Hamas to al-Qaeda: Take Your Jihad and Shove It
You read right. Hamas, the Palestinian militant faction and political party considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, is proving quite effective, if brutally so, at destroying al-Qaeda cells in Gaza.
A group that calls itself Jund Ansar Allah (the "warriors of god") came out of the closet in June when three of its militants, on horseback no less, attacked an Israeli army post on the Gaza border. The horsemen were killed. But the "warriors" got a bit of press.
Reuters reports that the group is made up of a few hundred members, including former Hamas militants, and that it is in line with al-Qaeda's Salafist interpretation (which is to say, hyper-fundamentalist misinterpretation) of Islam. Last Friday, about 100 Jund Ansar Allah members took over a mosque in Rafa, the Gaza town on the border with Egypt best known for its tunnels, and declared Hamas an apostate organization in league with Israel.
The Planet's poles did a double-take, though they shouldn't have. Those who know Hamas, or the PLO, for that matter, know that both revile al-Qaeda, consider it an impostor and detractor from the Palestinian cause. Palestinians, Hamas included, aren't interested in global Islamic jihad or a pan-Arab caliphate, let alone in attacking American interests. They're interested in getting a country of their own. "Osama bin laden has damaged the Palestinian cause more than any other being," the PLO's Yasser Arafat told Palestinian journalist Zaki Chehab. "He has spent his fortune on bringing us Arabs and Muslims worldwide into disrepute by associating them with terrorism and hatred." (Arafat's past played something of a role in this, but you get the idea.) On that score, Hamas and the more secular PLO see eye to eye: al-Qaeda can take its jihad and, as Johnny Paycheck would put it if he were Palestinian, shove it.
Hamas didn't take kindly to Jund Ansar Allah's accusation last Friday. Its fighters immediately besieged the mosque and attacked. By Saturday morning, the faction was defeated, 28 people were dead, including an 11-year-old girl and Jund's leader, Abdel Latid Moussa. Some 150 people wounded. Surviving Jund Ansar Allah members described the clash as a "massacre."
It's not the last of al-Qaeda's burrowing in Gaza. Three or four groups affiliated with bin Laden's folly-seeking Salafists are believed to operate in the area (Army of the Nation, Tawheed and Jihad, Ansar Assuna and Army of Islam. , according to the Jerusalem Post).
But last week's showdown should send a message to Israel and the United States: Hamas' agenda is narrow, focused, and limited to the Palestinian cause. Branding it a "terrorist" organization may have had its propagandistic uses, and in many case earlier this decade the tag was accurate. But it's out of date. So is both Israel's and the United States' monomaniacal (if not Salafist, in its own way) rejection of any dealings with Hamas.
See Also:
- What Is Hamas?
- The Hamas-Israeli Conflict: A Primer
- How Israel Helped Create Hamas
- Hamas' Teasing Recognition of Israel
- End Game in Gaza: Ending Hamas
- Hamas Charter, Unabridged (1988)
- Waltz With Hamas: Israeli Atrocities in Gaza
Comments
Some of your articles bear substance from the western media,you need not to be regressive,in your opinions,always try to write a article which is balanced from the opposing side that indicates the depth of research and bias to all readers.That makes the distiction of a good journalist,my humble
summation.
ZZ, specifics would be tops.
Your attempt to present Hamas as legitimate falls flat.
Forget for a moment the rocket fire deliberately directed at Israeli civilian populations, the financing of suicide bombers and the deliberate targeting of civilians for murder and kidnapping (both Israeli and Palestinian).
Even aside from this, their Taliban-like actions against their political rivals and the citizens of Gaza, such as forcing women to dress according to Sharia, renders Hamas illegitimate.
Hamas still holds Gilad Shalit as a bargaining chip, in the hopes of extorting the release of convicted criminals from Israeli jails.
Only recently, members of Hamas were tossing their Fatah rivals from the tops of buildings.
Hamas is still deeply involved in numerous criminal enterprises, including charities fraud, forgery and smuggling.
Any attempt to portray these terrorist thugs as legitimate partners in peace, or a ‘moderate’ political organization are erroneous in the extreme.
