Hamas Proud of Civilian Attacks

A recent report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy shows that, despite its recent efforts to prove that they never targeted civilians on purpose, that Hamas has proudly displayed its terrorist rocket attacks on Hamas controlled media.

a review of the organization’s own media — including the website of its military arm, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (www.qassam.ps), and the Hamas-associated monthly journal Filastin al-Muslima (www.fm-m.com) — shows that Hamas knowingly and repeatedly fired on Israeli population centers in southern Israel. To accept Hamas’s latest claim that it did not launch rockets at civilians is to deny its numerous past claims to the contrary.

While I did not ready every word of the Goldstone report, I am under the impression that the report pretty much ignores what anyone with knowledge of Arabic could find on the Internet.

Here are two of my favorite paragraphs from the report:

On February 3, 2010, Hamas released a fifty-two-page response to the UN’s Goldstone report regarding its conduct during the Gaza war (called the “Battle of al-Furqan” in the organization’s commentary). According to this document, the killing and wounding of Israeli civilians was unintentional — Hamas forces had targeted only military installations during the fighting. This claim was based on a supposed internal investigation conducted by Hamas and led by its justice minister, Faraj al-Ghoul.

Historically, however, Hamas’s targeting of Israeli civilians goes beyond wartime exigencies — it is a fundamental aspect of the group’s struggle against Israel. Civilian casualties are neither regretted nor lamented. To the contrary, they are approved and applauded within Hamas’s internal publications and its propaganda aimed at Arab audiences. For example, in one Arabic article on the Qassam Brigades website (www.alqassam.ps/arabic/news1.php?id=14256), the group discusses rocket operations during the al-Furqan battle and cites the heroism of the Qassam Brigades personnel who conducted the attacks. Hamas subsequently declared that its February 3 report should not be interpreted as an apology for inflicting Israeli civilian casualties.

Hamas fully admits that 70% of the hundreds of rockets fired during Operation Cast Lead were aimed at Israeli civilians, not military or government buildings.  Israel was within its rights to defend its people from a hostile foreign militia.