Exposing Hamas

Responding to the Hamas Charter of 1988

It takes over half an hour to read all the way through the Hamas Charter, so I will only respond to certain points rather than going through the whole thing. To read it in full, click here.

1. “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”. It begins with a call for the destruction of Israel. Not the establishment of an independent Palestine (though it demands that later) but the destruction of Israel. That on its own should be enough to tell you that these are not people with whom Israel can (or should) negotiate. You cannot reason with someone who wants you dead.
2. Hamas derives the above quotation from Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who insisted since the 1920s that jihad of the heart must never replace the jihad of the sword. Al-Banna was implicated in the assassination of two Egyptian Prime Ministers and a plot to overthrow King Farouk. He was a terrorist.
3. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” Note what it doesn’t say here. It doesn’t say “against Yitzchak Shamir” “against the Likud Party”, “against the occupation” or even “against the Zionists”. It says “against the Jews.” If there were any doubt, this should settle that Hamas is anti-Semitic. And it gets worse
4. After pledging allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood and praising the anti-Jewish terrorist Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, Hamas rejects the possibility of territorial compromise and says “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Hamas isn’t just anti-Semitic, it is genocidally anti-Semitic.
5. Hamas then rejects the possibility of diplomacy and asserts that the only way to realise its goals is through “jihad.” Considering its praise of terrorists, jihad here is not a metaphor for struggle but a literal war.
6. After getting pointlessly repetitive, Hamas accuses “the Jews” of being the equivalent of Nazis. Considering Israel had existed for forty years at this point without attempting genocide against the Palestinians at all, this is an obviously false charge.
7. Hamas proceeds to accuse Zionist agitators of being responsible for the Freemasons and other secret societies and of having orchestrated the French Revolution, the rise of Communism and both World Wars. It also asserts that the United Nations is actually a front for Jewish power. The annual UN resolutions against Israel should be enough to disprove the last claim and the other claims are nothing more than conspiracy theories.
8. Hamas posits that the “capitalist West” and “Communist East” are united in their efforts to fight Islam. Given US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan both funded and armed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan for the sake of opposing the Soviets, this statement is simply wrong.
9. Hamas proclaims its desire for the peaceful co-existence of Jews, Muslims and Christians under Muslim rule. Nice try there, fellas but that’s not peace, that’s subjugation. It’s like saying “what I want is anarchy that I run”.
10. Hamas explicitly denounces the Camp David Accords and proclaims its opposition to any Muslim countries signing peace agreements with Israel. (Like I said, the Hamas Charter gets repetitive.)
11. Hamas accuses the Zionists of plotting to expand their empire from Palestine to the point of taking over Egypt and Iraq. That’s quite an accusation and Hamas’s evidence for it is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Since the 1920s, the Protocols have been exposed as a forgery created by Russian anti-Semites to rile up the masses against the Jews, by accusing the Jews of seeking global domination. It’s an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
12. There are other things that the Hamas charter says (i.e. proclaiming opposition to secularism in favour of theocracy and reciting Muslim prayers) but much of it becomes too repetitive for it to make sense for me to respond to it.

There you have it. Hamas is a pro-terrorist, Muslim Brotherhood inspired, conspiratorial, violent, genocidally anti-Semitic organisation with no interest in peace or diplomacy . Its efforts at destroying Israel both then and now are not in the least surprising. Dr. Sam Harris could hardly be more correct in his scathing denunciation of Hamas.