CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield exhibited smug rudeness in her November 16 interview of patient Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor. But she also forwarded a pathetic moral equivalence between Hamas’ war crimes against civilians and the right of a nation to defend itself against a terror group.
Perhaps someone can share with the CNN anchor some facts regarding what Hamas is.
Hamas is labeled by Israel, the United States, Canada, Japan, and the EU as a foreign terrorist organization of Sunni Palestinian Islamists, one founded in 1987 during the First Intifada as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The name Hamas means “Islamic Resistance Movement,” and Hamas was founded to create an Islamic state in the area known as Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, claims Jerusalem as its capital, and asserts a right of return of all Palestinians to an Islamic state bereft of Jews.
The Hamas Charter of 1988 is a compelling document. Article 7 provides the following quotation, attributed to Mohammad:
“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
Article 22 states that the French and Russian revolutions, colonialism, and both world wars were created by the Zionists or forces supportive of Zionism.
Article 32 of the Covenant refers to an anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:
“Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates.”
Muhammed dictated that Muslims should kill Jews, and so Hamas leaders and educators demonize and incite violence daily against Israelis. Palestinian media, madrassas, and mosques are rife with the teaching and preaching of anti-Semitism.
Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian nationalist, helped the Nazis plan the genocide of the Jews during World War II — but Hamas consistently denies the Holocaust.
There are only six million Jews in Israel, but 350 million Arabs and 1.2 billion Muslims in the region. Israel constitutes half of one percent the landmass of the Middle East — maybe the Zionist colonial domination has been a bit overstated?
Hamas has been brutal to all who oppose its tyranny. Hamas terrorists defeated Fatah to rule Gaza, throwing its enemies off of 14-story buildings. Gaza has not been a fun place for gays, women, dissidents, or anyone who dares challenge their dictatorial rule.
Hamas is a criminal gang featuring denial of a free press, beatings and torture of political opponents, and financial corruption.
Hamas uses mosques, hospitals, and schoolyards as hideouts and as places to store weapons, and its militants store weapons in homes, making it difficult to ensure that civilians close to legitimate military targets are not hurt during Israeli military operations. Its child abuse includes using children as militants and as human shields when Israel responds, and encouraging and celebrating suicide bombers.
Hamas brigades conducted the terror murder of Israelis in the First and Second intifada and the blowing up of buses, Passover celebrations, and discos in Israel from 1994 to 2005.
Israel estimates some 15,000 rockets and mortars have been shot into Israel by Hamas in the past decade. In recent years, affiliated Iranian-backed terror organizations have launched rockets at Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Even Human Rights Watch has called Hamas rocket attacks “unlawful and unjustifiable, and amounting to war crimes.”
An example of Hamas mass murder: the August 2010 West Bank shooting attack near Kiryat Arba. Four Israelis were killed after gunmen attacked their vehicle. The four civilian victims included a pregnant woman. Hamas hailed the attack as “heroic” and promised further attempts to kill “illegal settlers.” Hamas supporters in Jabalya publicly celebrated the killings. The attack was even condemned by the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
In late 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. Some four years later, Israel finds that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood supports Hamas.
Hamas rockets threaten a huge percentage of the Israeli population. They can now reach Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Israel’s borders are threatened by the instability resulting from an Arab Spring that has turned into a winter of discontent for Arabs, who also suffer under the tyranny of Islamism. Democratic dissidents in Cairo have been overrun by brutal Muslim Brotherhood rule. Syrian civilians are being exterminated.
Some friends of the U.S. in the region are now gone, and Israel has noticed that President Obama speaks not of jihad, Sharia law, and tyranny in Araby. He passively watches the Middle East explode, and won’t even condition U.S. taxpayer aid to the Islamic Republic of Egypt.
Americans stand by Israel, however. And Muslims who seek peaceful relations with Jews and Christians suffering under Islamist oppression understand the evil that is Hamas.
But left-wing voices in the elite media mouth banal words like “cycles of violence” and “root causes” of the problem. “Can’t both sides just pull back?”
By the way, Ashleigh Banfield’s journalistic record includes calling the daughter of the assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy at 5:00 a.m. with disgusting questions on air about her feelings about her murdered father. Kerry Kennedy, sleepy and polite, didn’t mention that her father was murdered in 1968 by an anti-Israel Palestinian Arab, Sirhan Sirhan, in an early moment of the modern Jihad.
Banfield should wake up: only Israeli victory and the defeat of tyranny will lead to the rescue of Palestinians from their tyrants and the chance for reconciliation between Arabs and Israelis.
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