Does Hamas truly want to eradicate Israel? (No)

Mainstream U.S. media reports on the crisis take it as an established fact that Hamas wants to eradicate Israel. Here, the other day, is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He called Hamas 

an Islamo-fascist organization. . . that is dedicated to destroying the Jewish state and imposing a Teheran-like Islamic regime in Palestine. . .

Let’s set aside the hysteria, and turn to a genuine scholar, Jerome Slater, who taught about Israel/Palestine for 50 years and who recently published the work of a lifetime: “Mythologies without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1917-2020.”

Slater looked calmly at the facts, and this is what he found. He recognizes that Hamas’s original 1988 Charter was in fact “openly anti-Semitic and called for the violent destruction of Israel,” but he says the record shows that “as early as 2009,” the organization “began moving away” from it. Hamas leaders continued to moderate their rhetoric, and then in May 2017 the organization issued a new charter:

There were still ambiguities and apparent inconsistencies, but there was a clear change: the new charter downplayed the religious fundamentalism of the original one, dropped the anti-Semitic language, and stated that the Islamist movement was not at war with the Jewish people but only with “Zionism” and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Slater scrutinized the document further, and went on to say that Hamas was also suggesting that it could accept a two-state settlement. Hamas would not be the first extreme organization to moderate its views under the pressure of reality, and no one can guarantee how sincere it is. But Slater continues to assert that the organization’s actions in recent years show it is not committed to all-out war. He quotes Israeli officials who acknowledged, for instance, that after the Israeli attack on Gaza ended in 2014 up until 2016 the organization had “not fired a single rocket, nor even a single bullet” from the besieged territory.

Slater also goes back further, and analyzes how Hamas came to power in Gaza. In late 2005, the George W. Bush administration pressured the Palestinian Authority to hold elections, because it was widely assumed the PA would win easily. Instead, Palestinian voters gave Hamas a majority in Parliament. The U.S. and Israel refused to accept the results, and promoted a military coup in Gaza to topple Hamas. The June 2007 overthrow attempt failed, and Hamas took full power in Gaza. Slater notes wryly:

Since then, in Israel and the United States these events have been typically described as “a coup” when, in fact, it was a response to the real coup — the US and PA actions after the wrong side won the Gazan election.

Of course Hamas’s popularity 14 years ago may have dissipated today, (although there have been anecdotal reports that even Gazans who oppose the organization support its rocket launches after the Israeli provocations in Jerusalem). And one theory about why PA leader Mahmoud Abbas (again) postponed elections in Palestine that were supposed to happen May 22 is that he knew Hamas would defeat him. 

Some of the mystery in the outside world about Hamas is surely because the organization is treated as a pariah. U.S. diplomats are prohibited from talking to it openly, the U.S. government calls it a terrorist organization, and the New York Times and other mainstream U.S. media outlets rarely if ever try to interview its leaders or listen to its supporters. 

Meanwhile, Jerome Slater deserves credit for taking Hamas seriously. He understands that you don’t make peace with your friends, but with your enemies, and your first step must be to find out who they really are and what they actually want.