HAMAS, ANTI-SEMITISM AND ISRAEL

• First a review of the situation in Gaza.  Listen to Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas:  “Jews are a people who cannot be trusted.  They have been traitors to all agreements—go back to history.  Their fate is their vanishing.  Look what they are doing to us.”  He referred to Jews as “brothers of apes and pigs.”  The Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war until Palestine is free of Jewish control.  Steven Erlanger reports of this TV station:  “Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the United States; its children’s programs praise ‘martyrdom,’ teach what it calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over Palestinian land, meaning any part of Israel.”  Although the Oslo accords of 1993 supposedly ban such talk, Hamas is not bound by them.  Such broadcasts by Hamas are modeled after what Hezbollah is doing on its TV station in Lebanon, Al Manar.  “Intended to indoctrinate the young to its brand of radical Islam, which combines politics, social work and military resistance, including acts of terrorism,” such TV programming, including the broadcasting of Friday sermons, point to how impossible any kind of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israel really is.  Indeed, it seems impossible!  No matter what kind of agreement Israel reaches with Fatah, the hatred Hamas and Hezbollah are brewing has implications that extend well into the next generation.  Every Palestinian believes that the situation in Gaza is ugly and unacceptable.  But what Hamas is doing through its propaganda is building a generation of children centered on hatred, closed minds and anti-Semitic sickness.  Consider the children’s program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers.”  One of the puppet characters, Assud the rabbit, speaks of conquering the Jews:  “We will liberate Al Aksa mosque from the Zionists’ filth.  We will liberate Jaffa and Acre.  We will liberate the whole homeland.”  Assud goes on that he vows to “get rid of the Jews, God willing, and I will eat them up, God willing.”  Assud also says to one of the other characters in the children’s program:  “We are all martyrdom-seekers, are we not . . .?  Of course we are.  We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our homeland.  We will sacrifice our souls and everything we own for the homeland.” 

• Second, a comment about the Hamas charter.  The charter is a deeply anti-Semitic document.  For example, it cites a famous forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as truth.  But “our battle is not with Jews as Jews but those who came and occupied us and killed us.”  This charter evidences the absolutely uncompromising position of Hamas when it comes to Israel.  For this reason, the leaders of more moderate Arab governments, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others must speak out and condemn such vitriol.  Correctly, the Israeli government has stated that in “Hamas’s education and broadcasting they turn the suicide bomber who murders the innocent into a positive role model, and they portray Jews in the most negative terms, that too often reminds us of language used in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.”  One Hamas leader made very clear the goal of Hamas:  “We want to connect the child to Palestine, to his country, so you know that your original city is Jaffa, your capital is Jerusalem and that the Jews took your land and closed your borders and are killing your friends and family.” 

• Finally, as this Perspective has made clear, Hamas and Hezbollah give absolutely no evidence of accepting the existence of Israel as a nation.  Their charter so states and every action buttresses their conviction.  From my perspective, the existence of the nation state of Israel is the beginning of the fulfillment of Ezekiel 37 and fits the unconditional covenant relationship God has with the Jewish people through Abraham.  The hatred and vitriol of Hamas and Hezbollah cannot undo either of these.  As God has done in the past, so He will do in the future.  He will be Israel’s advocate and He will fulfill His covenant promises.  However, this in no way guarantees that there will not be war nor continued fighting between Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel.  That Israel even exists is evidence of the miraculous.  Hamas and Hezbollah will never succeed in their articulated goal of destroying the Jewish people.  But, Israel and the Jewish people are no doubt in for some very difficult times in the future.  May God have mercy and may Jesus come quickly!

See the most helpful article by Steven Erlanger in the New York Times (1 April 2008).