I periodically put up text from the hamas charter, to show readers what Israel is up against – the mission statement of people the world demands Israel somehow make peace with/create a two-state solution with.
And now, as those brave gaza “men” – the ones who live under hamas “law” – drag Jewish women, children and elderly from their homes, murdering them and and doing who knows what to the ones they decided to keep around, I think it is time for another reminder of who and what Israel is actually dealing with.
Here is the hamas charter. The document written by hamas – which controls Gaza and, effectively, controls Judea and Samaria (the west bank) as well – to define itself and explain its objectives.
I urge you in strongest terms to read every word of it.
But, in case you don’t have a spare 10 or so minutes, let me provide you with a few particularly salient passages.
When reading them, please keep in mind that I am not paraphrasing or interpreting what the charter says. This has been pulled, word for word, from the charter’s text:
The second paragraph of the charter:
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 fifth paragraph of the introduction:
This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.
The last part of Article 7:
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 realisation 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 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. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Article 8:
Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.
Article 11, first paragraph:
The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?
Article 13, first two paragraphs:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. “Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know.”
Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?
There is more. Much, much more. But I would hope this is enough for you to understand the reality of what Israel faces: an enemy sworn to obliterate the entire country of Israel, kill every Jew (in Israel and everywhere else), and which absolutely refuses to negotiate any settlement of any kind or cede even one square inch of land as sovereign Israel territory.
This is who Israel has been dealing with all these years. This is who Israel is dealing with now.
And now that Israel, its borders breached, hundreds dead and thousands injured or captured, retaliates for the war hamas (and its mentors/suppliers/benefactors in Iran) have started, you can be assured that there will immediately be cries of “disproportionate response”… from the same people who have had no problem with hamas all this time; who have acted as if hamas were just some benign group looking for peaceful coexistence.
I’ll end with a statement I’ve posted many times over the years: there are few things in this world that are discussed with a greater combination of certainty and ignorance than the Middle East.
Sadly, that is not about to change now.
