Egyptian officials are struggling to broker a 72 hour extension to the cease fire between Israel and Hamas. At the same time, Hamas spokesperson Mushir al-Masri had made clear that war may only be beginning.
“The war is not over yet. Our men are still in the field, manning forward positions, our fingers are on the trigger, and our rockets are trained on Tel Aviv, and Lod and beyond,” al-Masri said at a mass rally today.
Looking at media coverage of the re-ignited conflict in Gaza shows what many agree is a terrible ignorance of the causes of the war. The majority of media outlets seem to either blame Israel or hold Israel and Hamas in equal moral equivalence.
Many journalists and television news personalities do not have a deep understanding of Hamas and what it wants. They instead focus on the superficial like how many civilians have been killed in the fighting and calling for an end to the conflict.
The United Nations has said that as many as 1900 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, three-quarters of them civilians, and 64 Israeli soldiers have also been died.
The best way to accurately find out what Hamas is really all about is to read the Hamas Charter which lays out clearly the terrorist group’s mission. The charter specifically calls for the destruction of Israel.
Article seven of the charter contains a quote from SahihBukhari, considered by all orthodox Muslims as an authentic record of Prophet Muhammad’s words and deeds. The quote goes as follows- Prophet Mohammed said, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”
According to Islamic prophecy, there will be a final war against the Jews in which Muslims will slaughter all the Jews. Even the stones and trees (except for the Gharkad tree) will not hide them. This is preached often in mosques in Gaza and the nearby territory. This call for genocide of Jews is even on Palestinian TV.
If people believe that a final showdown with the Jews is ordained by God, it is therefore inevitable. This makes peace with Israel impossible to achieve. The Hamas charter is a very honest document and makes no bones that it wants the destruction of Israel.
Hamas Charter Article 13 says, “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).”
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
There is no grey area-Hamas is not interested in peace or any two state political compromise. They are only satisfied with the slaughter of Jews and the destruction of Israel. Hamas believes clearly that the destruction of Israel is their religious duty.
Hamas Article Seven says, “This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgment.”
So, according to Islamic Sharia (law), any territory conquered by Muslims must remain in Muslim control till Judgment Day. It is thus their religious duty to wage jihad to recover any lands lost to the infidels. This does not just concern Israel, but also territories once ruled by Muslims.
Spain, Portugal, parts of Italy and the Balkans were once ruled by Muslims.
This belief that Muslims are entitled to take back lost territories is backed up by the verse in Quran 2:191 which say, “And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, …”
So it is not just an Israeli problem-it is also a Western one. The same religious belief that underpins the jihad against Israel can also be used against Western countries that were once ruled by Muslims. Most journalists covering the Gaza war do not understand this.
Not all Muslims share the religious beliefs of Hamas. But if Hamas wins, Muslims all over the world will conclude that God must be on the side of Hamas and therefore their beliefs are correct. Moderate Islam, already in retreat around the world, will be crushed by a Hamas victory.
With the large numbers of Muslims living in western countries, the west will also lose if Israel loses. An Israeli victory, on the other hand is also a victory for moderate Muslims because Hamas’ beliefs will be discredited-beliefs are similar to that of ISIS, Al Qaeda and other extremist terrorist groups.
Journalists covering the tragic events in Gaza should not just focus on the superficial like the destruction of schools, hospitals and homes. Nor should they call for a halt in the war before Hamas is destroyed. It is as if World War II journalists, on learning that tens of thousands of Germans were killed by the bombing of Dresden, called for a ceasefire before Nazism could be destroyed.
Both the ideologies of Hamas and Nazism called for the genocide of the Jews. Both ideologies are equally evil. Both ideologies are incompatible with and a threat to Western democracy.
While every death is tragic, the death toll in this conflict is light compared to Dresden, where the estimate of deaths ranged from 35,000 to as high as 100,000. How come no one called for a ceasefire to save German lives? Hitler’s Mein Kampf was not taken seriously by Western journalists when it first came out. In fact, western leftists like George Bernard Shaw were sympathetic to Nazism. Today, most western journalists are not taking the Hamas Charter seriously either. Those on the left are even sympathetic to HAMAS.
They are as usual wrong. Peace can only come when Hamas and its religious beliefs are destroyed. It would be better to do it as quick as possible before their beliefs infect the moderate Muslims living in non-Muslim countries.
A successful businessman and author, Robert H. Lee has spent years extensively researching the history of nations for his book Saving Democracy from Suicide. (LINK: www.savingdemocracyfromsuicide.com) A self-professed Americaphile, Lee resides in Singapore with his family, but he previous lived in the United States where he went to the University of Michigan for his MBA.