Mick Hartley

Noted Israeli historian Benny Morris at Quillette on Muslim Antisemitism and the Western Left - "The pro-Hamas demonstrations are driven by the identification of Israel with “colonialism” and the idea that the Palestinians are anti-colonialists. This approach is based on ignorance."

I have closely followed the trajectory of Hamas, the Palestine branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, since it emerged in Gaza in the late 1980s, in particular in my 2009 book One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict. The best and most succinct entry point for understanding Hamas is the movement’s foundational “Charter” or “Covenant” (readily available online, in English). 

It defines “the Jews” as “smitten with vileness, wheresoever they are found.” The Jews, states the Charter, “with their money, stirred revolutions in various parts of the world… They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution… they were behind World War I… [and] World War II, through which they made huge financial gains.” 

So, how does Hamas intend to solve “the Jewish problem”? The Charter states: “The Prophet… has said: ‘The time [the Day of Judgment] will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. [And] the stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” We saw this happen, almost literally, on 7 October.

As to its immediate political goal, the Charter is clear: Hamas seeks to turn the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—“from the river to the sea,” a phrase echoed in many of the post-7 October demonstrations—that is, all the territory of British Mandate Palestine or the historical Land of Israel into a Sharia-governed Islamic polity. It intends “to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine,” after obliterating the Jewish state “through jihad,” as “Islam obliterated others before it.” 

[Greta] Thunberg and [Judith] Butler and their colleagues, feminists all, might also ponder the Charter’s designated role for women:

The Muslim woman… is the maker [i.e., birther] of men… Woman… plays the most important role in looking after the family, rearing the children and imbuing them with moral values and thoughts derived from Islam… She has to be of sufficient knowledge and understanding where the performance of housekeeping matters are concerned, because economy and avoidance of waste of the family budget, is one of the requirements.  

Hamas’s—that is, the Muslim Brotherhood’s—ultimate goal reaches well beyond the Middle East. As the Charter, with calculated vagueness, poetically puts it, it extends “everywhere across the globe… to the depth of the earth and… out to heaven… The movement is a universal one.” Europeans and Americans should take note. 

Worth reading in full.