HAMAS

12/12/2006

HAMAS is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawammah al-Islammiyya. It means Islamic Resistance Movement. The terrorist group is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood - the same organization that has spawned most fundamentalist Islamic hate groups. The Muslim Brotherhood is a Sunni, Salafist, Islamist, religious movement that originated in Egypt. It seeks the forced imposition of fundamentalist Muslim social, moral, legal, religious, and political mandates on the world.

Throughout the late 1960s, HAMAS's founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was actively engaged in the Muslim Brotherhood. He was an Islamic preacher, educator, and charity/social worker. In 1973, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin established al-Mujamma' al-Islami as an umbrella organization overseeing Muslim Brotherhood projects in Gaza. By the early 1980s, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin's fundamentalist Islamic ideology caused him to include jihadist acts along with his preaching and educating duties. He openly espoused violence against Israel and America.

After the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada (armed Islamic uprising) in December 1987 (called by Fatah and the PLO), HAMAS was established as the political/religious/militant arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel. HAMAS members began actively terrorizing and killing Jews.

In August 1988, HAMAS released its official charter. It stated that HAMAS was "committed to creating an Islamic state in the territory of Palestine" which it took to be all of Israel. According to the HAMAS charter, "the land of Palestine has been endowed to Islam, and it is therefore the duty of all Muslims to liberate Palestine through violent jihad." In this regard, the charter of HAMAS is indistinguishable from that of the PLO and it differs only in respect to scope with that of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Jihad, Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, and al-Qaeda.

Hamas remains zealously dedicated to its violent, fundamentalist Islamist goals and seeks to destroy Israel and replace the Palestinian Authority with an Islamic state. While HAMAS and the Palestinian Authority/PLO do cooperate occasionally, HAMAS has generally presented itself as a pure Islamic alternative to Arafat's Marxist Muslim Fatah. HAMAS has violently opposed any political compromises with Israel and has frequently used suicide bombings and rocket attacks against to derail the peace process.

As part of its Islamist ideology, HAMAS maintains an active network of social services within the Palestinian Territories. They are funded by the OPECers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran (somewhat surprising since Iran is Shia, not Sunni) and are designed to bribe Muslims into compliance with fundamentalist, jihadist, Islam. If you were a Palestinian, the choice would be between starving and submission.

Hamas's substantial financial support comes with strings attached. Children mus attend their schools and mosques and parents must sign oaths of allegiance. Hamas provides financial, food, housing, education, health care, religious, and recreation services that the Palestinian Authority has been unable to provide because they are more interested in enriching themselves than indoctrinating the populous in Islam. These inducements have substantially increased popular support for HAMAS, drawing political support away from Fatah, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority. HAMAS has been able to leverage this support into an increased barrage of terrorist activities.

In January 2006, HAMAS ran candidates for Palestinian parliamentary elections for the first time. Shocking everyone in the West besides those who had read Tea With Terrorists, HAMAS won a landslide victory, winning over 65% of the vote and garnering 76 out of a possible 132 seats. While Western politicians and media spokespeople claimed that this negative turn of events could not have been predicted, I actively predicted this very outcome in the book and on radio shows beginning in 2002. Read the opening and title chapter of Tea With Terrorists if you'd like to know what other predictions I got right.

In a public address given on Wednesday evening, October 11th, 2006, George Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said: "Palestinians deserve to live better than they do, and to be free of the humiliation of occupation in a state of their own." She was therefore saying that the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas was the victim of humiliating oppression rather than the oppressor of the Palestinian people, the opposite of what is actually true. She was also fabricating history. Before the Fatah and Hamas intifada against Israel, back when Muslims were integrated into the Israeli society, the "Palestinian people" were the best educated, most prosperous and most free Muslims in the world. But after their violent terrorist uprising, the Palestinians who were now separated from Israel became as indoctrinated, oppressed, humiliated, impoverished, hateful, and violent as all of the other Muslims who surround Israel's oasis of relative civility.

