For the naive and unenlightened, and many a postmodernist academic, political bureaucrat or media commentator, Hamas’ victory in the Gaza elections of 2005 was sufficient to persuade them that democracy had suddenly broken out in that troubled neighbourhood and that, consequently, any new Hamas leadership deserved legitimacy and respect.
And despite the all-too-predictable reality that the democratization of the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas – was never on the cards, nor could it or would it be, there are still pundits in the international community – some of whom hold high political office – who remain obstinately wed to the fantasy that negotiating with Hamas is the only way forward for peace in the Middle East. That Canada, the United States, and the European Union list Hamas as a terrorist organization has had little apparent impact on such apologists. Instead, it seems to have emboldened them.
There are very good reasons why talking to Hamas is futile. Any inkling of moderation, in word or deed, since the movement’s founding in 1988, would undoubtedly have opened opportunities for engagement but, sadly, none has been evident. Author Andrew Bostom, writing in the American Thinker (January 2009), reminds us that Hamas’ foundational covenant calls for a Muslim genocide of the Jews. This rallying cry has remained central to Hamas ideology ever since.
And in a recent bulletin of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, senior researcher, Jonathan Halevi, gives further examples of the ominous underpinnings of Hamas beliefs. He notes that “there is no evidence of a new pragmatism among the Hamas leadership, but only greater indications of a much harder line, which is expressed by its adoption of expressions of genocidal intent in its war against Israel and the Jewish people.”
By way of illustration, and to emphasize that such murderous ideation is both current and deliberate, Halevi draws attention to a December 2010 Hamas booklet titled The Path of Glory, which celebrates the movement’s 23rd anniversary. Included in this publication are messages from two of Hamas’ senior military commanders, Mohammed Def and Ahmed al-Jaabari. Def is on record as threatening that “you [meaning Israelis] are going on the path to extinction and Palestine will remain ours including Al-Quds [Jerusalem], Al-Aqsa [Mosque], its towns and villages from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River, from its north to its south. You have no right to even an inch of it.”
In echoing Def’s call for conquest, Al-Jaabari warned that “as long as the Zionists occupy our lands, only death or exile awaits them.”
Such venomous outbursts by Hamas leaders are not especially surprising. They’re merely more of the same along a continuum of intimidation and manipulation that have defined the Islamic Resistance Movement since its establishment. What they reflect is a mindset that is uncompromising, fixated and irredeemably chained to a philosophy that is demonizing and annihilationist.
When an enemy’s raison d’être calls openly and implacably for your extermination, there seems to be little to discuss. What really requires explanation is the pathology of those who, knowing full well what Hamas is and what its objectives are, nonetheless persist in pressuring Israel to begin talking to its envoys.