world until they establish a global caliphate, led by one holy man who rules and speaks for Allah.

Mir wurde in der Ambulanz gesagt, ich sei eine mutige junge Frau, weil ich mich getraut habe, Hilfe anzunehmen. Im ersten Moment wollte ich protestieren, weil es sich nicht wie Mut angefühlt hat, sondern eher wie Aufgeben. Aber daran zu arbeiten, besser zu werden, ist eigentlich das Gegenteil von Aufgeben. Ich habe es ja schon Tariq gesagt: Es fühlt sich eher so an, als könnte ich nach langer Zeit wieder daran glauben, dass alles wirklich gut werden kann. Es fühlt sich auch ein klein wenig wie damals an, als ich mit den Sadeem-Geschwistern und Hama auf dem Dach stand und auf Wien runtergeblickt habe. Als wäre ich unverwüstlich.

Israel is not just any small country. It is the only small country - the only country, period - whose neighbors publicly declare its very existence an affront to law, morality and religion and make its extinction an explicit , paramount national goal. Iran, Libya, and Iraq conduct foreign policies designed for the killing of Israelis and the destruction of their state. They choose their allies (Hamas, Hezbollah) and develop their weapons (suicide bombs, poison gas, anthrax, nuclear missiles) accordingly. Countries as far away as Malaysia will not allow a representative of Israel on their soil or even permit the showing of 'Schindler's List' lest it engender sympathy for Zion.

A truce between Israel and Palestine? Imagine walking into a doctor’s office. You sit down, pick up a magazine, and begin to read. A few minutes later, a man walks in, the man who killed your wife, the man whose son you murdered. He sits down, picks up a magazine, and begins to read. A two-state solution to the problem between Israel and Palestine? Imagine walking into a doctor’s office. You sit down, pick up a magazine, and begin to read. Next door, a man walks into the restaurant, the man who killed your wife, the man whose son you murdered. He sits down at a table, orders a meal, and begins to eat. In either case, there is an intolerable tension that has resisted resolution by diplomacy, combat, sanctions, or segregation. Forgiveness is the only reasonable solution.

Ubiquitous surveillance means that anyone could be convicted of lawbreaking, once the police set their minds to it. It is incredibly dangerous to live in a world where everything you do can be stored and brought forward as evidence against you at some later date. There is significant danger in allowing the police to dig into these large data sets and find “evidence” of wrongdoing, especially in a country like the US with so many vague and punitive laws, which give prosecutors discretion over whom to charge with what, and with overly broad material witness laws. This is especially true given the expansion of the legally loaded terms “terrorism,” to include conventional criminals, and “weapons of mass destruction,” to include almost anything, including a sawed-off shotgun. The US terminology is so broad that someone who donates $10 to Hamas’s humanitarian arm could be considered a terrorist.

Then I read this: “You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). That's it! I was thunderstruck. Never before had I heard anything like this. But I knew that this was the message I had been searching for all my life. For years I had struggled to know who my enemy was, and I had looked for my enemies outside of Islam and Palestine, but I suddenly realized that the Israelis were not my enemies. Neither was Hamas, nor my Uncle Ibrahim, nor the kid who beat me… nor the ape like guards... I saw that enemies were not defined by nationality, religion, or color. I understood that we all share the same common enemies. Greed, pride, and all of the bad ideas and the darkness of the devil that live inside us. That meant I could love anyone.

Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible. Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence made it more difficult for moderate leaders on both sides to negotiate. In the long term, the continuing confrontation makes it more likely that ever more extreme leaders will be chosen on each side, pledged not to negotiate with the enemy. The process of polarization is all the more probably when terrorists deliberately choose targets that they know will cause outrage and revulsion, such as attacks on cherished national symbols, on civilians, and even children. We can also think of this in individual terms. Imagine an ordinary Palestinian Arab who has little interest in politics and who disapproves of terrorist violence. However, after a suicide bombing, he finds that he is subject to all kinds of official repression, as the police and army hold him for long periods at security checkpoints, search his home for weapons, and perhaps arrest or interrogate him as a possible suspect. That process has the effect of making him see himself in more nationalistic (or Islamic) terms, stirs his hostility to the Israeli regime, and gives him a new sympathy for the militant or terrorist cause. The Israeli response to terrorism is also valuable for the terrorists in global publicity terms, since the international media attack Israel for its repression of civilians. Hamas military commander Salah Sh’hadeh, quoted earlier, was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza in 2002, an act which by any normal standards of warfare would represent a major Israeli victory. In this case though, the killing provoked ferocious criticism of Israel by the U.S. and western Europe, and made Israel’s diplomatic situation much more difficult. In short, a terrorist attack itself may or may not attract widespread publicity, but the official response to it very likely will. In saying this, I am not suggesting that governments should not respond to terrorism, or that retaliation is in any sense morally comparable to the original attacks. Many historical examples show that terrorism can be uprooted and defeated, and military action is often an essential part of the official response. But terrorism operates on a logic quite different from that of most conventional politics and law enforcement, and concepts like defeat and victory must be understood quite differently from in a regular war.

