Hamas was founded in 1987 and has been the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip since its takeover of that area in 2007.
But what is Hamas? Here are some facts to remind you:
1. Hamas takes its name from an acronym that means “Islamic Resistance Movement” in Arabic.
2. Hamas refuses to recognize the State of Israel’s right to exist as an independent, sovereign nation, and is totally opposed to any agreement or arrangement that would recognize its right to exist. At the beginning of its 1988 Hamas Charter there is a quotation attributed to Hassan Al-Bana, the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, that “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, as it wiped out what went before.” (Contrary to some misleading news stories, Hamas’s 2017 “Political Document” does not replace the 1988 charter.)
3. Hamas is committed to jihad. Its charter stresses the importance of jihad (holy war) as the main means for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to achieve its goals: An uncompromising jihad must be waged against Israel. Jihad is the personal duty of every Muslim.
4. Hamas is an antisemitic organization. According to its charter, the Jewish people have only negative traits and are presented as planning to take over the world. The charter uses myths taken from classical European and Islamic-based antisemitism.
5. The Hamas Charter includes antisemitic myths taken from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (mentioned in Article 32) regarding Jewish control of the media, the film industry and education (Articles 17 and 22). The myths are constantly repeated to represent the Jews as responsible for the French and Russian revolutions and for all world and local wars: “No war takes place anywhere without the Jews’ being behind it” (Article 22). The charter demonizes the Jews and describes them as brutally behaving like Nazis toward women and children (Article 29).
6. Hamas is the local Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which briefly took control of the Egyptian government, and which promotes extremism and terror activities throughout the Muslim world.
7. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, Canada, the European Union, Japan and others.
8. Although members of the international community have proposed treating the political and military wings of Hamas as separate entities, the Hamas infrastructure places the political wing at the command of the military wing. As Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin stated in 1988: “We cannot separate the wing from the body. If we do so, the body will not be able to fly. Hamas is one body.”
9. Hamas’s first ever suicide bombing took place on April 16, 1993 when a suicide bomber detonated the car in which he was driving at the Mehola Junction near Beit El.
10. On January 27, 2002, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, Wafa Idris, blew herself up on Jaffa Street in the heart of downtown Jerusalem, killing one person and injuring about 100 more. Hamas claimed responsibility.
11. Hamas has been responsible for many appalling acts of terror including the suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya, in the midst of the 2002 Passover holiday seder with 250 guests. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack in which 30 people were killed and 140 injured – 20 seriously.
12. In December 2011, Hamas “celebrated” its 24th anniversary, boasting that it had killed 1,365 “Zionist soldiers” since 1987. Hamas does not differentiate between Israeli soldiers and civilians.
13. On January. 25, 2006, Hamas won a four year term within Palestinian government but remains in power to this day through violent force.
14. In June 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip through a violent coup, killing numerous Palestinians, some by pushing them off of tall buildings in Gaza. The Red Cross estimated that at least 118 people were killed and more than 550 wounded during the fighting in the week up to June 15.
15. Hamas members use Palestinian children as human shields when carrying out attacks on Israeli soldiers.
16. On April 16, 2001, Hamas launched its first rocket into Israel from Gaza.
17. Since 2001, thousands of rockets and mortars have targeted Israel from Gaza, with Hamas either firing, or controlling, the vast majority. Over 5 million Israelis are currently living within firing range and under threat of rocket attacks.
18. Hamas deliberately targets Israeli civilians, firing rockets indiscriminately while hiding among its own civilian population – a “double war crime.”
19. Hamas is a Sunni group while its primary patron over the years has been the Shi’ite Iran. (Iran briefly suspended its aid to Hamas during the Syrian civil war – during which time Hamas enjoyed patronage from Qatar instead – but Iran has since resumed its support.)
20. Iran aids and supports Hamas in the following ways: by transferring enormous sums of money to the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and to the Hamas movement; by training Hamas operatives in military skills in Iran; by smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip, including the long-range rockets recently used to attack Israeli cities; by transmitting technical-operational know-how used to manufacture and improve the weapons in Hamas’s possession, including increasing the destructive power of the IEDs and homemade rockets used to attack Israel.
21. Hamas’s annual budget was estimated to be some $500 million, of which approximately 20% is spent on military infrastructure. Nearly half of that military spending is for terror attack tunnels many of which exit near Israeli towns.
22. Hamas routinely misinforms its followers. Several years ago, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal falsely claimed to the Palestinian public that Hamas had destroyed (former Israeli Prime Minister) Ehud Barak’s home in Tel Aviv. In reality, Israel had destroyed the home of then Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
23. Although Hamas has complained of product shortages in the Gaza Strip, it has focused on smuggling thousands of rockets into the area.
