Barry Rubin
Following up on our GLORIA dispatch, “Who Owns the Palestine Card”--
http://www.gloriacenter.org/index.asp?pname=submenus/articles/2008/rubin/2_19.asp--in which a high-ranking Iranian official claims the battle against Israel as a Shia and non-Palestinian monopoly—comes a Hamas statement which also indicates the deep divisions among Muslims and Arabs. At the same time, in contrast to the bragging (or is it whistling in the dark?) of Iran and Hizballah, it shows the high sense of despair among radical forces.
The statement came from Fathi Hamad, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and spokesman, on the Hamas television station, al-Aqsa, in late January but is still very timely.[i]. On one level, this speech is all heated rhetoric but it contains some very important points.
He complains that while martyrs are sacrificing themselves “in defense of the honor of the Arab and Islamic nation, and in defense of the holy places,” that most Arabs and Muslims do nothing to help. Hamad attempts to appeal to them by claiming that they must destroy Israel in self-defense—he knows that appeals to help the Palestinians in their own right have no effect—since Israel supposedly wants to conquer them also. “The Jews want to invade Egypt and Iraq, to destroy Saudi Arabia….”
Hamad knows, of course, that far from a romanticized view of Arab or Muslim solidarity that the Egyptians have been blockading the Gaza Strip, Iraqis are busy killing each other, and Saudis are focusing on making money and fighting the Shia Muslims (including Hamas’s ally, Iran).[ii] Clearly, they are not going to be persuaded to go to war because they fear an imminent Israeli invasion of their own territory.
And so Hamad—like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his key speeches—simply accuses Arabs and Muslims of being wimps. Bashar’s claim to machismo on this subject is undercut by his carefully avoiding any attacks on Israel from his own territory. He lets Lebanon pay the price for his clients’ cross-border raids.
Hamad simply loses it:
“Where is your valor? Stop being such cowards. The time has come for you to awaken from this deep slumber. The time has come for your honor, dignity, and valor to awaken. Where are you, Muslims?...As a sign of your love for Allah and the Prophet, you should sweep away the borders, which were created by imperialism. We are in need of weapons, we are in need of food, we are in need of moral support, as well as support by the media, economic support, medical aid, and support in weapons.”
Note that his request for aid has brought no response. The Arab states are not interested in helping Hamas because they recognize it as part of a radical Islamist threat to them. And they are not very much interested in confronting America or fighting Israel either.
Of special interest, though, is his reference to sweeping away borders. Far from being Palestinian nationalist, Hamas is pan-Islamist. Calling on Arabs to abandon being Egyptians, Iraqis, or Saudis is not only going to fail in 2008, it also makes the existing regimes (always with the exception of Syria) even more antagonistic toward Hamas. Note also that since Hamas is against the existence of states it isn’t going to make peace in exchange for a Palestinian state.
Think about it: anyone who is a good Muslim must destroy all the existing states. Not a great incentive for Arab governments to help Hamas.
Then comes the key line:
“Oh Arabs, who number 300 million, you cannot allow yourselves to be ruled by four million brothers of apes and pigs…. Where are you, oh Muslims, who number one and a half billion, yet you are ruled by four million brothers of apes and pigs?”
Why he chose the number four million is not clear, presumably to indicate a ruling elite of about one percent of the total. At any rate, a brother of an ape or pig—terms often applied to Jews by Islamists—has to be himself an ape or pig. Like other radical Islamists, both Hamad and Hamas are ready to strip others of their right to call themselves Muslims. This is against traditional Islamic practice but quite common among Islamists.
Yet it isn’t very good tactics to admit that very few Muslims and Arabs are supporting you and then say that this means they are not Muslims at all. If you define people as enemies unnecessarily they will view you as an enemy.
And that is the point, for Hamas, all non-Islamists are evil and, there is a strong implication here, deserve to be killed. Hamas is not only at war with Israel but it—along with Hizballah, Iran, and Syria—are at war with pretty much all the other Muslims and Arabs. Iraq, where insurgents daily murder other Muslims and Arabs, is the clearest example of this situation. Algeria’s civil war and Hizballah’s tactics in Lebanon might also be cited as similar cases.
Hamad continues with Hamas’s—here far more traditional—view of gender issues: “You stand there like women and do not lift a finger.”
A lot of this kind of rhetoric is somewhat reminiscent of PLO efforts to get the Arab states into war with Israel. One result of this strategy was the PLO’s defeat and expulsion by Jordan, which refused to be drawn into this game, in 1970. Another was the Arab states’ 1973 defeat. They have learned some things since then.
Finally, he concludes, addressing the Arab regimes:
“Your armies, tanks, and planes have become rusty.”
Not rusty at all. They are being kept in good shape for use against your friends and counterparts in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and other places. Be careful who you call “apes,” they might just bite your guerrillas.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloriacenter.org and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal http://meria.idc.ac.il. His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).
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