Gazans hypothesized that the brutality of the offensive was a tactic to force them to turn against Hamas. In many instances this worked, particularly when Hamas showed its own merciless face. Under the heavy toll of bombing, Hamas used the chaotic environment of war to settle its own political scores and carry out extrajudicial assassinations of its domestic enemies, including members of Fatah who were held in its jails, as well as suspected collaborators or informants for Israel.40 More disturbingly, in the early days of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas’s Ministry of Interior called on citizens not to respond to evacuation orders by the Israeli army, asserting that these were only issued as a form of psychological warfare to create panic.41 Many in Gaza criticized Hamas, not least for its role in dragging the coastal enclave into another conflagration. Others were critical of Hamas’s governance record and its authoritarian streak.

What the West does not understand about Islamism is that Jihad is very systematic. It has stages. If Muslims have the upper hand, then Jihad is waged by force. If Muslims do not have the upper hand, then Jihad is waged through financial and political means. Since Muslims do not have the upper hand in America or Europe, they talk about peace in front of you while supporting Hamas and Hezbollah in the back room. The whole idea of Islam being a peaceful religion emanates from that silent stage of Jihad. Sheikh Qaradawi has taught Muslims this form of trickery at conferences in the U.S., I have it on video. At one conference, Qaradawi used the example of Salahu-Deen Al-Ayubi (Saladin). Saladin was asked to concede to peace with the verse from the Qur’an 8:61, “And if they incline to peace, then incline to it and trust in Allah.” However, from Qur’an 47:35, he replied, “And be not slack so as to cry for peace and you have the upper hand.”93

If a one-state solution is a nonstarter, what are the prospects for a two-state solution? Put simply, they appear very bleak. Bleak primarily because the Palestinian Arabs, in the deepest fibers of their being, oppose such an outcome, demanding, as they did since the dawn of their national movement, all of Palestine as their patrimony. And I would hazard that, in the highly unlikely event that Israel and the PNA were in the coming years to sign a two-state agreement, it would in short order unravel. It would be subverted and overthrown by those forces in the Palestinian camp—probably representing Palestinian Arab majority opinion and certainly representing the historic will of the Palestinian national movement—bent on having all of Palestine. To judge from its past behavior, the PNA would be unwilling and, probably, incapable of reining in the more militant, expansionist factions—Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and so on—who would represent themselves as carrying on the patriotic, religious duty of resisting the Zionist invader. No Palestinian leader can fight them without being dubbed a “traitor” and losing his public’s support.

* In 2012 fatah and Hamas forged unity agreement and accepted all of the demands of the quartet. Obama administration also approved this agreement threatened the long-term goal of dividing Gaza from the West Bank. Something had to be done, three Israeli boys were murdered in the West Bank the Netanyahu government had strong evidence that once they were dead but use the opportunity to launch a rampage in the West Bank. During the 18 day rampage Israeli soldiers arrested 419 Palestinians and killed six, Hamas finally reacted with its first rocket strikes in 19 months. This provided the pretext for operation protective edge on July 8 by the end of July 15 hundred Palestinians had been killed 70% of them were civilians including hundreds of women and children. Three civilians in Israel were killed. Large areas of Gaza were turned into rubble. Gauzes main power plant was attacked, which is a war crime rescue teams and ambulances were repeatedly attacked for hospitals were attacked another war crime. Are you in school was attacked harbouring 3300 refugees who had fled the ruins of their neighbourhoods on the orders of the Israeli army

