Take Out Hamas Now: Islamic movement morally corrupt, a cancer in Palestinian dream
East Jerusalem – Occupation of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas terrorist organization and the destruction there of the democratically elected government system should make it clear to all that there is no compromise with Islamic fundamentalism.
Hamas is and always has been an organization premised on Islamic superiority, not on the goal of achieving nationalism for the Palestinian people.
But if there is a silver lining in the Hamas-led civil war there, it is that the conflict could serve as the basis for secular Palestinian leaders in the remaining government institutions in the West Bank to re-engage in the peace process with Israel.
A coalition can be formed that would re-energize a new peace initiative with Israel while destroying Hamas and the Islamicist movement that threatens not only the West but all Palestinians who believe in an independent state based on secular nationalism and true democracy.
Since it was founded during the first Intifada as an armed Islamic movement, Hamas has never compromised on its two main goals, destroying the Jewish State and undermining the Palestinian secular existence.
In their extremist religious eyes, there is no difference between Israel and the Israeli people, and a secular Palestine and its secular leadership.
That Hamas was able to take control of the Gaza Strip, a hell hole of economic disaster and political turmoil where more than 1.35 million Palestinians live, should not be a surprise.
Although Hamas fronted representatives to participate in the democratic elections held in January 2006, their organization has been neither democratic nor driven by the goal of creating a democratic state.
They took over control of the Palestinian National Authority only because the larger, more popular secular Palestinians split their votes. Although Hamas won the January 2006 elections, the organization never won a majority mandate from Palestinians.
Yet Hamas used its power not to build on the democracy and to pursue peace, but as an opportunity to undermine the secular lifestyles of the majority Palestinians through intimidation, militant confrontation and by using violence designed to provoke the Israeli military occupation to create greater Palestinian hardship that plays into Hamas’ long term goals.
As long as there is no hope for peace, no movement towards compromise and continued suffering and frustration for Palestinians living under an oppressive Israeli military occupation, Hamas militancy, not their religious fanaticism, will remain an attractive choice to the emotionally racked Palestinian people.
Ismail Haniyeh, who was ousted as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority that his organization intentionally destroyed in the Gaza Strip, is frank in declaring that his goal is to transform the Palestinian movement into a religiously-governed movement, not a secular democratic state.
Haniyeh is disingenuous when he claims that the conflict is the result of the corruption of his secular rival party, the Fatah organization founded by the late Yasir Arafat.
In truth, while the Fatah-dominated government had serious corruption problems, the Hamas organization is morally corrupt. It used violence not as a weapon of resistance, although that is what they claimed, but as an immoral tool to block the very peace process that gave legitimacy to the election system that allowed Hamas to rise to “minority control” of the PA.
It is so important to understand that the peace process failed not solely because of the difficult hurdles on the Palestinian refugees and the City of Jerusalem that both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators failed to overcome, but because Hamas intentionally used suicide bombings at each and every junction where peace talks were poised to make headway.
Religious fanatics cannot compromise
Hamas is as much responsible for the collapse of the peace process and the return to violence as was Ariel Sharon, the extremist Israeli prime minister who rose to power in the five years after one of his followers assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who launched the peace process with Arafat.
Hamas does not want peace. It is a cancer in the Palestinian dream for statehood. They will trade off anything to survive as a movement driven by blind faith, not reasoned and free public choice.
Mahmoud Abbas is not only the successor to Arafat, he is the symbol of the secular political movement that places individual choice and real democracy above religious fanaticism.
For the sake of Palestinian unity, he has stood by while Hamas government leaders have violated the fundamental basis upon which they were elected, asserting undemocratic policies such as Sharia Law on the Palestinian populations where they have rule.
They have sat back while Islamic terrorists have threatened to “slit the throats of women from ear to ear” who appear on Palestinian TV without wearing the “Hijab,” or Islamic religious head covering.
