8-Jun-12: Selling big lies

Haniyeh

Part of the strategy of killing other people’s children in order to undermine that other people’s will and resistance involves telling very large and powerful lies and getting very large and powerful organizations to sell them for you.

This is what stands behind an article in today’s Guardian newspaper with the ad-agency-spun title “We Palestinians are reclaiming our destiny”. It purports to be written by the “prime minister” of the Hamas regime, Ismail Haniyeh. He speaks no English but whoever wrote it tells a politically smart and appealing yarn:

We as a people want to live in our homeland, the land of our ancestors, in freedom, dignity and democracy, and with a just peace that restores our rights. We do not want to attack anyone and do not accept anyone attacking us. As we have said on more than one occasion, the key to security is the end of occupation....I would like to reiterate on behalf of my people our sincere desire to live in security and stability, without wars and bloodshed; we hope that the world will help us in this venture. We extend our hand to all those who seek a just peace to work seriously to end the occupation and help us establish our state, which the world has already recognised... We do not want more blood.

We’re faced with an almost irresistible urge to take this article apart and expose one after another the falsehoods, distortions and inventions from which it’s confected. Doing that would be a totally undeserved service to the terrorists who operate Hamas since it means our readers would be applying their discernment to claims that are built on the fundamental base of a Big Lie: that Hamas has nationalistic ambitions to build a country of their own and do good for their people. 

The reality, concealed among the doublespeak of this ghosted article, is much, much darker. Hamas exists to break Israel down and destroy it. The problem they come to solve is not that they lack a state. It’s that we have one.

Our respected colleague Elder of Ziyon writes on his blog today about the things another Hamas ideologue and military leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar – the so-called foreign minister of the Hamas thugocracy, said on video in 2010:

"We have liberated Gaza, but have we recognized Israel? Have we given up our lands occupied in 1948? We demand the liberation of the West Bank, and the establishment of a state in the West Bank and Gaza, with Jerusalem as its capital – but without recognizing [Israel]. This is the key – without recognizing the Israeli enemy on a single inch of land… This is our plan for this stage – to liberate the West Bank and Gaza, without recognizing Israel’s right to a single inch of land, and without giving up the Right of Return for a single Palestinian refugee… Our plan for this stage is to liberate any inch of Palestinian land, and to establish a state on it. Our ultimate plan is [to have] Palestine in its entirety. I say this loud and clear so that nobody will accuse me of employing political tactics. We will not recognize the Israeli enemy. "

EoZ points to the supremely important but ignored (by Westerners) Hamas Charter that explains in clear terms how Hamas does not seek to create a Palestinian Arab state, democratic or otherwise. Its struggle is for a pan-Muslim 'umma with “Palestine” being swallowed up by a new large Islamic nation. He captures the message well: Democracy is not the goal. It is no more than a tactic.

Thanks to Elder, we also offer this handful of recent statements made on behalf of Hamas that present the polar opposite of what the ideologues at the Guardian are peddling today:

• March 30, 2012: Hamas confirmed that the Al-Aqsa Intifada "will continue to be present at the heart of every Arab and Muslim, and that they address the Palestinian issue." and the Islamic movement stressed in a statement that the resistance will continue in all its forms in the liberation of Palestinian land ....Hamas stressed that the intifada "will remain a landmark inspired by the Palestinian people the meanings of resilience, stability, and the challenge against the crimes of the Zionist enemy."
• May 16, 2012: The entire [Hamas] Palestinian Legislative Council confirmed that the armed resistance is the only option to restore the rights and Palestinian rights.
• May 26, 2012: Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal confirmed that resistance is a right for all peoples and every nation, and no nation in history has terminated occupation voluntarily, but it only happens by the use of force. 

The Guardian, in presenting today's Haniyeh-branded op ed is complicit in the peddling of a lie that the master propagandist of the Nazi regime, Goebbels, would surely have been proud to call his own. Its editors and readers will continue to shut their minds to the reality of terrorism, and the ugliness of its practitioners. But we, who cannot afford the price of willful stupidity, will ignore them and keep our focus where it already is: on keeping our homes, families and society safe.