Seeking Legitimacy: Abbas Moves to End Stipends for Terrorists, Families

Tuesday, 11 February 2025 | Are we surprised that the hostages Hamas released on Saturday resembled concentration camp survivors? If anything, we should be surprised that the five IDF lookouts seemed as healthy as they did. It is misleading though because only days after their release from captivity, we learned about the abuse they had suffered. There should be no surprises. It is not the lack of food; It is the ideology.

Hamas was a branch of the Mujama al-Islamiya, an Islamic organization founded in 1973 by Shiekh Ahmad Yassin as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.

"Thousands went to the streets and burned the offices of the al Quds newspaper, a movie theater and a pool hall," according to a report. This was in 1980. These were followers of Yassin. At the time, IDF soldiers stood by thinking they were witnessing internal Palestinian strife. But that was the first violent action of the group in Gaza.

Their ideas were drawn from the ideology of Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood's ideologue who authored one of the group's most important texts, "Our war against the Jews."

Qutb did not refer to the Brotherhood's war against Zionism but against world Jewry. He wrote an antisemitic pamphlet based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who stood at the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in the past, said Muslims have to complete Hitler's work, and on Hamas television broadcasts pundits said this means that Hamas must destroy all Jews and Christians.  

Nazism was a unique phenomenon in human history, and it should not be equated to every nationalistic or racist ideology, but there is one exception: Islamic Nazism, where religious and political leader after leader promote the destruction of Jews. In that sense, Hamas exceeds even other Jihadist movements such as Al-Qaida and ISIS.

Muhsan Abu Ita, a member of Hamas, said on the group's channel that destroying the Jews is a "wonderful blessing." Ahmad Bahar, who was the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, said the Jews "are a cancer, and they and the Americans must be destroyed."  Dr. Yunes al Astel, a member of the Palestinian parliament and a dean of Islamic law at the Islamic University, said the destruction of Jews is a matter for this time and not for the future.

This is not mere talk. In 2018, during demonstrations along the Gaza border with Israel, activists raised flags with swastikas and on children's programming on Hamas TV kids are taught by a cartoon character resembling Mickey Mouse that the vision of Hamas is the eradication of all the Jews.

Those raised on such programming carried out the October 7 massacre. But that violence came earlier still, with the massacre of Hebron's Jews in 1929 and in the Farhud, the pogroms in Iraq in 1941 or in Yemen's Aden in 1947.

There has always been a hatred of Jews in Islam, but it became worse with the emergence of political Islam—such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its Nazi influence, but it was often ignored.

The Nazi swamp in Gaza is still there, despite the military beating it endured. We must stop our illusion.  We wanted to believe that more economic prosperity and a thriving economy would distance its danger. Our mistake is ignoring the ideology, and that had come at a great cost.  Hamas, and not the ideology, took a beating. It must be recognized for the Nazi ideology that it is.

Please do not compare the horrors of captivity to the Holocaust, the families of hostages ask. They are right. Unlike in those years, Israel now has a state and a military. It fights back. The comparison must be between Hamas and the Nazis. We were wrong to ignore that and wrong to provide them with funds. That has ended. Now Hamas must be destroyed but after all the hostages are returned.

We've recently learned that the IDF will receive the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bunker-busting bomb from the United States. It has the force of a small nuclear device. We were wrong on Hamas but should not repeat the mistake when dealing with Iran. That is not only in the national interest but is also a moral obligation.