Hamas Sickos – http://khookaypeng.blogspot.com/2009/01/hamas-sickos.html

I was shocked listening to Buletin Utama on TV3 about the ceasefire news in Gaza. Hamas leaders are taunting the Israelis for their failure to extinguish their group.

The reaction of Hamas leaders should make us wonder if they are fit to govern Gaza or they have taken over the territory by force and terror.

Imagine the sheer magnitude of destruction and death. Yet these bunch of Hamas fighters shed no tears, feel no remorse for the death of their own people.

Muted criticism and condemnation against Hamas and their reaction only reinforces the hypocrisy of this world.

Our response

We refer to your post ‘Hamas Sickos’ Tuesday, 20th January 2009.

The Palestinian tragedy, which has been around longer than many of us, deserves an objective and fair study that must go beyond the latest monstrosity in Gaza and must take into account all the stakeholders.

Hamas is the democratically elected voice of the Palestinian people, winning an overwhelming electoral vote in 2006. They are first and foremost a resistance movement, established at the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada of 1987 – 1994, a resistance against Israeli occupation.

Israel is an occupying force, living on stolen land and the Palestinians have borne and withstood the brutality of the world’s fourth strongest military force, backed by the mightiest, the USA. In fact the vast majority of people in Gaza are refugees made homeless with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. These facts are indisputable.

Hamas is not the first to fight Israeli occupation, nor will they be the last. The Palestinians have been resisting the Israelis since their land was first stolen from them. Man’s expansive history provides abundant examples of resistance to an occupying force or colonial masters. One need only look at the resistance in Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Algeria even the American war of independence; a pattern repeated through the annals of history across the globe. Where man has been oppressed, he has resisted.

As a resistance movement, it would be expected of them to declare victory, especially when Israel, from the very beginning of the onslaught declared their objective to be the annihilation of Hamas. History again provides ample examples of resistance movements standing defiant.

Whether the world likes it or admits it, Hamas is one of the stakeholders and has a significant role in a solution to this crisis. They are ‘kampung boys’ if you like it and are highly regarded by their people and have in fact grown in popularity among the ordinary Palestinian since the Gaza massacre.

To label them as ’sickos’ would be callous especially if it is based solely on one report.

We attach the following as further reading and understanding. It is an extract of an interview, which can be read in its entirety at

http://www.thenutgraph.com/liberating-palestine.

Azra Banu
Secretary
COMPLETE
www.completemalaysia.com
completemalaysia.blogspot.com
complete2009@gmail.com

The Nut Graph spoke exclusively with Australian author and lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah via e-mail. The Sydney-based Abdel-Fattah is an award-winning novelist who has written three novels for young adults. Her latest book, Where the Streets Had a Name, features as its main characters two teenagers living in Bethlehem, the West Bank.

An Australian of Palestinian and Egyptian descent, Abdel-Fattah has also been active in inter-faith advocacy. She is one of the original members of a Melbourne-Palestinian/Jewish women’s friendship group. Abdel-Fattah has also been active in a number of Palestinian human rights campaigns, the Australian Arabic council and various Australian Muslim women networks.

Q. Why is there so much support for Hamas, and so little for Fatah, in Gaza and the West Bank? Why do you think Palestinians are opting to support an organisation that many perceive to be Islamist and terrorist in orientation?

A. I think firstly Palestinians revolted against Fatah because of its internal corruption and seeming complicity with Israel. For example, Israel relies on Palestinians in the West Bank to assist it in rounding up “terrorists”. Secondly, at the very least, Palestinians are opposed to Fatah’s impotence.

I believe that Hamas won [the previous elections] because it was an alternative to the corruption in Fatah. It was perceived to be a better defender of Palestinians.

Hamas also does plenty of social services work. This arm of Hamas has been a huge factor in swaying public opinion from Fatah. Again, it appears to be a more “caring” alternative to a more elitist Fatah.

Most importantly, the more brutal and belligerent the occupation, the more desperate Palestinians are for leaders to stand up in support of their rights and independence. The nature of occupation determines the nature of the resistance. Fatah failed to deliver so Hamas was a welcome, new alternative to try.

I think it is a gross over-simplification to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organisation. As much as we may have problems with its charter, it is a resistance movement. Indeed, any organisation deemed to be a terrorist organisation by the West is usually an organisation resisting tyranny and oppression.

We never question why Israelis support their leaders and parties, both left and right, which are the mouth-pieces of the most reprehensible state-sponsored terrorism. The war on Gaza is the clearest example of a state using terror against a besieged and starved people.

Ultimately, we cannot champion democracy when we refuse to accept democratically-elected governments because we don’t like them. We may disagree and loathe them, as Palestinians do of every democratically-elected “terrorist” Israeli government, but peace will only come when we negotiate with our enemies. This is the true test of democracy. Israel cannot have it both ways.