Statement on Hamas (October 10th, 2023) When Israel strikes, it's "national security" - when Palestine strikes back, it's "terrorism". Just like over two hundred years ago when native americans resisted their homeland being stolen, it was called "Indian Attack". Or like over a hundred years ago when Indian soldiers in the British Army revolted against the empire, in defense of their homeland, it was called "Sepoy Mutiny". The narrative never changes - when the colonizer terrorizes the world, it's given glorious sounding names like "exploration" and "conquest", but if the oppressed so much as utters a word in resistance, it is branded as attack, mutiny and terrorism - so that, the real terrorists can keep on colonizing as the self-appointed ruler of land, life and morality, without ever being held accountable for violating the rights of what they deem second rate lifeforms, such as the arabs, indians, latinos and so on. After all this, some apes will still only be interested in one stupid question. Do I support Hamas? To which I say this. Until you've spent a lifetime under an oppressive regime, you are not qualified to ask that question. An ape can ask anything its puny brain fancies, but it's up to the human to decide whether the ape is worthy of a response. What do you think, by the way - colonizers can just keep coming as they please, to wipe their filthy feet on us like doormat, and we should do nothing - just stay quiet! For creatures who call themselves civilized, you guys have a weird sense of morality. Yet all these might not get through your thick binary skull, so let me put it to you bluntly. I don't stand with Hamas, I am Hamas, just like, I don't stand with Ukraine, I am Ukraine. Russia stops fighting, war ends - Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends. However, I do have one problem here. Why do civilians have to die, if that is indeed the case - which I have no way of confirming, because news reports are not like reputed scientific data, that a scientist can naively trust. During humankind's gravest conflicts news outlets have always peddled a narrative benefiting the occupier and demonizing the resistance, either consciously or subconsciously. So never go by news reports, particularly on exception circumstances like this. No matter the cause, no civilian must die, that is my one unimpeachable law. But the hard and horrific fact of the matter is, only the occupier can put an end to the death and destruction peacefully - the resistance does not have that luxury.

A poll produced by Birzeit University in the West Bank at the time confirmed Hamas’s fears, showing that 77 percent of Palestinians favored recognition of Israel, less than five months after voting Hamas into the legislature.120 Under Haniyeh’s leadership, Hamas’s cabinet sought to limit the fallout as it worked with president Abbas’s office to reach a compromise.121 Haniyeh’s pragmatic efforts faced significant obstruction as both Israel and Palestinian factions, as well as internal Hamas forces, sought to prevent a rapprochement from emerging.122 In early June 2006, Prime Minister Olmert leaked information that Israel had approved three presidential trucks with approximately three thousand arms to be delivered to Fatah across the Allenby Bridge from Jordan, further inflaming tension among factions.123 From the Gaza Strip, rocket fire increased. This raised suspicions that Hamas’s external leadership, along with leaders within Gaza who were committed to Hamas’s project, were encouraging al-Qassam to prevent Haniyeh from adopting a moderate position in discussions with Abbas.124 On June 9, Israel carried out an air strike that killed a family of seven in Beit Lahiya, Gaza, who were picnicking on the beach. Officially breaking the ceasefire that had lasted since the Cairo Declaration the previous summer, al-Qassam promised “earthquakes.”125

The prevailing inability or unwillingness to talk about Hamas in a nuanced manner is deeply familiar. During the summer of 2014, when global newsrooms were covering Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, I watched Palestinian analysts being rudely silenced on the air for failing to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization outright. This condemnation was demanded as a prerequisite for the right of these analysts to engage in any debate about the events on the ground. There was no other explanation, it seemed, for the loss of life in Gaza and Israel other than pure-and-simple Palestinian hatred and bloodlust, embodied by Hamas. I wondered how many lives, both Palestinian and Israeli, have been lost or marred by this refusal to engage with the drivers of Palestinian resistance, of which Hamas is only one facet. I considered the elision of the broader historical and political context of the Palestinian struggle in most conversations regarding Hamas. Whether condemnation or support, it felt to me, many of the views I faced on Palestinian armed resistance were unburdened by moral angst or ambiguity. There was often a certainty or a conviction about resistance that was too easily forthcoming. I have struggled to find such. I have struggled to find such certainty in my own study of Hamas, even as I remain unwavering in my condemnation of targeting civilians, on either side.

The town of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, like all the other towns and villages in the West Bank and the Strip, was placed under military curfew for three days. This short period was enough for the army to perform its routine devastation. Muhammad Ahmad al-Astal, who was then twenty-four years old, recalled how the soldiers burst into the house where his friends usually gathered, about ten Palestinian men in all. The soldiers took four of them to another room. He remained with three other members of the family. Two of them were taken by the soldiers to a corner of the room and beaten with rifle stocks; they were also punched, slapped and kicked. He and another family member were ordered to empty the cupboard of its contents, clothing and other household items. In his own words: ‘The soldiers called me over, slapped me on the face and told me, ‘You are Hamas’. I returned to empty the cupboard but I was called over again. This time they told me, ‘You are Islamic Jihad’, and slapped me again.’ There was a third round of abuse in which he was told, ‘You are PLO’. Another man in the room was treated in a similar way. Then they were both summoned: ‘one soldier held me by the neck and banged our heads together’. It turned out that in the next room the same abuse was taking place and then they were united with two men from the other room and ordered to stand facing the wall with their hands up in the air: ‘the soldiers gave us back our ID cards to hold up in the air and told us to remain like this’. After half an hour the older members of the family told them the soldiers had left

The Koran is empathetic about the rights of other religions to practice their own beliefs. It unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians as a violation of Islam. It states that suicide, of any type, is an abomination. The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many of the new atheists with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. This kind of terror, in fact, has its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, which invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb: a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on September 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, in protest over the arrest of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200. Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon during the suicide attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Three were carried out by Christians.