But worse than all of her revisionism and deceit, there is the moral question. To say that the "Palestinians deserve...a state of their own" is to say that terrorism is a valid and justified political strategy. The Palestinians are second only to the Pakistanis in the application of terror. And the only moral response to terror is rebuke, not reward.

America's second-most prolific and deadly liar went on to tell the audience of Palestinians: "I promise you my personal commitment to that goal." At the dinner marking the third anniversary of the American Task Force on Palestine, Rice preached: "There could be no greater legacy for America." The legacy of looting Israel, of thinning the nation at its waist, of giving her land to her enemy, is vividly portrayed by the prophet Isaiah. He says that such a nation will be pruned back and that its cities will be laid waste.

Let's examine some of the people who contributed to the rise of the Islamic Resistance Group - one of the world's most vicious and deadly terrorist associations. It's important to know the nature of those to whom America wants to turn over the keys of the Promised Land. We begin with the Islamic Resistance Group's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He was born in the late 1930s and became paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a childhood accident. During his teenage years, he was heavily influenced by Muslim Brotherhood teachers. Thereafter, Sheikh Yassin began training as an Islamic teacher in Cairo.

In the late 1960s, Yassin began efforts to encourage pious Islamic religiosity and ritual observances among Gaza youth. He was briefly imprisoned by Egypt in 1966 and became disillusioned 1967 following Israel's rout of Team Islam in the Six-Day War. Thereafter, Sheikh Yassin focused on preaching and teaching fundamentalist Islam.

This focus on Islamic religiosity prompted Yassin to revive Muslim Brotherhood activities in Gaza. In 1973, he founded the Islamic Center which coordinated Muslim Brotherhood activities in the Gaza Strip. He was arrested in 1983 and 1984 after arms caches were discovered in his home. Such weaponry, therefore must have been part and parcel of his preaching and teaching fundamentalist Islam, and central to the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood.

For accumulating weapons whose purpose was to kill Jews, Yassin was given a 13-year sentence. He was released in May 1985 following a prisoner exchange. He was arrested again in May 1989 and sentenced in to life imprisonment. He was again released in a prisoner exchange in October 1997. The Palestinian Authority tried to place Yassin under house arrest in December 2001, leading to widespread clashes. Finally, he was killed in an Israeli missile attack on March 22, 2004.

Abd al-Aziz Rantisi was another influential Hamas member. He was born in 1947 in Yabna and grew up in the Khan Yunis refugee camp. He was educated as a pediatrician at Alexandria University starting in 1972. That is where he first came into contact with the Muslim Brotherhood. He helped establish the Islamic Center in Gaza in 1973 and became a bona fide member of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1976. He worked at Khan Yunis hospital as head of pediatrics but was dismissed by Israel in 1983 and was imprisoned multiple times for jihadist activities.

Abd al-Aziz Rantisi led Hamas starting in April 1989 but was deported by Israel to Lebanon in 1992 for inspiring and planning terrorist attacks. There he served as the spokesperson for other deportees. On his return, he was rearrested by Israel in December 1993 and held until April 1997. He was then held by the Palestinian Authority in detention for 21 months until February 2000. He was arrested again in July 2000 after calling the Palestinian participation in the Camp David talks an act of treason. He was released in December 2000, but has been rearrested multiple times since. He currently operates out of the Shaykh Radwan area of Gaza City where he served as a spokesman for Hamas. Following the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Rantisi was elected as the group's commander. Rantisi was killed by an Israeli missile strike on April 17, 2004.

