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November 08, 2005
In New York Times, Hamas Attacks are "Armed Resistance"
In a very disturbing article last Friday (Nov. 4) about Hamas members running the municipality in Qalqilya ("Voted in, Hamas Sets a West Bank City Astir") Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger referred several times to Hamas's "armed" or "military resistance," thus employing Hamas’s own preferred phrasing to invoke heroic language for the murder of children.
He [Mahmoud Abbas] thinks he can co-opt Hamas members into politics and away from armed resistance, hoping to persuade them to put down their arms after the elections
and
And what about Hamas's military resistance to Israel?
How can the bombing of a pizza shop, killing 15 people between the ages of 2 and 60 who were peacefully eating their lunches, possibly be construed as, in his words, "military resistance to Israel?" Or suicide bombings on the downtown streets and shopping malls of Netanya? Or the killing of two schoolboys waiting for a bus near a gas station? Or the car bombings at a pedestrian mall on Ben Yehuda where the primary victims were teenagers who had never served in the army? Or the bombing of a university cafeteria targeting both foreign and Israeli students? Or suicide bombings at a game club in Tel Aviv, a beachfront pub, a crowded cafe in Rehavia, a popular restaurant in Haifa, on buses throughout the country? Or the targeting of families with children and elderly grandparents holding Passover Seders at a Netanya hotel? These are just a few of the attacks against civilian targets since September 2000 for which Hamas has proudly taken credit. Over 350 people were killed in these attacks, including elderly Holocaust survivors, a bride and her father out for heart-to-heart talk before her wedding, college students, babies and toddlers. Over 2000 others were wounded and maimed in these attacks.
Echoing Hamas’s own words that portray these attacks as something other than terrorism gives the terrorist agenda credence.
Hamas' "military resistance"
Posted by RH at November 8, 2005 03:52 PM
Comments
Surely, Hamas' actions are "armed resistance" in every sense of the word. It produces results. It works. Israel withdraws. Be honest to your enemies.
Posted by: Danny at November 9, 2005 10:10 AM
"Armed"--yes, "resistance"--no.
How about "military resistance against Israel"? Surely, targeting babies cannot be considered a military action.
Call a spade a spade--it is "terrorism."
Posted by: rh at November 9, 2005 11:44 AM
I agree with both Danny and RH.
Hamas might very well produce results, as Danny says. Still, even if Hamas actions do produce results, that does not make them "military resistance."
Various mafias, for example, produce results, often by murder of innocent civilians. But that makes them gangsters, not a "military," and it makes their work extortion, not "resistance."
Similarly, Hamas is not "military resistance." They kill civilians as part of their quest to "obliterate" Israel, as noted in the Hamas charter, making them "terrorists."
(The charter also notes that "Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people." So appart from being a terrorist group, based on American Heritage Dictionary's definition, they are also a racist group. "Terrorist" and "racist" are more accurate, more precise, and more suitable words than "military" and "resistance" to describe Hamas.)
Posted by: greg at November 9, 2005 11:58 AM
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