But their real goal is not the imposition of the Hijab on women, but the subjugation of women, Christian Palestinians and secular Muslims by denying them an equal voice in Palestinian society. Hamas terrorists firebombed symbols of secular lifestyle, including restaurants that have served alcohol, nightclubs that have permitted intermingling of young men with women and dancing.
Worse, though, Hamas has allowed their armed factions to act outside of the authority of the PA, firing Qassam rockets into Israel not as acts of defensive resistance but as a provocation to create increased conflict that allows their political counterparts to exploit the Palestinians who are then the victims of Israeli retaliation.
Hamas cannot claim they are both a resistance movement and the majority leadership of the secular Palestinian Democratic government.
They have played both sides not for the sake of achieving Palestinian goals of democratic statehood, but to strengthen their base as an Islamicist power that has exploded into a mini-Hamastan State.
Abbas and the true democratic representatives of Palestinian hope in the PA have a choice. Either they can continue to try to appease the unappeasable Hamas cancer, or they can act forcefully to destroy Hamas and remove it from all aspects of Palestinian leadership and society.
The fear of a civil war is long past. This is a civil war that Hamas has begun by its actions in the Gaza Strip where dozens of Palestinians from rival political groups have been murdered in cold blood and their buildings, homes and offices burned to the ground.
If the secular Palestinians do not take a stand today to stop Hamas, Hamas will eventually bring its religious fanaticism to the West Bank where a final civil war will be fought.
In the battle against religious fanaticism, secular forces always seek to compromise while the religious extremists, driven by faith, cannot compromise on their faith and continue to seek the destruction of the other side.
At stake today is the survival of Palestinian secular society and the hope for a negotiated peace with Israel.
(This column appeared at YnetNews.com. It was also distributed through syndication to all of the Arab World, American and Middle East publications that often carry his column. Ray Hanania is an Award Winning Palestinian American columnist, author and standup comedian. Writing from East Jerusalem, Hanania can be reached at www.hanania.com. )
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Fucking jews pretending like arabs
Great article Ray.
Awale, what are you talking about?!
Ray is a Jew pretending to be an Arab because he said not so good things about Hamas.
OMGZ WORLD IS GONA END.
awale, go back to Iraq and blow yourself at a Shi’a neighborhood. That’s all you clowns are good at, anyways.
Sometimes you wonder why YNet News publishes editorials by Arabs. But then you realize that this editorial could have been written by the Israeli FM because it, calls, basically, for a continuation of current Israeli policy towards the Palestinians: increased Israeli influence and control over the Fath movement; more demonization of Hamas; a call for the forcible removal of Hamas with Israeli and US help; and an absolution of Israel’s role in leading to the current situation, pinning all the blame on Hamas.
This is especially amusing: “In the battle against religious fanaticism, secular forces always seek to compromise while the religious extremists, driven by faith, cannot compromise on their faith and continue to seek the destruction of the other side.”
Considering that Haniyeh, the day after Fath fighters of gangster Dahlan fled the Gaza strip into Israel and Egypt, extended a blanket amnesty to captured Fath rebels (since Hamas was democratically elected, not Fath), and asked Hamas fighters not to execute or attack any captured Fath rebels; and that Dahlan and Abbas, at this offer, instead chose to encourage further attacks on Hamas on the West Bank.
Ray, sometimes you’re only a little bit off the mark. This time you’re so off the mark you might as well become the Israeli foreign ministry’s spokesperson.
Ray Hanania,
When you say take out Hamas, who and how will this be done? Are you going to go and lead the fight against Hamas?
Why did you leave out what you mentioned in this article that you wrote in 2003. (http://www.counterpunch.org/hanania01182003.html ) You wrote
“Hamas is considered one of Israel’s greatest threats, but the Islamic terrorist organization found its beginnings in the misguided Israeli effort to encourage the rise of a religious alternative that would undermine the popularity of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasir Arafat.â€
So even if Hamas was taken out and a secular group was to gain power, Israel would find another way to support a rival group to perpetuate the infighting and have agent provacetuers commit violent acts which will immediately be blamed on Israel’s enemy. Israel will then continue to make excuses not to negotiate with the Palestinians.
