Skip to main content

Objective Overview of Hamas

Council on Foreign Relations 
Thursday, January 8, 2009; 11:27 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/08/AR2009010801937.html

Is Hamas only a terrorist group?
No. In addition to its military wing, the so-called Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, Hamas devotes much of its estimated $70-million annual budget to an extensive social services network. Indeed, the extensive social and political work done by Hamas - and its reputation among Palestinians as averse to corruption - partly explain its defeat of the Fatah old guard in the 2006 legislative vote. Hamas funds schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues. "Approximately 90 percent of its work is in social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities," writes the Israeli scholar Reuven Paz. The Palestinian Authority often fails to provide such services, and Hamas's efforts in this area¿as well as a reputation for honesty, in contrast to the many Fatah officials accused of corruption¿help to explain the broad popularity it summoned to defeat Fatah in the PA's recent elections.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/08/AR2009010801937.html

What attacks is Hamas responsible for?
Hamas is believed to have killed more than five hundred people in more than 350 separate terrorist attacks since 1993. Not all Hamas's attacks have been carried out by suicide bombers. The group has also accepted responsibility for assaults using mortars, short-range rockets, and small arms fire. In 1996, Hamas bombings played an important role in undermining the election hopes of Labor Party leader Shimon Peres, who represented the succession to assassinated Oslo Accords signatory, Yitzhak Rabin. (Likud's Benyamin Netnanyahu, who ran against the accords, won instead). Between 2001 and 2003, in particular, Hamas and its comrades of Palestinian Islamic Jihad carried out dozens of such attacks, ultimately leading Israel to begin construction of a barrier between itself and Palestinian regions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Israel pays students to post favorable comments online.

https://www.facebook.com/FromDarknessToLightTRUTH/videos/760705497393111/ There's a few ways of spotting the paid comment makers. One is they generally go for ad homenum attacks. This one is an antisemite, that one is an enemy of Israel, this one is not qualified to speak. I also find it amusing that Noam Chomsky is considered not qualified to speak because his PhD is in linguistics but Alan Dershowitz, a trial attorney, is even though Chomsky is just brimming with relevant facts and Dershowitz is so clearly a manipulator. They are not too educated these commenters.  Also, they also never respond to educated responses because they have no response and possibly they are instructed not to respond so as not to help promote educated thought on the topic.
Post a Comment
Read more

R. Mendel Kasher, who I find is the source of almost all the classic Zionist distortions - by Megila

R. Mendel Kasher, who I find is the source of almost all the classic Zionist distortions. He was the one who made up the story of those Gedolim signing a paper was the Medinah is the aschalta degeulah, and he was the one who doctored the story of the meeting of the Moetzes Chachmei HaTorah in 1937 where he left out the poiastion of people like Rav Ahron Kotler. He wrote a book called HaTekufah heGedolah which is absolutely full of misquotes, fabrications and distortions. His deception has already been exposed and well known to those who have researched this topic. R. Zvi Weinman documented extensively the forgeries of R. Kasher - and he even challenged him in public to respond to his findings when R. Kasher was alive - in his excellent work "Mikatowitz ad 5 B'Iyar." Of course, R. Kasher did not produce any response to the evidence against him. More of R. Kasher's falsifications are exposed in the sefer "Das HaTziyonus", especially his now famous fra...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Real Charedim

It seems sometimes in the Mistake of Israel that anybody who isn't anti-religious, which essentially is most of the country, is Charedi, ie. claims to be. Oh I'm Charedi. Oh he's Charedi. That's what one hears from people as they march along with their smart phones, flags, and blue jeans. And I won't even give you a picture of how their wives and daughters dress and conduct themselves. They are all Charedi. I suspect that they make this claim because they see that irr-Religious Zionism is so empty. Oh, they still buy into all the myths about the Mistake and the army but they see intuitively that there's nothing else there. They want to latch onto the rich life of real Charedim, and the easy way to do that is with a simple declaration. And what about most of the country being anti-religious, well that's not necessarily how they'd describe themselves. After all, some have religious brothers and sisters and grandmothers. Some are just not hostile people and...
Post a Comment
Read more