Who Are These People?!? Trying To Understand Hamas

A recent article in The Atlantic Monthly rocked my boat.  "Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology" by Bruce Hoffman - CLICK HERE - made the Hamas Covenant (1988) sound pretty outlandish to me.  So, a quick Google search and I could easily find an online copy of the full translated documented - with thanks (ironically!) to Yale Law School.  CLICK HERE    

All I know to say is that both the article and the Hamas Covenant are harrowing reading.  Hoffman seems correct to me when he says that the Covenant is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler's 1933 personal manifesto Mein Kampf.

Hoffman summarizes the 36 articles of the Hamas Covenant in this way:

• The complete destruction of Israel as an essential condition for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Islamic law (Sharia),
• The need for both unrestrained and unceasing holy war (jihad) to attain the above objective,
• The deliberate disdain for, and dismissal of, any negotiated resolution or political settlement of Jewish and Muslim claims to the Holy Land, and
• The reinforcement of historical anti-Semitic tropes and calumnies married to sinister conspiracy theories.

Reading the full text, I find 3 separate references to the Rotary Club (!!!!!) as part of the international Zionist conspiracy that must be resisted?  The Rotary Club?

After reading this I am no longer surprised that Hamas would build their command structure headquarters underneath a civilian hospital.

I am horrified to watch video of the carnage in Gaza right now - children buried in rubble, civilian deaths, the destruction of infrastructure.  But after reading Hamas' own words and Hoffman's analysis of them, those videos now remind me of the photographs taken after the Allied firebombing of Berlin and Dresden in World War II.  Horrifying?  Certainly.  Did they cross a line of justice?  Perhaps.  That is worth a hard discussion.  But Hamas sounds too much like the Nazis for me to find an easy resolution.  I'm not coming up with any slogans that fit on a sign or shout through a bull horn.

How does one separate Palestinian civilians from Hamas idealogues?  I'm not sure, but would love to figure that one out.  How does Israel wage war against Hamas in such a way that civilians are not injured, or just as disconcerting, radicalized to support Hamas? That is another sleepless night of prayer and pondering.

I'm not in a position to answer those questions, but I am in a position to raise them.  And I am using them as I pray.  My experience pastoring church members in the Washington, DC area who were involved in national security settings has lead me to pray in this way:

• For people I do not know
• Who are tasked with making decisions I am not faced with
• Involving facts that I do not have
• That have consequences we cannot completely project.

As always, if you would like to talk more, think I missing something, have more to offer or would like to hear more, call the Harderwyk office and let's arrange a way to get together.  But for now .  .  .

Please join me in praying.