Fatmah Hassan Tabashe Sufian, sixty-one years old, married and a mother of four, was woken up on 6 April 1993 at three o’clock in the morning. Soldiers broke into her house, pushed her up against the wall and asked her where her children were; they are asleep, she replied. They woke up her son Saad, thirty years old, kicking him and beating him with their hands and rifle stocks, until he was spitting blood all over the place. Her other son, Ibrahim, was badly beaten, and the B’Tselem researcher who took Fatmah’s evidence testified that long after the incident he could still see signs of ecchymosis – subcutaneous bleeding – on his back. Both sons were taken out to the yard and put against a wall. The soldiers found two toy guns and began slashing the two men with them until the toys broke. Then they gathered everyone in the complex, twenty-seven people, into one room and threw in a shock grenade. Saad and Ibrahim were ordered to empty the cupboard while they were continuously beaten by the soldiers shouting at them, ‘You are Hamas and we are Golani [the name of the military brigade to which they belonged].’ Nor did they spare Fatmah’s old, blind brother who was a hundred years old. He too was abused by the soldiers, who threw mattresses and blankets at him.25 Thus, every April from 1987 until 1993 this was the routine of the collective punishment. But it was not only these three days that mattered. Collective punishment in March–May 1993 robbed 116,000 Palestinian workers of their source of living, bisected the Occupied Territories into four disconnected areas and barred any access to Jerusalem.26 Seen from that perspective, when the Oslo Accord was implemented as a territorial and security arrangement, it was just official confirmation of a policy already in place since 1987.

When Israel strikes, it's "national security" - when Palestine strikes back, it's "terrorism". Just like over two hundred years ago when native americans resisted their homeland being stolen, it was called "Indian Attack". Or like over a hundred years ago when Indian soldiers in the British Army revolted against the empire, in defense of their homeland, it was called "Sepoy Mutiny". The narrative never changes - when the colonizer terrorizes the world, it's given glorious sounding names like "exploration" and "conquest", but if the oppressed so much as utters a word in resistance, it is branded as attack, mutiny and terrorism - so that, the real terrorists can keep on colonizing as the self-appointed ruler of land, life and morality, without ever being held accountable for violating the rights of what they deem second rate lifeforms, such as the arabs, indians, latinos and so on. After all this, some apes will still only be interested in one stupid question. Do I support Hamas? To which I say this. Until you've spent a lifetime under an oppressive regime, you are not qualified to ask that question. An ape can ask anything its puny brain fancies, but it's up to the human to decide whether the ape is worthy of a response. What do you think, by the way - colonizers can just keep coming as they please, to wipe their filthy feet on us like doormat, and we should do nothing - just stay quiet! For creatures who call themselves civilized, you guys have a weird sense of morality. Yet all these might not get through your thick binary skull, so let me put it to you bluntly. I don't stand with Hamas, I am Hamas, just like, I don't stand with Ukraine, I am Ukraine. Russia stops fighting, war ends - Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends.

Let me pursue this point briefly with reference to what is described in our media, and by many of our public intellectuals, as “the Islamic roots of violence”—especially since September 2001. Religion has long been seen as a source of violence,10 and (for ideological reasons) Islam has been represented in the modern West as peculiarly so (undisciplined, arbitrary, singularly oppressive). Experts on “Islam,” “the modern world,” and “political philosophy” have lectured the Muslim world yet again on its failure to embrace secularism and enter modernity and on its inability to break off from its violent roots. Now some reflection would show that violence does not need to be justified by the Qur‘an—or any other scripture for that matter. When General Ali Haidar of Syria, under the orders of his secular president Hafez al-Assad, massacred 30,000 to 40,000 civilians in the rebellious town of Hama in 1982 he did not invoke the Qur’an—nor did the secularist Saddam Hussein when he gassed thousands of Kurds and butchered the Shi’a population in Southern Iraq. Ariel Sharon in his indiscriminate killing and terrorizing of Palestinian civilians did not—so far as is publicly known—invoke passages of the Torah, such as Joshua’s destruction of every living thing in Jericho.11 Nor has any government (and rebel group), whether Western or non-Western, needed to justify its use of indiscriminate cruelty against civilians by appealing to the authority of sacred scripture. They might in some cases do so because that seems to them just—or else expedient. But that’s very different from saying that they are constrained to do so. One need only remind oneself of the banal fact that innumerable pious Muslims, Jews, and Christians read their scriptures without being seized by the need to kill non-believers. My point here is simply to emphasize that the way people engage with such complex and multifaceted texts, translating their sense and relevance, is a complicated business involving disciplines and traditions of reading, personal habit, and temperament, as well as the perceived demands of particular social situations.

