2-Jan-12: 2:02 minutes of utter clarity on why Hamas is a terrorist group (and what this means about the people who persist in denying it)

[Image Source]

The video clip below comes from Palestinian Media Watch which specializes in the translation and publicizing of Arabic language materials into English. The clip captures an important speech made by the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh (reported here) on 14th December 2011 in front of 100,000 supporters in Gaza City's al-Katiba park. This was a rally celebrating Hamas' 24th birthday and its proud claims to have killed 1,365 Israelis and to have fired 11,093 civilian-seeking rockets into Israel in that period.

We're replaying the speech here because Haniyeh says things that - for reasons you may understand better than we do - keep getting forgotten, denied, concealed or distorted.

Two days after the Gaza City speech, his fellow supreme Palestinian Arab leader, Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fatah and of the PA, said things that directly contradict Haniyeh. Nevertheless they received widespread media coverage. Abbas said Hamas has agreed that "there will be no military resistance" and "the permanent solution is on the '67 borders". But the speech by Haniyeh makes plain that this is not what Hamas says. Abbas surely knows this. So do the journalists and editors who publicized his words.

The key statement in the speech that follows is that the Hamas efforts to win back Gaza, the "West Bank" (as he terms it) and Jerusalem are an "interim objective". Nothing - certainly not the pending unification deal with Fatah - will change Hamas' real, actual, long-term "strategic" goal: eliminating all of Israel. He and his followers will not relinquish one inch of what he terms the land of Palestine. He says it about as clearly as a person can.

Here is the transcript of the speech by Ismail Haniyeh, Gazan leader of Hamas. And right after it, the video.

"We say today, explicitly, so it cannot be explained otherwise, that the armed resistance and the armed struggle are the path and the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and for the expulsion of the invaders and usurpers [Israel] from the blessed land of Palestine. The Hamas movement will lead Intifada after Intifada until we liberate Palestine - all of Palestine, Allah willing. Allah Akbar and praise Allah. We say with transparency and in a clear manner, that Palestinian reconciliation - and all sides must know this - cannot come at the expense of [our] principles, at the expense of the resistance. These principles are absolute and cannot be disputed: Palestine - all of Palestine - is from the sea to the river. We won't relinquish one inch of the land of Palestine. The involvement of Hamas at any stage with the interim objective of liberation of [only] Gaza, the West Bank, or Jerusalem, does not replace its strategic view concerning Palestine and the land of Palestine." 

[Al-Aqsa (Hamas), Dec. 14, 2011]

Give the man credit: he desperately wants to be believed. We owe him and hatred-driven terrorist racists like him that simple courtesy.