24. Hamas and Fatah have been holding reconciliation talks intermittently since 2008, but have yet to reach a sustainable agreement. (The parties reached an official agreement but it is yet to be implemented, and many experts doubt that it ever will be.)
25. “Palestine from the river to the sea, north to south is our land. Not an inch can be conceded. The liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine is a duty, a right and a goal. Holy war and armed resistance are the real and right path to liberation and recovery of rights.” – Khaled Meshal speaking at Hamas 25 anniversary “celebrations.”
26. From 2013 to 2014 Israel foiled 64 attempts by Hamas to kidnap Israelis, and on June 14, 2014, Hamas members succeeded in kidnapping three Israeli teenagers: Naftali Frenkel (16, from Nof Ayalon), Gilad Shaer (16, from Talmon), and Eyal Yifrah (19, from Elad) while they were returning home from school. All three were subsequently murdered.
27. In mid-2014 Hamas dramatically increased its rocket-fire against Israeli civilians, including at one point firing over 80 rockets in a single day toward Israeli cities and towns.
28. In response to increased rocket-fire (#27), and the construction of dozens of attack tunnels, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge: targeting 4,762 terror sites (many placed by Hamas in civilian areas) and destroying 32 tunnels (many with openings near Israeli towns). Meanwhile Hamas fired 3,356 rockets at Israel, and killed 64 soldiers as well as three civilians. Many international organizations accepted Hamas’s claim that Israel killed some 2,000 civilians in Gaza. Yet the IDF and independent sources dispute that claim: showing that many casualties were actually armed combatants, and additionally pointing to Hamas’s cynical use of human shields: such as moving its main military headquarters into the basement of Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital and firing rockets from densely populated civilian areas.
28. In 2015 Hamas declared a new “intifada.” The terror organization contributed to the incitement and even specific online tutorials that produced a new wave of violence: hundreds of Palestinian stabbing and car ramming attacks persisting for over two years, and claiming dozens of Israeli lives. Over two hundred Palestinians died as well: usually while attacking Israelis or rioting. This came to be known informally as the “Knife Intifada.”
29. In 2017 Hamas released a “Political Document,” with uninformed news audiences calling it a “New Charter,” that “replaces” the 1988 Charter (see items 2-5) and that declares Hamas’s openness to a “two state solution.” On closer examination, the document actually reiterates Hamas’s dedication to the total destruction of Israel, and the text clearly states that it merely supplements, but does not replace, the genocidal charter of 1988.
30. In 2017 the United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Hamas responded by referring to the move as a “declaration of war” and declared (yet another) “new” intifada against Israelis.
31. Hamas played a central role in the “Great March of Return.” During the preparations Hamas was careful to remain in the background and represent the march as the initiative of Gazan activists who were not affiliated with Hamas. However, in effect (although not openly) Hamas took control and became the main force driving the “great return march,” providing it with an organizational, logistic, political and media framework.
32. Violent riots on May 14-16, 2018 to coincide with Nakba Day and the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem resulted in the deaths of 62 Palestinians. A Hamas official on acknowledged that 50 of the 62 were members of the Islamist terrorist group.
“In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, Fifty of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people. How can Hamas reap the fruits if it pays such an expensive price?” said Hamas official Salah Bardawil in an interview with the Palestinian Baladna news outlet.
33. Hamas uses children for terror. On May 14, 2018, at the height of the riots held during the Great March of Return, Saadi Abu Salah, a 16-year-old affiliated with Hamas, was killed. Despite his young age, the youth was sent by Hamas to the front line of rioters near the border fence, together with a group of boys known as the “tire and fence-cutting unit.” These youths, including Saadi Abu Salah, were sent by Hamas to cut the border fence, in preparation for penetrating into Israeli territory, putting their lives at risk.
34. Hamas, which orchestrates and directs the “return marches,” is also involved in launching incendiary kites and balloons into Israel and encourages their extensive use in what it calls the “popular resistance.” Hamas and the other terrorist organizations are fully aware of the economic and psychological damage caused by arson terrorism. They consider the kites a cheap, available and effective tool which does not endanger the residents of the Gaza Strip, and for which Israel does not have a suitable remedy.
35. On November 12, 2018, Hamas launched an anti-tank Kornet missile from the Gaza Strip at a bus carrying soldiers near the border with the Gaza Strip (south of the city of Sderot). An IDF soldier was severely wounded. A few minutes before the missile was launched, dozens of soldiers got off the bus to receive a briefing nearby. Launching the missile was the “opening shot” of a massive rocket attack initiated by Hamas, targeting cities and communities in the western Negev, with other terrorist organizations joining as well.
Hamas is not interested in peace or compromise with Israel – the facts speak for themselves.
