Hamas: a charter school of hate

Gail Rubin, Neil Hollanderand Travis Breckon

Special to The Enterprise

Published: September 12, 2010

This past July, a little girl, a Muslim from the West Bank village of Deir Zamat, was accompanied by her father to Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital to undergo life-saving eye surgery to remove a tumor. The surgery, funded by an Israeli aid organization, was performed by Jews and Muslims alike, as it is done throughout Israel every day, where patients and medical staff work together regardless of religion or ethnic origin.

To save a life is to do God's work. (Hadassah Hospital is affiliated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The hospital was founded by Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, which continues to underwrite a large part of its budget today. In 2005, Hadassah was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in acknowledgment of its equal treatment of all patients, regardless of ethnic and religious differences, and efforts to build bridges to peace.)

Two weeks later, the child's father led his fellow Hamas operatives in the West Bank ambush of an Israeli Jew, slaying him in cold blood in his vehicle. The father is a member of a Hamas terror cell operating in the West Bank.

Why? It is unfathomable that a father would kill those who saved his child's life.

Fast-forward to Aug. 31. On the eve of peace talks set to begin Sept. 1, four Hamas terrorists ambushed a vehicle driven by Jews outside of Hebron in the West Bank, killing a man and his pregnant wife, and two other adults, leaving the couple's six children as orphans. In Hamas-controlled Gaza, the bloodshed was celebrated. The news was broadcast from loudspeakers and there was a "victory" rally, with Palestinian children waving green Islamic flags and making a victory sign.

The day after his four thugs pumped bullets into the Israelis, Hamas' top leader in Gaza gave a fiery speech rejecting any peace with Israel. The strongman Mahmoud Zahar said his Hamas operatives would resist peace efforts and criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for joining the peace negotiations. Zahar declared that Abbas has no right to represent the Palestinians in achieving peace with the "Zionist enemy.

"Hamas' slaughter of civilians in the West Bank, aimed at torpedoing the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, is in keeping with its brutal takeover of Gaza in 2007, which left Abbas in control only of the West Bank. Can peace be achieved by the Palestinians when this Palestinian-Palestinian conflict continues to rage? Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak recently wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times that reconciliation between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah movement is "critical to achieving a two-state solution" and renewed an offer of Egyptian mediation.

But no go. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, where Iranian-supported terrorists are plotting to plunge the entire region back into the Dark Ages. A brutal, Taliban-style Islamist regime is emerging in Gaza. Having forcefully taken control of the area following Israel's unilateral disengagement in 2005, Hamas has intensified its reign of terror, first and foremost against the innocent Palestinian people living there.

After Israel voluntarily left every inch of the territory in the hands of Abbas' Palestinian Authority, Hamas took control of Gaza in a bloody coup. Hamas unequivocally refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist while actively calling for, and planning, its destruction.

From different published reports it is well known that Hamas' arsenal now stands at more than 5,000 rockets — including long-range missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv. Even more worrisome are the reports that since Operation Cast Lead, Iran has invested millions in rebuilding Hamas' ground forces, and is sending a steady stream of men to training camps in Syria and Lebanon, and even to Iran, to learn advanced military techniques from the Revolutionary Guard.

Why is Hamas hell-bent on Israel's destruction? Answer: Read its charter. It is bone-chilling.

Hamas principles

The principles of Hamas are stated in its covenant, or charter. Following are highlights:

* "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory)."

* "The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

* "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

* "After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

"The charter declares that jihad (in the sense of armed battle) is the only solution. It cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a ludicrous anti-Semitic forgery.

The "Zionists" and the "freemasons" and "others" (the Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs and B'nai B'rith) are blamed for what Hamas and radical Islamists see as the major calamities of the world, especially the French Revolution.

One of the most ominous aspects of the charter, however, is this Hadith:

"Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari)

The implication is clear: Allah promised that the Jews will be murdered, and Hamas "aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take."

Muslim Brotherhood

Some observers deny the relation between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the charter states:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterized by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgment, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam."

Moreover, the charter quotes Hassan-Al-Banna, a Nazi sympathizer who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Hamas views itself as a part of the Muslim Brotherhood and an ideological heir of al Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood spawned a number of radical Islamist movements, including al-Qaida.

Hamas positions

Recent statements by leaders include the following:

* Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas said in his sermon at the Katib Wilayat mosque in Gaza that "Jews are a people who cannot be trusted. They have been traitors to all agreements. Go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing."

* Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, in a column in the weekly newspaper Al Risalah in 2008, discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that "suffering by fire is the Jews' destiny in this world and the next." Astal concluded, "Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews."

* "We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity," Hamas leader Fathi Hammad stated in Gaza on Jan. 2, 2009.

* In a sermon aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa television, cleric Yunis Al Astal said, "Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam. I believe that our children, or our grandchildren, will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and, Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them."

The question is: When will we all — Muslim, Jew, Christian, Quaker, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Baha'i (and Rotary and Lions) — stand together against this barbarism?

— Gail Rubin, Neil Hollander and Travis Breckon are members of the Davis Interfaith Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Middle East.