Why did you leave out that after the 2006 elections, Israel had arrested over 60 Hamas MPs and officials, for no good reason?
You bring up the Shariah actions of some extremists, which reminds me of the same rationalizations used to bomb Somalia. The same with the invasion of Iraq, when people kept on saying Saddam gassed his own people, but it is left out that the United States supported Saddam Hussein, strategically and financially, when he was committing his worst atrocities.
In the beginning, when the Untied States was created, there was religious fundamentalism and there were cruel and unusual punishments for trivial acts, women had no rights, but with time it changed. It was changed by the people living in the United States, not by outsiders preaching human rights and democracy to them, while dropping bombs on their heads and homes.
No offense, Ray, but this article is a piece of crap. From beginning to end. As Yaman says, it could have come straight from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It’s no wonder it got published in YNet.
Your article ignores the basic point: the root cause of the fighting stems from Fatah’s refusal to accept that it lost the elections last year. Numerous reports have shown that certain factions within Fatah (e.g. Mohammed Dahlan) were working with the United States & Israel to overthrow Hamas. That doesn’t excuse Hamas’ behavior the past week, which has cost its reputation with the Palestinian people dearly. But this infighting never would have happened had Fatah accepted it lost the elections last year fair and square.
By the way, if you’re going to talk about “destruction…of the democratically elected government system”, why not mention Abu Mazen’s illegal moves in establishing the Fayyad Government?
I should add, Ray. This was published in an Israeli newspaper. To an Israeli audience, are you really writing “Take out Hamas now?” I mean, the only way to interpret this is that you are calling on Israel to destroy Hamas. Fine, but how do you think they are going to do it? Gently, without casualties? Has this been the lesson of 40 years of occupation?
I mean, really. This is a new low. I hope you reflect on these points.
Oooh. I enjoyed it, and I’m Israeli and American. It’s something different.
Ouch. Sorry, Ray.
Here’s a link to Mahmoud Abbas speaking about the Hamas Threat:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873266.html
I wrote the SAME column and distributed to every newspaper. But, as we know, SOME Arab newspapers will NEVER publish opinions that are critical of Palestinian terrorism, and only Jew-bash.
The column I wrote is RIGHT ON. F-those bastard Islamicists who have destroyed and are trying to destroy the Palestinian dream of statehood with their Islamicist fanatic religious crap. I hope the Palestinians destroy Hamas … and by the way, if you read my column on CounterPunch, is was clear in blaming Israel for giving the Islamic Associationt he power to build a RIVAL to the PLO, and they then turned terrorist on Israel during the first Intifada, so don’t pick and choose and pretend something is right.
Hamas IS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. They are anti-Christian, anti-Secular Muslim Arab, anti-Semitic. They have worked to destroy the peace process since it began and are responsible for the peace process failing.
YnetNews.com publishes my views because unlike the Palestine Times and the Palestine Chronicle who only published me when I “bashed” Israel, YnetNews publishes my views when I criticize and denounce both sides. That’s called objective journalism, which is something we need MORE OF in the Arab World.
By the way, I will also be writing beginning next week for the Jerusalem Post, so those people who hate Jews can Jew-bash me for that, too.
I am celebrating the certain demise of Hamas and I hope they all go to hell so the Palestinian people — all of the Palestinian people — can find freedom not as religious monsters and criminals, but as secular activists for civil rights, tolerance and freedom, something Hamas denies it’s own people
By the way, I didn’t hear a word of sympathy for the secular Palestinian Muslim women targeted by the Islamicists in Gaza. Or don’t you watch al-Jazeera English which, despite some problems with journalism ethics and bias, probably is the most objective news organization in the Middle East. They broadcast interviews that feature both Arabs and Israelis, something not even the Israeli media does well at all.
Hamas to be destroyed? Insha’allah!
