Is Hamas real or a bad joke?

I am not sure if Hamas is unhappy or happy with Israel’s use of “disproportional force” each time the jihadists escalate indiscriminate rocket attacks against Jewish targets. I am not sure if we poor souls can ever understand the jihadists when they say “they love death more than we love life.”

Hamas’ rhetoric stinks of death, nothing but death – indiscriminate death. Be it “our” death or “the enemy’s.” And it never metamorphoses into something more humane, something less nihilist. Most recently, in an interview with Today’s Zaman, Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, confidently spoke of “defending and liberating Jerusalem,” and “fighting the enemy forever.” According to Mr. Haniyeh, the nearly 200 dead Palestinians – including Palestinian children killed by errand Hamas rockets – proved Hamas’ “prowess.” He called the eight-day fighting a “victory.”

In the same interview, the prime minister pledged to prepare “bodies and army” for the next attack on Israel and to keep their strategy “always based on armed struggle.” Mr. Haniyeh defines the Palestinian borders as “from Palestine as we know it [Gaza, West bank and Jerusalem] to Rafah and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.”

Mr. Haniyeh claims that “with every [Israeli] attack we grow stronger.” Since “Muslims don’t cheat or lie,” one cannot help but wonder if the Israeli Defense Forces are secretly conspiring for Hamas’ jihad. If what Mr. Haniyeh says is true, why do the willing subscribers of the Palestinian cause across the world, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, complain of Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Hamas targets? They should instead welcome every attack, thinking every attack will strengthen Hamas. Is that too cruel to say? Ask Mr. Haniyeh.
But Hamas can be amusing too. Its charter is must-read fun. My favorite section is the one which states: “The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

Other pearls of humanity include holding Jews responsible for a wide range of events and disasters going as far back in history as the French Revolution. The Hamas covenant also provides justification for fighting and killing Jews, without distinction of “whether they are in Israel or elsewhere.”

Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s section on Hamas contains these headings, among others: Military wing, Islamization efforts, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, statements on the Holocaust (another fun read), children as human shields, children as combatants, human rights abuses, rocket attacks on Israel, attempts to derail 2010 peace talks, themes of martyrdom, guerilla warfare and other targets. Another heading reads: Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey as a role model. We are honored!

And the U.N.-sponsored probe into the previous war, the Goldstone Report, accused Israel of war crimes and other offenses, but it also found that:

1- They (Hamas’s activities) constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population. These actions would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity. … The rocket and mortar attacks launched by armed Palestinian groups have caused terror.

2- Hamas continues to view all armed activity directed against Israel as … a legitimate right of the Palestinian people.

3- The security services under the control of the Gaza authorities carried out extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, detentions and ill treatment of people.

The latest war is over. Hamas is happy because the war gave Hamas what it says it loves more than we love life. And I tend to blame the whole bloodshed on stupid trees and rocks in the holy lands. They still refuse to call out to Muslims or Abdullah and betray the last Jew hiding behind them – the last Jew to be killed.