On the Fence | Recent Hamas victory a step towards militant theocracy

Ian Saxine Columnist

What do you call a group of people who spend their time complaining about how the source of all their problems is the Jews? Personally, I would opt for “anti-Semitic losers.” But now the answer depends on where you live. If you live in the United States, the people blaming the Great Depression are usually called Neo Nazis or skinheads. In Palestine, as of last week, those types are called “the government.”

That’s right. In their latest bid to make it harder for the rest of the world to feel sorry for them, the Palestinian people overwhelmingly voted Hamas into power. To be clear, Hamas, (the name is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement”) is the Islamist terrorist group responsible for a good portion of the attacks upon Israeli civilians since its founding in 1988. The group was voted into power ostensibly in the hopes that it will provide less corrupt leadership than the sitting Fatah party. Unfortunately, legitimizing Hamas is leading Palestine down a dangerous road.

Many Vassar students will undoubtedly chalk up my criticism of Hamas as a dangerous terrorist organization as some sort of blatant generalization or stereotyping of mere nationalists as terrorists. So I decided to present a few choice bits of the Hamas charter (established in 1988) to show what sort of aims Hamas is likely to pursue. You can find a number of websites posting the full text of this charter if you Google “Hamas” and “charter.” The quotations I am using are from a copy on the nonprofit peace-seeking website at mideastweb.org.

The charter is, from beginning to end, a call for all good Arabs and Muslims to destroy Israel, home of “the warmongering Jews.” In a strange twist of logic, the charter deplores “Zionist Nazi” crimes against the Palestinians. The reader of the charter is informed that Jews have been behind World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. Also, the Zionists plan to take over the entire Middle East, and then, once they have “digested” it, the world! Anyone skeptical of these assertions is encouraged to look them up in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a rabidly anti-Semitic tract long known to be a forgery dating back to the early twentieth century. An American equivalent would be if a political party took power that justified its actions by citing the 1915 pro-Klan film, The Birth of a Nation.

The goal of Hamas is to not stop fighting until Israel is destroyed and a proper Islamic state set up. Islam itself shall be the vehicle of rule, and “it is the duty of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam over this region.” Hamas will not stop until an Islamic theocracy is established over all of present-day Israel and Palestine. Forgive me if I say that secular, nationalist violence and corruption are preferable to the Hamas approach.

Don’t get me wrong: I think plain old nationalism, the idea that a certain ethnic or religious group deserves its own exclusive homeland, is a recipe for disaster. I think anything short of a multi-ethnic, secular, unified state in the region is doomed to failure, since the territorial clams of the Israeli and Palestinian nationalists who seek domination of certain real estate by their own kind overlap. Only a shared land for all will work. Call it naïve, but I see it as the best shot for the region, even if it will take time.

Secular nationalists are a foolish bunch, but Hamas is even worse, for they sport what is arguably the most dangerous ideology in the world today: Islamism. This political ideology is not to be confused with Islam the religion. Islamism—a western-inspired, total worldview more on par with communism, capitalism, fascism, and other European inspired “isms”—is an ideology that seeks to put a geographic, worldly edge to Islam. A Muslim believes that Islamic law applies to all Muslims, whether they live in Baghdad or Boston. An Islamist believes that Islamic laws should apply to everyone within a country, regardless of their religion, and believes the state should enforce those laws. An example of Islamist government would be Afghanistan under the Taliban.

I sincerely hope the rest of the world refuses to grant legitimacy to any Palestinian government run according to the Hamas principles, and I endorse all of the proposed aid cut- offs promised by the European Union if Hamas does not repudiate its stated aims. Anyone who excuses letting such a hateful group to be treated like any other government by saying that they are “efficient reformers” should remember that so were Hitler and Mussolini. Both of them were praised early on by much of the world press for “making the trains run on time.”

Yes, Palestinians have legitimate grievances. But how far are they willing to go to alleviate them? Although they have suffered greatly, nothing that has happened in Palestine can possibly justify putting Hamas’ agenda of blood and terror into practice.

In keeping with the theme of last week’s article, (“Small, individual contributions can stem tide of global misery,” published in the 2.3.06 issue of the Miscellany News), I wanted to share a statement from the Vassar branch of UNICEF that their December drive netted them $210 and allowed them to provide 80 South American children with school supplies for an entire year. That’s less than $3 per student! I continue to encourage you to donate to UNICEF and other worthy causes, in which even small contributions make a difference.