Thanks
Ray Hanania
http://www.hanania.com
Hi Ray. That was a very good article. Are you seeing or aware of any Iranian/foreign involvement in the campaign to capture Gaza and turn it into mini theocracy?
I can’t speak to any of these arguments: I’m mostly on the outside looking in, even though I’ve read my share of NY Times editorials, and imagine myself something of an up-to-date guy. But I do notice how terribly confused this whole mess is: especially when people refer to objective journalism. People apparentlyhave taken a step back from thier opinions a million times in a million diffeerent ways, and still they can’t seem to strike the other guy, on the other side of the argument, as being fair or reasonable. What a total chaotic, miserably complicated, deadly earnest and completely ridiculous waste of good opinion! when nobody seems to agree with the what somebody else says, not even a little bit! It is an indictment of how totally pathetic the human comedy can become, when everybody is mouthing cartoon balloons that the others cannot hear, let alone listen or understand. If this weren’t a matter of life and death, I would expect some proctor to come into the room and chastise the whole class for being unruly children. Get a grip! this is your life you idiots! why are you losing it fighting, when there is so much more important things to do, study art and poetry, or build a bridge or hospital.
Say, Peter H, it wasn’t just the US and Israel backing Abbas against Hamas,
I think that the Arab League did, too.
Does that make the Arab League imperialist, zionist oppressors, also?
Grumpy,
It would make the Arab League puppets of Israel and the United States.
Many people complained that the Arabs are filled with hatred of Israel and the Jews, yet here we see that some of their leaders are willing to do Israel’s bidding.
Hmmm…. Well, I can’t argue that in the case of Iraq, anyway. ;^)
Seriously, some members (Iraq is still a member?) are subject to American influence to an extent, but it might not be wise to tell a Syrian or a Libyan that they’re a US/Israeli “puppet.”
Grumpy,
I didn’t say Syria and Libya are U.S. puppets. Actually, its Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt that are U.S. puppets.
Ray Hanania wrote, “By the way, I didn’t hear a word of sympathy for the secular Palestinian Muslim women targeted by the Islamicists in Gaza. Or don’t you watch al-Jazeera English which, despite some problems with journalism ethics and bias, probably is the most objective news organization in the Middle East. They broadcast interviews that feature both Arabs and Israelis, something not even the Israeli media does well at all.”
Do you think destroying the infrastrucutre of towns and preventing people from farming their land will help protect women from Islamists? Is that how women’s rights developed in the West?
Speaking of Egypt, what do you think of the peace conference coming Monday?
“Is that how women’s rights developed in the West?” No, and you know it. Women’s rights developed in the West by women being allowed to speak with little fear of being beaten or arrested.
Grumpy,
You really don’t know what you are talking about there was much resistance to giving women rights. Otherwise, women (and all men) wouold have been given the right to vote from day one. Western countries started developing human and women rights only when they had accumulated massive amounts of wealth. Then gradually and slowly human rights developed.
So Iran arrests women’s rights activists because the nation is poor?
“Western countries started developing human and women rights only when they had accumulated massive amounts of wealth.”
Did the US have “massive amounts of wealth” in 1791?
Congress shall make no law:
respecting an establishment of religion,
prohibiting the free exercise thereof,
abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
or to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I’d call those human rights, wouldn’t you? Here are some others that many countires wealthier than 18th century America don’t seem to have managed yet.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to:
a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury,
be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation,
be confronted with the witnesses against him,
have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor,
have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Grumpy,
No Iran arrests human rights because there is corruption.Poverty contributes to corruption because those who work in the judicial system and law enforcemnet must have high enough salaries so they won’t be easily bribed or fearful if threatened. Alot of money goes into providing protection to judges so they will not be swayed by threats.
Those rights you mention were for the property owning white men, it gradually applied to all by the the 20th century.
Iraq put on trial Saddam Hussein for his war crimes, when will the United States put the American collaborators of Saddam on trial?
I don’t believe I listed any rights that were withheld from minority groups like women or non-whites, except for slaves. You can correctly point out that these rights did not apply to slaves, but they did apply to all free people regardless of gender, nationality, of land ownership. “Property owning white men”? Where do you get your cliches?
