The billions that western nations have pours into the Gaza Strip to help it have mostly been exploited for terrorist purposes and to turn Gaza into a military outpost and its residents into hostages of a brutal regime influenced by the Iranian ayatollah regime. Hamas used the cement it received to build tunnels; the fertilizers for agriculture to build ammunition; the iron to make rockets rather than build homes.
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Israel supplies Gaza with electricity from the Rutenberg Power Station in Ashkelon and water from the Simcha Station in the Negev, near Sderot. These two sites were attacked by rockets from Gaza. Over 600 of the rockets Hamas has fired have landed in the Gaza Strip, killing children and adults and destroyed numerous homes. Hamas is killing its own citizens, and blaming Israel. Hamas wants to weaken the Palestinian Authority and then take over, just like it did in Gaza in 2006. This means that any possibility for a long-term truce would be shut down. Any support for or understanding of this terrorist organization just strengthens its standing among the Palestinians, gives a prize to terrorism, and encourages it.
While Israel was enduring rocket fire, there were many supportive voices in the world. The moment Israel went on the offensive to attack Hamas' military bases, headquarters, rocket stockpiles and launchers, as well as its tunnel network, voices of "reason" began calling on Israel to hold fire and talk to Hamas. If only western rationalism were the basis for political and diplomatic conduct in our region. But our neighbors to the south cling to a completely different worldview. Anyone who thinks that it can be compromised with endangers not only Israel's existence, but also the free world.
To understand what we are dealing with, one should go back to the organization's founding manifesto: the Hamas covenant, which was written in 1988 by the infamous Ahmed Yassin. This is Hamas' most important ideological document. Its leaders declare their full commitment to the charter, and stress that the movement will not change a word of it.
This is Hamas' slogan, which opens the charter: "Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Quran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes." The charter decrees that Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (and world jihad) and quote Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." Hamas sees itself as "one of the links in the chain of jihad" against the "Zionist invaders." A famous Quranic verse, quoted in the charter, is taken verbatim from Islamic tradition: "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
Here, one can already see Hamas' two main goals: to destroy the state of Israel and kill Jews. There is a reason why liberal analysts called this document "Nazi."
Here are some of the movement's other goals, as written out in the charter: "Homelands be retrieved and from its mosques would the voice of the muezzin emerge declaring the establishment of the state of Islam." Does this refer to the Gaza Strip only, or also to Judea and Samaria? The answer lies in Article 11: "The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day … This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force."
And then in Article 13 of the charter, which addresses initiatives for dialogue: "Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing [conceding] any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion … There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad."
Hamas treats the Fatah (Palestinian Authority) like an errant brother who has been influenced by the west: "With all our appreciation for The Palestinian Liberation Organization … we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion."
The humanitarian part of the charter invites all of us to not oppose the Islamic revolution, but rather to gather under the merciful wings of the masked faces: "The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement. It takes care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions … It is possible for the followers of the three religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam." Moving.
In short, the charter concludes, "Jihad is the only way to liberate Palestine … Their false futile creed can only be defeated by the righteous Islamic creed."
Israel does its utmost to restrict its strikes to terrorists from Hamas and other organizations, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. We do our best to avoid harming the civilian population. Hamas uses them as human shields, and as stated above, a large proportion of the rockets it fires land on its own citizens, killing them. That doesn't bother this criminal organization.
Last night, I brought my daughter down to the shelter a few times because of rocket attacks. We heard the booms of the interceptions, and then I heard something else: My daughter's teeth chattering out of fear. This is how hundreds of thousands of Israeli children have been living for years.
This situation is insufferable. No country that wants to live would allow a reality like this to exist. The Jewish people didn't come home after thousands of years in which they had no home to once again hide out in fear. That is why we founded a state whose categorical imperative is to defend its citizens. And that is what will be.
This is the time when any true seeker of freedom in the west should support Israel until it completes its mission in Gaza and brings down the terrorist infrastructure there, otherwise the cycle of bloodshed will soon return. The Foreign Ministry has enlisted all its missions worldwide for this job. Our lives depend on it.
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