If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with the world.

Hamas is for Muslims who favor Jihad. ...Hamas aims for every inch of Palestine. ...No part of it should be given up. ...Hamas is opposed to initiatives, peaceful solutions and international conferences. Jihad is the only solution.

Role in Gaza Talks Signals a Comeback for Abbas Adel Hana/Associated Press Ahmad and Mahmoud al Masri on the rubble of their family home in Gaza on Tuesday. A cease-fire was holding for a second day. By ISABEL KERSHNER JERUSALEM — For months Israel called on President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to break with Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, and to dismantle the new government that resulted from the reconciliation agreement.

Islamic life is like a ladder, with prayer and praising Allah as the bottom rung. The higher rungs represent helping the poor and needy, establishing schools, and supporting charities. The highest rung is jihad.

In the past, the Israelis complained that the Palestinians were so fragmented that no faction could deliver on any peace deal. Now Abbas had a controlling position. Washington and Brussels backed him. Everything was in place for a package to bring Gaza back under the control of Abbas, to disarm Hamas, to reopen crossing points to Egypt and Israel, monitored by EU observers, and to pour millions of dollars into Gaza's reconstruction as a precursor to a viable Palestinian state. But instead of welcoming this sign of growing moderation, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, resorted to his old tactic of divide and rule. In June, three Israeli teenagers vanished in the West Bank. Netanyahu ordered a "hostage rescue operation", despite intelligence that the youths were already dead, which escalated into the onslaught against Hamas.

Israel has no interest in destroying Hamas; it seeks merely to weaken and isolate it. Hamas gives Israel an out, a convenient villain, someone to blame.

When it came out in court that this Norwegian madman was inspired to violence by al-Qaeda and Hamas, that was not widely reported.

President Obama’s proposed deal makes military conflict with Irana virtual certainty. Under the terms that have been publicly announced, Iran will keep its nuclear centrifuges, will keep its enriched uranium, and will keep developing its ICBM program (which exists for the sole purpose of carrying a nuclear weapon to America). Under the terms of the deal, Iran will receive billions of dollars — which it will surely use to keep developing nuclear weapons. And, becauseIran will remain the leading state sponsor of terrorism (the deal does nothing to change that), those billions of dollars will also be funneled directly to Hezbollah and Hamas and radical Islamic terrorists across the world. Along

When I came to the Middle East, journalists had a kind of immunity that allowed us to travel freely and meet with militants who hated Israel and the United States. In 2000, when I was working for Agence France-Presse, I didn’t feel fearful when I went to Gaza to meet with Hamas leaders or to the West Bank to speak to Palestinian gunmen. These men didn’t much like me. We didn’t have anything in common. But they felt that they had to treat me with common decency and a modicum of respect because I was a journalist and I was writing about them. They wanted to spin me so that I would give the world their version of events. They were never completely happy, of course, because my pieces didn’t make them look as perfect as they looked to themselves. But they needed to talk to me and other reporters because we were the only way they could get their story out. Now jump ahead to 2006. Zarqawi was on his killing spree in Iraq, and suddenly the Internet had become ubiquitous, and uploading videos on YouTube and other platforms was literally child’s play. So Zarqawi and his henchmen said to themselves, “Why should we let reporters interview us and filter what we say? We can go straight to the Internet and say exactly what we want, for as long as we want to say it, and we can post videos that Western journalists would never show.” Journalists became worthless, at least as megaphones. But we became valuable as commodities to be stolen, bought, and sold, traded for prisoners, or ransomed for millions.

Throughout history there have been populations that have lived in desperation, and none of them have resorted to the intentional targeting and murder of children as an officially practiced and widely praised mode of achieving political ends. When extremist elements of otherwise legitimate liberation movements such as the Republican Sinn Fein have committed such atrocities, their actions have been unconditionally condemned by the civilized world, and their political objectives have been discredited by their vile crimes. This is not so with the Palestinians. Once upon a time there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now that place is in the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. Now that behavior is legitimized as ‘armed struggle’ against Israeli ‘occupation’ by, among others, the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Commission, and the European Union. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hamas in 1987, the campaign to destroy Israel has taken on an ugly, fanatic religious tone. Holy obligation reinforces (and is replacing) Palestinian nationalism as the motivation for committing terrorist murder. As we have seen the secular, ‘moderate’ factions of the Palestinian nationalist movement (such as Abbas’s Fatah Party) will shrink into insignificance, and is replaced by terrorist Islamic factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hamas receives financial and material support from the same sources as al Qaeda, and from al Qaeda directly. Islamic Jihad receives financial and material support from Iran, directly and through Hezbollah. These are the same international criminal entities that wage religion-based terror war against the United States. They do it for the same reason and by the same means: to make Islam supreme in the world, by the sword or the suicide bomb.

