What Does Hamas Want?

geoffff

This is what John Lyons* says Hamas wants from this war:

"Hamas's aim is to inflict as much damage on Israel as possible to strengthen the Palestinians' claim for a state.

"While the group's charter calls for an end to Israel, in recent years its main power broker Khaled Meshal has publicly acknowledged that any Palestinian state would be along 1967 lines. In effect, this was an acknowledgment of Israel's right to exist along those lines.

"This is not to try to portray Hamas as any peace-loving entity-- in my view its members are Neanderthals on a good day and terrorists on a bad one.

"They lose all moral authority by firing at civilian targets in Israel as they do.

"But Hamas's acknowledgment of a Palestinian state at least gives a starting point for the future." 

* The Australian 14 July 2014

When talking about Hamas recognition of Israel, Lyons is referring to this five year old furphy and minor flurry among the left/liberals of the West. This is what Lyons uses as source for his latest mighty scoop that Hamas has performed the mother of all somersaults on Israel and has implicitly recognised her right to exist.  

This so called Hamas "peace" deal  was  an offer of a hudna of exactly ten years duration. No shelling or terrorism for ten years. After that all bets are off. 

In return, Israel must immediately and permanently withdraw all military and civilian population to the 1949 hudna lines, including from Jerusalem, recognise Palestine and allow all Palestinians the "right of return" to Israel which will therefore have no sovereignty over her borders or population.

Hamas however would not be required to recognise Israel. This was made quite explicit. 

The Hamas offer in a nutshell follows. Drop all national titles such as Israel and "Palestine" to get a little closer to the way these men think when they use those words. For them, "Israel" and "Palestine" mean nothing at all. The words and the notions they embrace, inform the ideology of these men not in the slightest.

The Jews in Jerusalem and the "settlements" over the 1949 hadna line are to be ethnically cleansed from their homes while all the Muslims in the world with an ancestor with an UNWRA card must be admitted to Israel. 

The Jews must recognise Muslim sovereignty over all the land over the line including the ancient Jewish quarter of the Old City, the Temple Mount and the Jewish neighbourhoods that have been cleansed of Jews as part of the deal. The military must also go from these lands and towns with the Jews they defend.

The barriers to the Jews' state must come down. The Jews will have no need of those. 

In return Hamas pledges a hudna on  specific terms. There will be and never will be any recognition of Israel. The concept is repugnant to the ruling ideology of these men and they take the opportunity to say so yet again. 

The truce stands for ten years. Then the war can resume for any reason including very obviously to complete the Islamic conquest to the sea as dictated by the ruling ideology of these men in which they compete with one another for purity.

For what it is worth, Meshal's "offer" was not "public", but in private interviews with selected Western journalists who publish in English. Only a Western journalist could have the inflated gall to characterise such a thing as "public" especially given there would have been not a whisper about it in Gaza unless the Hamas bosses deemed it.

Hamas would not risk confusing the message to the punters. You can be certain of this. This is a totalitarian regime. These jihadist fanatics have the people's pretty much undivided attention. The people can not escape them, not in their homes, not in the schools or workplaces and certainly not in the mosques from where the fanatics rule.

Hamas and all the Islamist factions apparatus play to two publics and what they say to one has only an accidental overlap with what they say to the other.   

Again, for what that is worth in this case, where what Hamas has said to its useful idiot public in the West is if anything more chilling than even the genocidal threats it preaches from the pulpits and the organs of state and war with which it rules the people, courtesy of the world. 

This is not at all what John Lyons has sought to portray about what Hamas wants.

This was not in the slightest some belated, grudging or abstract acknowledgment of Israel's right to exist by a gang under siege as Lyons would have it. It is the exact opposite. 

It is a sneering and cynical demand to surrender, from a gang boss who likely was enjoying himself, jeering in English through this media laid on for free in spades. Jeering at his enemies across the line and in the West who he hates with a settled glowing contempt of pure fire that reaches to the bones as they keep on saying over and over and over again generation after generation.  

"Apart from the time restriction (a truce that lapses after 10 years) and the refusal to accept Israel's existence, Mr. Meshal's terms approximate the Arab League peace plan . . ."

-- Hamas peace plan, as explained by the New York Times

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

-- Tom Lehrer, satirist

Charles Krauthammer Washington Post 8 May 2009 

The Times conducted a five-hour interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal at his Damascus headquarters. Mirabile dictu, they're offering a peace plan with a two-state solution. Except. 

The offer is not a peace but a truce that expires after 10 years. Meaning that after Israel has fatally weakened itself by settling millions of hostile Arab refugees in its midst, and after a decade of Hamas arming itself within a Palestinian state that narrows Israel to eight miles wide

Hamas restarts the war against a country it remains pledged to eradicate.

This is Khaled Meshal on 9 December 2009 publicly saying what Hamas wants 

"Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land,"  "We will never recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take."

Is This Public Enough?

"Give that bald Australian infidel prick in glasses a seat up front."
"I like the cut of his jib."

Who are we to believe? What Khaled Meshal says Hamas wants?  Or what Lyons says Khaled Meshal says Hamas wants? 

In divining the motives of Hamas, whose words should we carefully listen to?

What Khaled Meshal actually says, both in public to the mob; and in private to Western journalists, such as we have seen here?

Or what John Lyons says what Khaled Meshal says which very clearly he has not.

Gee, that's a tough one. 

For so thoroughly distorting what Hamas is all about by so thoroughly and ... let's face it ...  dishonestly really, distorting Hamas's message, earns Lyons his first nomination for the Bush Turkey duh.   

It won't be the last. Not even for just that one article.

Lyons could only portray this as an acknowledgement by Hamas of Israel's right to exist, by not saying what actually happened. By telling a ... how can I put this delicately? ... well,  a porkie, really. This blog is shocked. Shocked I tell you.

Never mind what Hamas wants. This leaves one wondering about the motives of journalists like Lyons.

He has done this while Israel has once again been forced to war against viciously armed and entrenched trained terrorists bent on murdering as many of the Israeli civilian population as it can and a good number of its own in the process.

Why does Lyons do this?

To make Hamas look like it had any kind of "moral authority" to lose, even with the most recent attacks on civilians aside? To pretend that at root they are not as vicious and deluded as they are? To contend that it is Israel who is unreasonable. To portray it as all Israel's fault anyway?

Perhaps in truth, Lyons thinks that the Jews deserve these beatings and its their fault that there can not be a day of peace until the Israelis give to their enemies what their enemies demand of them. 

Their surrender. Submission.

What they demand of all of us really. Why trained terrorists from Australia have already been let loose on the world.   

Lyons says the members of Hamas are Neanderthals on a good day and terrorists on a bad one.

Not a bad line. What are they today, John Lyons? Neanderthals or terrorists? Is this a good or a bad day?

cross posted Israel Thrives