HAMAS - as articulate as LIKUD

Nayef Rajoub is a leading candidate of Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (better known as Hamas) vying for a parliamentary position in the coming Palestine legislative elections. al Jazeera interviewed him on a number of issues. This bloke is bloody articulate, cool and witty, which goes to show Hamas aren't just made up of terrorist brutes.

His answers to the interviewer's questions contain the correct amount of assertiveness. I have reproduced a very short extract. You can read the full interview here. I have to admit that, much as I don't favour religious based parties like Hamas, I do find, within a wider Palestinian context, some sympathies with his answers.

Extracts:

Q: Will Hamas ever contemplate recognising Israel?

A: Will Israel ever contemplate recognising Palestine?

Q: But Hamas is dedicated to Israel's destruction.

A: Isn't Israel also dedicated to Palestine's destruction? Who is occupying whose land? Who is tormenting and brutalising the other? Who has expelled millions of innocent people from their ancestral land, Hamas or Israel?

Indeed, who is occupying whose land? Who has expelled millions of innocent people from their ancestral land, Hamas or Israel?

Hamas is of course listed as a terrorist organization in many Western nations, in the same way that former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and his Irgun were listed as terrorists.

Menachem Begin was a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1978, which was a real joke considering his past, and to prove that indeed his award was farcical, in 1982 he ordered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and bombed the living daylights of West Beirut, with the quiet concurrence of the USA. Nobel Peace Prize winner eh?

His brutalities were so repulsive that it moved a Holocaust survivor, Dr Shlomo Shmelzman, to pen a letter to the Israeli media that stated:

In my childhood I have suffered fear, hunger and humiliation when I passed from the Warsaw Ghetto, through labour camps, to Buchenwald. Today, as a citizen of Israel, I cannot accept the systematic destruction of cities, towns and refugee camps. I cannot accept the technocratic cruelty of the bombing, destroying and killing of human beings.

I hear too many familiar sounds today, sounds which are being amplified by the war. I hear “dirty Arabs” and I remember “dirty Jews”. I hear about “closed areas” and I remember ghettos and camps. I hear “two-legged beasts” and I
remember “Untermenschen” (subhumans). I hear about tightening the siege, clearing the area, pounding the city into submission and I remember suffering, destruction, death, blood and murder ... Too many things in Israel remind me of
too many things from my childhood.

As I mentioned several times over, today's Israel, especially its leaders like Ariel Sharon and Uzi Cohen, behave exactly like Nazi SS generals. Their behaviour towards the Palestinians are Gestapo like. They favour and have borrowed heinous Nazi SS tactics such as collateral and group punishments, rocketing and machine-gunning suspected enemies regardless of innocent civilians nearby, and destroying homes of Palestinians for no crime other than being related to an insurgent.

Menachem Begin was also the prime minister during the Sabra & Shatila maasacre, Israel's My Lai.

So what's the difference between Hamas and Likud, other than the latter being favoured by the Americans and some of the Western nations.

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