Mahmud al-Zahhar is one of Hamas's most senior political and religious leaders. He was educated as a surgeon and served as a lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza. He became Hamas's chief recruiter and publicist in April 1989. He then served as Hamas's representative to the PLO from January 1990. He was also deported to Lebanon in December 1992. Al-Zahhar was the target of an unsuccessful Israeli assassination attempt in September 2003 in Gaza City. The raid killed his son and a bodyguard in addition to injuring members of his family. With Hamas's victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections, al-Zahhar joined the government as their Foreign Minister. His first major initiative was a tour of neighboring Islamic countries where he was able to garner substantial aid from OPECers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Ibrahim Ghosheh (Ghousheh) was born in Jerusalem in November 1936. He was trained as a civil engineer in Cairo and then worked as an engineer in Jordan between 1962 and 1966. He served the Kuwaiti Emirs in 1971 and 1972. He toiled in Hamas public relations beginning in late 1992, operating out of Amman, Jordan. In 1999, he was arrested and held by Jordan, but was eventually deported to Qatar. In June 2001, Ghousheh attempted to return to Jordan, provoking an international dispute with Qatar. Jordan finally permitted him to stay on the condition that he curtail his work with Hamas, seeing that it was a terrorist organization.

Mahmud Abu Hanud (Hanoud) was born in 1967 and graduated from Islamic College in Jerusalem. He was an active participant in the 1987 intifada, being wounded in a raid during that time. In 1992, he was deported to Lebanon where he is believed to have acquired military training. Following his return to the Palestinian Territories, he became the West Bank commander of Hamas's ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassem Brigades. In 1994, he was detained by the Palestinian Authority for firing on settler vehicles near Nablus, though he was released soon after his arrest. Israel attempted to assassinate him in Asira al-Shamaliyya in September 2000. He surrendered to Palestinian Authority forces and was detained until May 2001 when Israel bombed his prison in Nablus. He was finally killed on November 23rd 2001 when an Israeli missile hit his van. Keep in mind that the only reason that Israel was interested in this man was that he, like his comrades, was inspiring and equipping suicide bombers.

Musa Abu Marzuq was born in 1951 in Gaza. He studied engineering at Ayn Shams in Cairo and worked in the United Arab Emirates until 1981. He was a student in the United States from 1981 through 1991, receiving his PhD and gaining residency rights. After returning to the Middle East, he became the head of Hamas's Political Bureau. Musa Marzuq was expelled from Jordan, where he was in charge of public relations, in 1995. He was arrested at New York's JFK airport, though the U.S. dropped all charges against him in 1997, allowing him to return to Jordan. Marzuq was expelled again from Jordan in August 1999 when Hamas's offices there were closed by the Kingdom because of their terrorist affairs. Marzuq is now a Yemeni national and operates out of Damascus, Syria. He has been cited as a leading terrorist figure in assaults against Americans, and yet, Musa Marzuq uses Islamic charities in the United States to raise money for Hamas.

Ismail Abu Shanab was born in 1955. He was educated as a construction engineer at Colorado State University, where he received his Masters degree. He taught engineering at Gaza's Islamic University and served as deputy to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas. For his involvement in Hamas terrorist acts against Israel, he was imprisoned for seven years. After his release in 1996, he served as Hamas's observer to the PLO Central Council and toiled as Hamas's representative to the Committee of National and Islamic Forces. He was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza on August 21st, 2003.

Salah Shehadah was born in Gaza in 1953. He obtained a secondary school certificate, but his financial circumstances did not allow him to pursue his university education. He was, however, later invited to study medicine and engineering in Turkish and Russian universities. He continued his education in the Higher Institute for Social Service in Alexandria, where he first became affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Salah Shihadah was arrested in 1984 on anti-Israel terrorist activities and was jailed for two years. After being released in 1986, he worked as Director of Student Affairs at the Islamic University until Israeli authorities closed the university during the first Palestinian intifada. Ignoring the closure, Salah continued to work at the school, and was arrested again in August 1988. Shihadah was the founder of the first organized militant apparatus of Hamas, known as the Palestinian Mujahideen. His popularity as a terrorist/spiritual leader in HAMAS was growing to the point where many considered him to be the heir to Sheik Ahmed Yassin. He focused his energies on the production of Kasam I and Kasam II rockets - a favorite Islamic weapon for indiscriminantly destroying and terrorizing civilians second only to the strapping explosives to a guided missile/young boy. This jihadist was killed in an Israeli missile strike on his residence in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City in 2002.