Israel Matzav

Hamas Uber-Alles

Last month the Palestinian people, by a significant majority in an orderly democratic election, voted Hamas into power. In upcoming months, there will be efforts to obscure the identity of this organization--to claim that its past commitments are giving way to a rethinking and that it is “in evolution.” It is important, therefore, to have a clear idea of where Hamas is coming from and where its worldview must necessarily lead it.

Hamas may have just engaged in a parliamentary maneuver, but it remains a self-defined religious apocalyptic terrorist group whose foundation document preaches genocide and world domination by the military and religious forces of Islam.(1) In Arabic, “Hamas” means “zeal.” In Hebrew, Arabic’s sister language, the same word means “violence.” But the group’s comes from the acronym: “Haraqat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyah”: the Islamic resistance movement.

El-Ikhwan el-Muslemeen: the Moslem Brotherhood

As described in its Charter (or Covenant), Hamas is the “Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood,” the movement known as “al-Ikhwan al-Muslemeen.” The “Brotherhood” was founded in Egypt in 1928 by the Islamic ideologue Hassan al-Banna (grandfather of today’s controversial Islamic activist Tariq Ramadan). His cornerstone assertion was that true Islam had been diluted and betrayed by Moslem politicians truckling to the West, and that the only way to set Islam back on a true path was to violently replace these traitorous Moslem politicians with true Islamic leaders who would make the Qur’an their nations’ constitutions and Shari’a their civil law. Ultimately, once the trans-national population of Moslems, known as the “umma” (the nation), was under the leadership of right-thinking religious Moslems who eschewed westernization and modernization, the whole concept of nation-states would dissolve and the Moslem “umma” would be united, from Mauritania to India, from Turkey to Yemen, and from Pakistan to Somalia, under one Islamic religious Caliphate.

In short, Hassan al-Banna wanted to take the Moslem world back to the 8^th century, and use violence and murder, terrorism and assassination to do so. In the context of this Armageddon-type confrontation between a neo-Caliphate and modern Moslem states, al-Banna saw the Jews of the world (there was not yet a state of Israel) as a major enemy of diabolic proportions. He quoted Mohammed’s extra-Qur’anic teaching that the world would know ultimate redemption, and the resurrection of the dead, only when the Moslems had succeeded in annihilating all of world Jewry, or converting them to Islam. His words would later appear in the Hamas Covenant.

Al-Banna’s disciple was an eloquent writer and preacher, Sayd Qutb. Qutb lived for a bit more than a year in the United States, traveling and acquainting himself with American culture and social mores. His response to democracy and freedom was one of shock and horror. His writings, which lay the groundwork for modern “brotherhood” preaching, regard Western civilization in general, and the USA in particular, as manifestations of demonic licentiousness and sinful hubris. The Brotherhood’s goal must be the destruction of this ungodly and perverse society.

The Brotherhood quickly attracted to its ranks both those predisposed to violence and those for whom violence was only a means to restoring Allah’s will on earth, first with errant Moslem nations, and then with the nations that represented leadership in “global un-belief.” End-of-days rhetoric with apocalyptic prophesies, coupled with training and action in violent attacks on politicians, opposition religious leaders, and civilians, proved effective in drawing into its fold many thousands of followers.

By the late 1930s, Nazi Germany had established contacts with the Brotherhood, and the Haj Amin el-Husseini, father of Palestinian nationalism [and Arafat's uncle CiJ], was a close collaborator with Hitler. Not surprisingly, the Brotherhood adopted fascist trappings, language and symbolism. In fact, Sayd Qutb’s book “Our Struggle with the Jews” is reminiscent of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Qutb simply changed the players. Instead of being the eternal enemy of the “Aryan race,” the Jews, in the perception of the Brotherhood, became the eternal enemy of Islam. His central theme was the Jews’ use of Christianity, capitalism and communism as weapons in their war to subvert Islam. Moreover, he re-interpreted history such that the Jews could be blamed for everything from the French revolution to Marxism, materialism, sexual depravity, World War I, World War II, and global poverty.

Al-Banna was assassinated in 1949, and Qtub was eventually imprisoned and executed in Egypt. After three attempts by the Brotherhood to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser in 1966, Nasser executed the Brotherhood’s leadership and killed, imprisoned, or exiled thousands of its followers. Leaders went underground or sought refuge in neighboring countries.

The Brotherhood experienced a resurgence during the Cold War and especially after the Khartoum Conference of 8/1967 following the Six-Day War. As a result of the Arabs’humiliating defeat on the traditional battlefield, terrorism took precedence as a strategy. Yassir Arafat, a member of the Brotherhood in the 1950s, took on the mantle of terrorist par excellence with funding from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and training and deployment via the USSR.

Other branches of the brotherhood resurfaced in the decades following the 6-day war, and garnered ever-growing support from Moslem rank-and-file after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. That Israeli victory too, snatched as it were from the jaws of defeat by brilliant Israeli flanking actions and creative battlefield maneuvers, shamed the Arab world once again and supported the idea that only a return to the true Islam of the Caliphate could give the “umma” the strength it needed to ultimately prevail.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:16 PM