What I didn't know at the time was that no matter how much we weighed on Allah's scale, all of our righteousness and good works were like filthy rags to God. Even

Growing up in the Middle East, I came to find out that Arab children are taught hatred of the Jews from their mother’s milk. From a young age, Arab children are constantly bombarded with stories and information presenting Jews as barbaric, conniving, manipulative, warmongering people. Meanwhile, Jews teach their children patience, humility, service, tolerance, understanding of others, and charity to all. They call it tikkun olam, "to repair the world." The Arab-Israeli conflict has remained intractable because the Arab world refuses to accept the right of a Jewish state to exist autonomously in the middle of the Muslim Middle East. At first this refusal was based on what appeared to be pan-Arab nationalism, and then on Palestinian nationalism. There is a lot of bluster, pride, and honor among Arabs, which supports the nationalism angle. But as a Lebanese Christian looking at it from ground level and willing to blow the whistle on the hatred that Arabs harbor and teach their children against Jews, I can tell you that religious hatred, humiliation, and resentment are the driving factor behind the Israeli-Arab conflict. As a Christian who was raised in a country where people were shot at checkpoints because their ID card said “Christian,” I see it differently. I think that with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and especially after the rise of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) during the 1987 intifada, the world is seeing the true reason for the Arab world’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist: radical Islamic supremacism. It has come to the surface, overshadowing the nationalist rationale and moving on, seeking bigger game in the West.

In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting nonstate opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.

Dımê Lüya cambaze yena nat sono dot, zof bena sa ke, Dapire itha niya. Selıke darde we, sıtê Dapire kerd fekê ho sımıt, seke sımıt vake: “Ox, na sıtê Dapire çıxaşi weso, hore sımen-nêsımen qe mırd nêben, meste ki hore yen reyna sımen”. Seke Lüye uste ’ra ke dünike ra şêro tever, Dapire peê çêveri ra vejiye ame vake: “Dêma ke tuya yena na tholavê sıtê mı ser, tu ala vınde ez na kerdena tu tore verdan”. Dapire darıya huya de qolê fişte hawara ke purode ro, tavi na helm de Lüye thil bena remena, seke remena, hama dana Lüye ro, dımê Lüye çel beno, destê Dapire de maneno. Lüye cerena Dapire vero, vana: “Dapire, tore odvo ke reyna nin, sıtê tu nêtıren. Gonia ho ken tora, dımê mı bıde mı, ben hore pê çhalp-çhulpê ho ken”. Ma endi nae ‘ra têpia Dapire dımê Lüye qe dana cı, Dapire cıra vana: “Tı su, mıre sıte mı biya, ez ki dımê tu dan ve to”. Teseliya Lüye ke kote, hore terknena sona, sona kune era rae, xêle ke sona, senik ke sona, rae ra raste zu Bıza Kole bena. Bıza Kole Bıza Kole lüye ra perskena vana: “ewru qe çêfê tu çino, dıme tuyo rındeki re seviyo”. Lüye vana: “Bıza Kole! Bıza Kole! Seveno heve sıt bıde mı Sıt ben dan Dapire Dapire ki dımê mı dana mı Ez ki dıme ho ben pê çhalp-çhulpê ho ken”. Bıza Kole Lüye ra vana: “Mı ewru qe thoae fekê ho nê esto, so mıre tene velg bia, hore borine, sıt yeno cızıkunê mı, ez ki sıt to dine” Dara Velgi Narae Lüye oncia kuna era rae, sona, xele ke sona, yena cae de raste zu Darê bena. Dare Lüye ra perskena vana: “ma ve

Palestinian Authority: When Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, some of its militias went on a cross-destroying rampage. The Rosary Sisters’ convent and school in Gaza were ransacked and looted by masked men, and crosses were specifically targeted for destruction. A Christian resident of Gaza also reported having a crucifix ripped from his neck by someone from the Hamas Executive Force, who said, “That is forbidden.”239

