Understanding Hamas

As Hamas terrorizes Israel, it’s worth understanding just what Hamas is trying to achieve. One of the best short works on Hamas’s ideological foundations and strategic ambitions comes from a book review in the Autumn 2006 Azure. In reviewing Matthew Levitt’s Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, Yechiel M. Leiter highlights how Hamas combines the provision of social services and making war on Israel into one inseparable agenda. Dawa, the “call” to God to proselytize to nonbelievers and aid believers, is a critical concept:

In what is possibly the most disturbing chapter, Levitt shows how Hamas’ dawa activities incentivize terrorism through education: Schools supported by their charity teach children from the earliest ages to idolize suicide bombers. In this way, Hamas creates a controlled environment in which impressionable minds are filled with images of salvation, providing prefab answers for all of life’s problems. “Polling data suggest that Hamas’ efforts to radicalize children are indeed successful,” Levitt writes. “According to an April 2001 survey conducted by the Islamic University in Gaza, 49 percent of children ages nine to sixteen claimed to have participated in the Intifada—and 73 percent said they hoped to become martyrs.”

Clearly, then, Hamas’ talk of separation between its military and charitable branches is strictly for Western consumption. As Levitt shows in his later chapters, all aspects of the organization support and nurture each other. The recipients of dawa charity, for example, especially in the realm of medical assistance, are beholden to Hamas, as are the individuals who have carried out terror attacks and their families. So, too, are recipients of Hamas financial aid or social services less likely to turn down requests from the organization to allow their homes to serve as safe houses for Hamas fugitives, to courier funds or weapons, or to store and maintain explosives than are people who do not depend on the organization’s handouts. Indeed, these beneficiaries are often grateful for the opportunity to return the favor. In this way Hamas’ social welfare support is largely determined by a cost-benefit analysis that links the amount of aid awarded to the support that aid will buy. In this sense, Hamas certainly does take care of its own: Individuals tied to Hamas receive more dawa assistance than those unaffiliated with the organization. Members linked to terrorist activity receive still more.

This is a critical, yet often overlooked, point. As Hamas leaders themselves admit, contrary to Western perceptions, not all poor people are beneficiaries of Hamas’ benevolence. Rather, only those who support Hamas’ terror activity enjoy the benefits of its coffers. While Westerners tend to paint a picture of impoverished Palestinians turning to terror out of desperation, the truth is that terrorists are born, first and foremost, out of a system of incentives deliberately arranged to breed them.

Read the whole thing.

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Understanding Hamas

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