Kafir, I did not call Hamas “moderate,” nor did I call Hamas “legitimate.” Those are your own loaded straw men. They are certainly immoderate. They certainly have a terrorist pedigree. Or did. And you won’t catch me disputing their affinity for defenestration. But they are no more immoderate, and in most respects are less so, than the Israeli terror and siege machinery they’ve been up against. And they’re no less “illegitimate” than Israel’s lawless and disproportionately brutal treatment of Palestinians. My point is: the two sides not only deserve each other; they have no way out of their labyrinths without each other. That’s why at heart they understand each other so well. They’re made of the same thuggish fiber. It’s not for nothing that Israel initially sought out Hamas as a potential ally. It will again, as it did the PLO. All circles close in the Middle East, though they may look like nooses on the way.
Still more factually incorrect moral relativism.
Hamas is most certainly more immoderate that ANY Israeli administration dating from the modern state of Israel’s inception.
* Israelis do not promote genocide and racism in text books, television shows, music videos, plays and films. Hamas does.
* Israel goes to great pains to avoid civilian casualties, often causing greater risk to their own forces. Hamas, on the other hand, hides amongst civilians while launching rockets indiscriminately at civilians.
* Israel goes to great pains to avoid damaging holy sites and civilian infrastructure, Hamas stores weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques, and launches attacks from those locations.
* Israel has a democratic process that includes Israeli Arabs. Hamas routinely attacks their Palestinian political rivals… and needless to say, there are no accommodations made for Jews in Palestinian politics.
You call Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “disproportionate”… and while this expression may be in vogue, it is completely absurd. For Israel to launch a ‘proportionate’ attack, they would have to lob thousands of rockets indiscriminately at Palestinian towns, without benefit of guidance systems. They would have to send members of the IDF to Palestinian markets with suicide bombs. Members of Likud would need to start tossing members of Labor off rooftops, and they would need to accidentally murder many Israeli citizens with poorly constructed, accidentally detonated bombs.
THAT would be a proportionate response to Hamas.
They are made from the ’same thuggish fiber’, are they? Israel provides water and electricity to Gaza at the expense of Israeli tax payers – what does Hamas donate to Israel, beside rockets and hostile rhetoric? I do not see Hamas providing free medical treatment to Israelis, as Israel does so often for the residents of Gaza and the West Bank.
The Palestinians claimes they wanted land for peace, and Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza, dismantled their settlements (at great emotional, economic and political cost) and handed over millions of dollars worth of infrastructure.
In response to being given what they said they wanted, the Palestinians began smuggling weapons and launching thousands of rocket attacks at Israeli towns.
THOSE are your ‘partners in the peace process’.
Hamas is a terrorist group that has in it’s charter the blatantly racist goal of killing or driving every Jew from the middle east. This is indisputable.
Israel is a small nation beset by enemies on every side, yet they have repeatedly made concessions in an effort to live in peace…. and yes, they even sought to work with terrorists like Arafat in the misguided hope of finding a genuine partner in peace. For their labors, they were repeatedly lied to and betrayed.
Your attempt to draw a moral equivalence between the the legitimate state of Israel and the designated terror group Hamas is vile, and betrays not only your blatant bias, but also a refusal to acknowledge any facts that undermine that bias.
People who set Hamas and the IDF side-by-side always strike me as either being apologists to terrorism or just not having a legitimate perception of what’s going on.
Hamas explicitly targets civilians and rejoices when they murder innocent people. I’ve heard the laughable argument that the IDF targets civilians, and it’s weak. Plus, Israel has never celebrated the death of innocent people.
Hamas trains CHILDREN to fight in the jihad and uses them, along with retarded people, for suicide bombings. Israel doesn’t even consider such animalistic tactics.
Hamas, and Fatah, does indeed want their own state. But they’re not willing to tolerate the existence of a Jewish state anywhere in the Middle East. All you have to do is listen to comments made by their leaders, or read their charters, to see this. It’s not hard. Israel, in contrast, has tolerated Palestinian violence for 60 years and suffered Arab violence for generations before that, and are still willing to allow for a Palestinian state.
Hamas and the Palestinians are not to be seen as the same cause; Hamas has hijacked the Palestinian cause and warped it into a religious, anti-Jewish one. Legitimizing Hamas and excusing their crimes against humanity as you do here is the biggest mistake of the anti-Israel party and it will be their undoing.
As you have an article about ending Hamas, I’m going to assume you don’t blindly support them. In that case, I’d suggest rewording your article.