But of course, both these—liberal multiculturalism and the Islamic resurgence—are not to be seen as separate but two sides of the same coin. While they may portray each other as the adversary/enemy, both equally feed off a vicious cycle of othering. This is perhaps most visible in the common forms of demonization deployed by both Islamofascists and Western anti immigrant racists (us-them, civilized-barbaric, pure-corrupt, more permissive, etc.). But ultimately, this is a false and mystifying conflict, each binary pole generating and presupposing the other. Instead, both sides are to be seen as symptomatic of the antagonisms of today’s (still mostly) Western Dominated global capitalist order. For one thing, several of the “fundamentalist”/“terrorist” groups that the West rails against are in fact Western creations, often initially supported to suit short-term geopolitical interests (e.g., British promotion of the Saudi Wahhabis [after World War I] and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood [during World War II] as part of a divide-and-rule strategy; US backing of the Taliban to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s; Israeli support of Hamas in the 1980s to undermine the PLO). Moreover, the United States and Europe have a long history of championing totalitarian regimes, especially in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt, Iran under the shah, etc.): it is not implausible, in fact, to suggest that the West is (and has been) invested in these countries remaining undemocratic so that they can be counted on for their geopolitical support, and perhaps especially their oil reserves. Western economic interests thus trump Middle Eastern political well-being, with Islamic religious resurgence as a resulting symptom.

Mesela Rençberi ’be Toxım u Hardi Eke zaf dewa ra xêle mılet ke dormê dêde êno pêser, o cırê jü mesela qesê keno: “Rocê mordemekê de rençber şono, toxım erzeno hêgaê xo. Eke toxım erzeno, tenê pışkino raê ser, bınê lınga de pelexino, çuçıkanê asmêni rê beno qut. Tenê toxımi ki çarçê hardê torjıni beno, firıg dano, hama hardê beji de vêşeno, maneno. Tenê toxımo bini ki çarçê wertê teli u tuli beno, werte de hakasino, maneno. Hama toxımo bin gıneno hardê rındi ro, beno khewe, jü ra sed dano.” Nae ke vano, vengê xo keno berz, vano: “Kamo ke heşnaene rê goşê xo estê, wa goş do!” Isa manê mesela rençberi ’be toxım u hardi keno araze Şagırtê Isay cıra pers kenê: “Manê na mesela çıko? ” O cüab dano: “Heq sırê Hukumdarenia xo şımarê keno ayan ke şıma bızanê. Ê binarê ki mesela de ano ra zon ke, Horace ‘vinıtene de mevinê, heşnaene de fam mekerê.’ Manê mesela ki nao: Toxım vatena Heqia. Toxımo ke kewto rae ser, zê êwê ke vatene heşnenê, hama Şeytan ‘ke êno, qese zerrê dinara fino ro duri ke iman ro cı miyarê u ra mexelesiyê. Toxımo ke gıneno hardê torjıni ki, zê êwê ke vatene heşnenê, şabiyene ra cênê ro xo ser, hama bêbıngewê, şopê pê inam benê, hona waxtê cerrebnaene de imanê xora kunê duri. Toxımo ke gıneno ro wertê teli u tuli ki, zê êwê ke vatene heşnenê, hama rae ra derd u bela, kêf u eşqê dina u dewletenia dina de nêrewinê, nêresenê. Hama toxımo ke gıneno hardê rındi ro, zê êwê ke zerrepakiye u raştiye ra vatena Heqi heşnenê, qori kenê, xode vındarnenê u ebe sebri rewnenê, resnenê. İncila Lukaşi ra gore 8:4-15

Whether these politicians lack understanding of the law or simply seek to circumvent it by using corporate regulations instead is unclear. But in the case of both Hamas and Hezbollah, we need to ask: What is the impact in Palestine and Lebanon, where these groups are powerful players in local politics—local politics that have no shortage of violent actors? Azza El Masri is a media researcher from Lebanon who, for the past several years, has studied content moderation. “Is Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and its participation in the Iran-KSA proxy war tantamount to terrorist activities? Yes,” she told me in a text message. “However, this doesn’t absolve the fact that Hezbollah today is the most powerful political actor in Lebanon.” Lebanon’s political scene is, to the outsider, messy and difficult to parse. After the fifteen-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands, the country’s parliament instituted a law that pardoned all political crimes prior to its enactment, allowing the groups that were formerly militias to form political parties. Only Hezbollah—an Iran-sponsored creation to unify the country’s Shia population during the war—was allowed by the postwar Syrian occupation to retain its militia. The United States designated Hezbollah (which translates to “Party of God”) a foreign terrorist organization in 1995, more than a decade after the group bombed US military barracks in Beirut.

Over the years, lawmakers in several countries have implored tech companies to go above and beyond the law to remove certain designated groups, in particular Hamas and Hezbollah—calls which have at times succeeded.43 Most recently, a 2019 letter from sixteen members of US Congress to Twitter to ban Hamas resulted in the company caving, after first pushing back, and banning accounts from both groups.44

At a point in history when two thirds of Europe’s Jewry had been exterminated, with their murderers uncharged, it seems reasonable to me that the world needed a Jewish state. None of this is to condone the tragedy of Palestinian displacement nor the illegality and, to my mind, immorality of the settlements, nor to minimise or excuse any of the subsequent tragedies visited upon the Palestinian people who have suffered worst from a cycle of violence that does as much to advance the careers of right-wing ideologues as it does to legitimise Hamas, but it’s important to remember that Israel exists, primarily, because it needed to. Know that every Jew you meet has a member of their family who was forced to leave their homeland because it was hostile to Jews. Anti-Semitism created Israel, and not, as some would have it, the other way around.

