Defense of Hamas is indefensible

by Ray Hanania (Palestine/USA)

Politics but mostly religious bias and fervor are driving much of the analysis defending Hamas and placing blame for the recent confrontation at the feet of the Fatah loyalists.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. The proof is in its conduct during the failed Oslo Peace Accords and the Camp David Peace efforts. Every time Palestinians and Israelis reached a compromise or seemed to move the peace process forward, Hamas
used vigilante terrorist violence to derail the peace process, intentionally targeting Israeli civilians.

I might remind those who defend Hamas as the legitimately and Democratically elected representatives” of the Palestinians that Yasir Arafat and the government that led the Palestinians into and through the peace process were also Democratically
elected.

And, more importantly for those pro-Hamas activists with such short memory, Hamas sought to undermine the Arafat government and used every means at its disposal to block Palestinian Democracy.

After years of trying to block Democracy, they finally entered the process, winning not a representative majority of the votes cast but control through a skewered and poorly organized voting system.

Every knows that the result of the January 2005 elections did not even come close to representing the will of the majority of Palestinian voters who embraced the peace process that was derailed as much by Hamas as it was by the hoodlums who succeeded Yitzhak Rabin, whow as murdered by an Israeli terrorist.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is the only legitimately elected representative of the Palestinians who has the weight of Palestinian voters on his side.

And Ismal Haniyeh, whose declared allegiance is to religious law above and beyond the Democracy he shrouds himself in so falsely, is no longer an official representative of the Palestinian people.

The deception of Hamas was exposed even as Hamas controlled the Palestinian government during the past 18 months.

Hamas representatives had control of the Palestinian government. They controlled the legislative seats. Yet, the could not control the vigilante terrorists who continued fire Kassam rockets at Israeli targets even after the Israeli settlers were forced to leave the Gaza Strip?

Was the firing of Kassam rockets official Palestinian government policy, the policy of the Hamas controlling faction, or the act of criminals who were clearly violating Palestinian laws by taking violent actions into their own hands?

Rather than crack down on the futile and even ridiculously pathetic Hamas rocket attacks against Israel, Haniyeh and his Hamas cohorts stood by silently.

And what kind of government leader sits back when his own supporters kidnap a British journalist, giving the entire Palestinian people a black eye?

What kind of government leader sits back when his own supporters threatened to “slit the throats” of women journalists working for the Palestinian Television in the Gaza Strip because they refuse to “kowtow” to the religious zealots who continue to grow and operate as an independent shadow government within the legitimately elected Palestinian government.

Should we be sorry that Hamas and Fatah have split? No. The fact is the battle for Palestine is as much between Palestinians and Israelis as it is between secular Arabs, who are Christian and Muslims, and the religious fanaticism of Hamas and its terrorist militant groups.

Palestinians cannot win the battle for justice and equality and national rights with Israel as long as Hamas and its religious fanatics continue undermine the true Palestinian Democracy and the real will of the Palestinian people.

We Palestinians respect Islam and Christianity, but we do not hold either religion above the other, nor do we place our religion at the end of a fanatic’s sword.

Palestine will be saved when the extremists in the Palestinian community are bridled, and Israel is forced to acknowledge our rights as a national people.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian American columnist, author and standup comedian who uses humor to confront anti-Arab hatred. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)