AJC Report Says Hamas Poses Same Threats as Al-Qa'ida

American Jewish Committee
Thursday, 7 February 2002

A new report on Hamas by the American Jewish Committee shows the ultimate goal of the Palestinian terrorist organization is to destroy Israel and replace it with a radical Islamic state.
The report also warns that Hamas presents as much a threat to the non-Muslim world as do the groups that make up Al-Qa'ida and Osama Bin Ladin's "International Front to Fight Jews and Crusaders." Like its precursor, the Muslim Brotherhood, "Hamas shares the view that a state of war has existed since the founding of Islam in the seventh century between Muslims on the one side and Christians and Jews on the other," says the report, written by Yehudit Barsky, director AJC's Division on Middle East and International Terrorism.

"Disrupting the activities of Hamas must be part of an international concerted effort to dismantle support for all terrorist organizations," concludes Ms. Barsky. "Dismantling the infrastructure of Hamas must be a goal for the counterterrorism strategy of the international community."

The report notes that Hamas still enjoys support among the United States' moderate Muslim allies. "When it comes to Hamas, many Muslim countries and individuals prefer to look the other way," notes Ms. Barsky.

The AJC report comes a week after President George Bush condemned Hamas by name as he spoke about the U.S.-led war on terrorism in his State of the Union address before Congress.

The U.S. State Department officially designated Hamas a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1996.

Hamas views Jews and Christians as "infidels" or enemies of the Divine revelation received by Muhammad. Its theology holds that the "disbelievers" will ultimately be vanquished in a cataclysmic war, or jihad, in which Muslim forces will triumph.

Hamas views Western influence as represented by Israel as the most formidable enemy confronting the Muslim world.

The group's modus operandi is attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians, including suicide bombings, kidnappings, drive-by shootings and stabbing attacks. Those who carry out the attacks are martyrs in the jihad, or holy war for liberation, and are promised rewards in Paradise. The organization's claims of responsibility for the attacks is catalogued on its official Internet site

The movement recruits activists to its ranks in mosques, schools, clinics, colleges, camps and sports club. "We like to grow them from kindergarten through college," the senior Hamas leader in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Hassan Yusuf, of the activists in an interview last year with USA Today.

To fund its social programs and institutions, the report says, Hamas relies on some Middle Eastern governments and private donors. For its logistical activities, it draws monies from Iran and from the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. It also enjoys support from non-official organizations and individuals in the Gulf States and non-profit charitable organizations in the United States and Europe.

Late last year, President Bush announced he had frozen the assets of one of these U.S. organizations, the Holy Land Foundation, which had raised funds to recruit Hamas suicide bombers and support the families of the bombers.

The AJC report also reviews the historically complex, volatile relationship between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. It says the PA has made efforts to try to co-opt members of Hamas by appointing its members to leadership positions. More troubling, it notes, is the ongoing recruitment by the Palestinian Authority of convicted members of Hamas' military wing into the official Preventive Security Services (PSS).

The report also sounds an alarm over what it terms an increasingly "deadly rivalry" between Hamas and the PA's military branches to prove nationalist loyalty by waging attacks on Israeli civilians.

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org