Israel is not the cause of Palestinian problems. In fact, no one has done more harm to the Palestinian people than their current leadership, whether it is Hamas in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Their main leadership technique is blaming Israel for every ill that befalls their people, thus abdicating their own responsibility.

The Palestinian leaders have been more intent on destroying Israel than on helping their own people. Although the Palestinian Authority is considered the moderate peace partner (by comparison with Hamas), it offers a financial incentive for the murder of Jews in terrorist acts.

Radicalement antilaïque et pro-islamiste, le mouvement des Indigènes de la République est né en réaction à la loi sur les signes religieux. Il considère que la France doit « interroger ses lumières » et lutte, selon ses mots, « contre toutes les formes de domination impériale, coloniale et sioniste qui fondent la suprématie blanche à l’échelle internationale »*25. Ses militants défilent régulièrement sous des portraits de Cheikh Yassine, soutiennent ouvertement le Hamas et « totalement la résistance palestinienne ». Un credo réaffirmé pendant l’Intifada des couteaux. Ils ont aussi tweeté une étrange photo prise à Molenbeek le 19 mars 2016. Elle montre un jeune homme défiant d’un air menaçant un cordon de policiers… lequel tente alors de sécuriser l’arrestation de Salah Abdeslam, l’un des terroristes du 13 novembre. En dessous de la photo du jour, en soutien à ce jeune homme menaçant, le Parti des Indigènes de la République a écrit : #Resistance. Le 8 juin de la même année, après un attentat à Tel-Aviv, Aya Ramadan, une autre militante du PIR, a rendu hommage à deux terroristes palestiniens ayant fait quatre morts et cinq blessés en ouvrant le feu sur la terrasse bondée d’un café de Tel-Aviv : « Dignité et fierté ! Bravo aux deux Palestiniens qui ont mené l’opération de résistance à Tel-Aviv. » Un tweet signalé pour « apologie du terrorisme » par la DILCRA, la Délégation interministérielle à la lutte contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme. Les « nouveaux antiracistes » sont surtout… les nouveaux racistes.

Hamas has the virtue of speaking clearly and consistently.

The Hamas is deeply, essentially anti-Semitic.

The Second Intifada did nothing to push the Palestinians toward accepting a two-state solution. Indeed, because of Israel’s countermeasures, the Palestinian rebellion appeared to harden popular attitudes against Israel, which was certainly Hamas’s intention in the first place.

Political Islam has served as a vehicle for resistance as well as collaboration in different eras of Palestinian history, notably in the form of the grassroots combination of Islamic revival and nationalism espoused by the charismatic Shaykh ‘Iz al-Din al-Qassam, whose “martyrdom” in 1935 can be said to have inspired the revolt of 1936–39. The same can be said of the more recent Islamic Jihad movement, an offshoot of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its founders were disgusted with the Brotherhood’s quietism and passivity toward—and, some even alleged, collaboration with—the Israeli occupation. Their attacks on Israeli military personnel in 1986 and 1987 helped spark the first Palestinian popular uprising, or intifada, which broke out in December 1987 and helped provoke the transformation of the major part of the Muslim Brotherhood organization into Hamas. Hamas itself has played a major part in the resistance to Israel, although some of the tactics that both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have pioneered in the Palestinian arena, particularly suicide attacks on civilians inside Israel, have been both morally indefensible and disastrously counterproductive strategically.

could have been a hero and made my people proud of me.

On the other side of that bridge, on the other side of transformation, is another more whole, more full, more free way of being, one that we can’t fully imagine from here. A way that we must simply bring into existence, step by step. The Talmud teaches, in the name of Rabbi Hama Bar Hanina, “Great is repentance, for it brings healing to the world.

Founded at the outset of the First Intifada in December 1987, Hamas had grown quickly, capitalizing on the currents of popular discontent with the PLO that had emerged for a variety of reasons. During the intifada, Hamas had insisted on maintaining a separate identity, refusing to join the Unified National Command. It promoted itself as a more militant Islamist alternative to the PLO, denouncing the abandonment of armed struggle and turn to diplomacy that was adopted in the PNC’s 1988 Declaration of Independence. Only the use of force could lead to the liberation of Palestine, Hamas argued, reasserting the claim to the entirety of Palestine, not just the areas occupied by Israel in 1967.