To try to get back to your point that I am disputing, you said, “Western countries started developing human and women rights only when they had accumulated massive amounts of wealth.” I’m saying that numerous human rights (all the above applied to women, too) were crafted into the US Constitution long before any massive national wealth.
Grumpy,
What was written and was practiced are two different things. I am sure that there are other countries and societies that had idealistic ideas about the law, that weren’t actually practiced.
This is no different from U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. goes around preaching human rights and democracy, but it engages in regime change and supports brutal dictatorships and kings that do its bidding.
And I am sure that there are other countries and societies that violently oppress idealistic ideas.
Look, Randall: you hate America. That’s fine, and you’ve sure got lots of company and lots of reasons. What you don’t have is a license to be inaccurate or to deny genuine contributions to human advancement just because you don’t like the source. We can both point to many cases — both domestically and abroad — where US actions were contrary to our professed ideals.
You want a meaningless apology? You’ve got it. Americans are a guilt-ridden people painfully aware of our many failures past and present. We are also, however, aware of many successes and smart enough to add up both sides of the accounting sheet. On balance, we’ve done more good than evil. Perhaps that’s because we have those ideals and — most of the time — try to live up to them.
As for who has the best track record on human rights, is there a nation you would like to compare us to?
Grumpy,
I am a citizen of the United States. Where have I denied America’s contributions. Where have I asked for an apology? I discuss mainly the wrong doings of the United States because the mainstream media barely does.
If a family member was doing something wrong, I would try to correct it. WHen my country is doing something wrong, I would like to correct it.
“when right to be kept right, when wrong to be put right”
Works for me 8^)
As for Hamas and Gaza, would it be possible to just leave them the hell alone? Except for return fire on rocket launching sites, that is: no reasonable person could expect Israel to sit quietly while being shelled.
Keep the wall up — strengthen it if needed — and just wait to see how well a Jihadist run state manages.
Grumpy,
Israel has not just been responding to rocket launches. It arrested over 60 MPs and officals for no good reason, it bulldozed=s and bombs infrastructure, it prevents farmers from selling their goods, when Jewish settlers vandalize property or commit violent against Paletinians, the Israeli soldiers do nothing about it.
Grumpy, you wrote “… no reasonable person could expect Israel to sit quietly while being shelled.”
Yet reasonable persons expect Palstinians to sit quietly while worse is done tho them?
As always when the question of Hamas comes up you say nothing about them, just rant about the other side. At least this time you didn’t throw in Iraq and the Congo…
Grumpy,
I don’t say much about Hamas because the vast majority of the mainstream media already does. The mainstream media hardly makes criticisms about Israel. You haven’t made criticisms about Isreal.
You’re right: I haven’t made criticisms about Israel.
Of course, the article isn’t ABOUT Israel…
As for the MSM:
A) You watch them? What on earth for?
B) Don’t worry: the UN more than makes up for it.
Grumpy,
What do you mean the article isn’t about Isreal? If Israel initally supported Hamas as a rival to the secular Yasser Arafat then Israel should be discussed.
After the 2006 elections in Palestine, Israel arrested over 60 Hams MPs and officials. Isreal’s military actions and occupation has played a part in the chaos in the region
The UN is impotent, it’s all talk and no effective action.
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They were beaten and arrested.
Where the hell did you learn your history?
Where the hell did you learn your English?
Sigh. I periodically get burnt out on sites like this from the sheer exhaustion of trying to have a rational discussion with people who are being deliberately obtuse. For example, I’m quite certain that Jina knows the phrase I used “little fear of” is NOT the same as the phrase is “immune to.” I have little fear of being killed in a terrorist attack, but I’m certainly not immune to it.
