Hamas In The West Bank

Extract. You need to read it all and it covers a great deal of ground. It’s by Mordechi Kedar (you may remember him from his epic take down of an Al Jazeera host by insisting that Jerusalem is not mentioned by name in the Koran. He’s right).

This is a speech given by Hassan Youssef in the west bank to Hamas students who’d just been elected to a student body.

“They say Hamas is finished, there is reconciliation. But I tell you so that all the students can hear, for all the world,to hear, for all the media to hear, we are the only ones, Gaza is the only one that has new weapons. Everyone knows that one day Gaza will be, at some point, under the guise of resistance, able to be the one that takes the enemy by surprise and executes an attack with the help of Allah. (Wild applause).

“And I am not saying this without giving it serious thought (repeats this) because (Hamas) resistance in Gaza has much, and Gaza today, all ofPalestine, every centimeter of the land of historical Palestine [sic] in Gaza is within reach of rockets from Gaza, glory to Allah.(loud applause and cries)…oh brothers and sisters, let me say my last words: there is no way we will accept this reconciliation (with the PLO) at any price if it entails affecting the equation of our security fist (i.e. the joint security arrangements with Israel under which the PA neutralizes terror), we will under no circumstances allow that here on the West Bank (the audience applauds)…my brothers and sisters, you are strong, you are great,you are mighty, you are laying the foundation for the next stage. You will soon see, I swear to you by Allah, that just as I see you (before me), so will you see the coming victory, by Allah’s Will, and on that day the (Muslim) believers will rejoice in the victory of Allah who supports (and brings victory) to whom he wishes to. May Allah bless you…”

The fact that the head of a terror organization appeared in an academic institution and was authorized to speak from a speaker’s podium covered with the Hamas flag did not give rise to any reaction from the lovers of “academic freedom” in Israel or the world, those who fight Israel, call her an “apartheid state” and call to boycott, sanction and divest from her.

Unity with that? Supported by the Obama administration? Great.

And this is another key point. Failed attempts, be they kidnapping or suicide attacks or shootings or anything else, matter!

A failed kidnapping must merit the same attention as a successful one: thorough investigation, arrests, elimination of infrastructure and standing trial. The media also do not consider failed attempts to be worthy of its attention, because if  they failed, nothing actually occurred. Nothing happened? Quite the opposite!

He also nails the idea about hitchhiking:

What is unsaid is that this argument has deep cultural underpinnings: in the “State of Tel Aviv” everyone lives for himself and by himself, works and finds entertainment in the many spots the city offers – coffee houses, restaurants, cinemas, theaters and concert halls. The lack of connection between the populace creates a situation where everyone finds his own way from place to place and cannot fathom why people would need to depend on “tremps”.  In the “state of Judea and Samaria” the atmosphere is entirely different – there is a strong feeling of community, solidarity, mutual trust and openness, and the “tremp” is based on the hitchhiker’s feeling that the driver is “one of us ” and would never harm him, as he would never harm the driver.

The difference is that of two groups of citizenry, both living in the same small country, but culturally, worlds apart.

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