American women of generations ago had little fear of being beaten or arrested compared to Iranain women who quite rightly have great fear. And of course the Americans didn’t have to worry about being flogged, unlike Delaram Ali who was sentenced to 10 lashes. I imagine — tell me if you think I’m wrong — that they felt just a bit freer to express themselves knowing that they very probably would not be jailed, they almost certainly would not be beaten, and they damn well wouldn’t be whipped.
Grumpy,
A fear American women don’t have to worry about is having their country bombed in the name of democracy. They didn’t have to worry about a foreign power instigating a war in their country using false evidence. Then the foreign power helps to perpetuate the conflict by selling weapons to both side of the conflict. See http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2292
Iranian women do face arrest and harsh punishment for speaking up about human rights. But that hasn’t stopped some of them for continuing to do so. See http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=12278
Also it’s interesting to note that “A third of all doctors, 60 percent of civil servants and 80 percent of all teachers in Iran are women.â€
Here is a book called Of Bridles & Burnings: The Punishment of Women by E.J. Burford and Sandra and Shulman that talk about the harsh punishments of women in Britain. For a description of the book Click Here
Here is a book called The Prison and the Gallows by Marie Gottschalk which is about mass incarceration in America. http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521682916&ss=toc If you look at the table of contents, chapter 5 is called “Not the Usual Suspects: Feminists, Women’s Groups, and the Anti-Rape Movement.â€
Here is a transcript of testimony by Fanny Lou Hammer http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fannielouhamercredentialscommittee.htm , an African-American who tried to register and vote in 1962. She and her friends were arrested and beaten. The policemen that had beaten her and her friends never got in trouble for their actions.
Okay: I give up.
I believe you that the Iranian women currently being jailed and flogged are having a much easier time than their American sisters did in the early 1900′s.
I believe you that the Saudi women who may get to drive soon are much freer than those oppressed American females of four generations ago.
No doubt the actual women on this site who are involved in securing equal rights in their countries are glad they live in the free and progressive middle east of 2007 rather than brutally repressive 1910 America.
Note: the Delaram Ali case is being appealed and that’s the only flogging sentence I know of.
Grumpy,
The women in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Asia have it twice as hard as women of Western coutnries. The women of Western countries had to fight only their own governments. The women in the developing world have to fight their own governmnet plus Western governments who go around preaching human and democracy, yet engage in regime change to support brutal dictators and kings who do their bidding. While Western governmnets have laws that give their citizens decent wages, they have no problem exploiting the labor in developing countries who get paid slave wages. While Western countries pass laws regulating the disposal of toxic waste in their own countries, they have no problem dumping toxic waste in developing countries; and the list goes on and on.
Thank you for explaining, Randall: I now understand that the oppression of women in the Middle East is due to evil Westerners.
I wonder if the morality police snatching women off the streets realize that they’re the puppets of the Western military/industrial oppression machine? Poor fools probably think they’re enforcing their own laws, we’ve hookwinked them so badly…
He never said that, learn to read plz.
That’s funny, Jina, at least coming from you. Scroll up a few posts to where I had to explain to you that “little” is not equal to “none.”
Do you now need me to explain “sarcasm” to you?
Grumpy,
Your “sarcasm” is neither clever or funny.
Based on past comments, what you wrote did not seem like “sarcasm.”
I did not say the reason for women’s oppression by their fellow male citizens where due to Westerners. I said that Middle Eastern women had two oppressions to deal with. First there is their own governments. Then there are the Western governments who go around preaching human and democracy, yet engage in regime change to support brutal dictators and kings who do their bidding. And if those dictators stop doing Western countries’ bidding, they have bombs dropped on their countries.
Grumpy Delaram Ali is not the only person who has a flogging sentence for participating in the peaceful women’s rights gathering in june of 2006. However her case is one of the most shocking. If you wish to take action against the prosecution of women’s rights defenders in Iran please take a few minutes and sign the following petition:
http://www.meydaan.com/English/petition.aspx?cid=52&pid=12
Delaram and other women who are sentenced to prison and flogging have a chance to appeal these rulings, therefore we need your help in increasing attention to their cases and putting their judges under pressure to reduce these sentences.