Op-ed by Fatah official criticizes Hamas and Hamas official who called for genocide of Jews: “The noble culture of resistance has been infected by a disease of armed violence for the sake of violence alone, which we completely rejected”
Excerpt of an op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily; the op-ed comes in response to Hamas Political Bureau member Fathi Hammad’s call to murder all Jews – see note below
Headline: “We will not be like the Talmudists (i.e., the Jews)!”
“The Palestinian people has a culture of resistance, like the rest of the civilized peoples of the world. The ideological texts and those of the poetic and literary heritage are full of rules and ethics, and for 100 years we have succeeded in proving the humanity of our struggle…
In all of the Palestinian revolutions, for approximately the last 100 years, the Palestinian fighter has never turned to using religion in his struggle against the occupation forces and the invaders…
However, this does not prevent us from admitting that the ‘political Islam’ organizations (i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood, and specifically its Gazan offshoot Hamas) have pushed the Palestinian cause into the furnace of conflicts based on religious worldviews – which we view as direct participation in a large conspiracy together with forces of evil that have made supreme efforts to eliminate the human values regulating the Palestinian struggle and to replace them with the values of fangs, claws, and brutality that are connected to the world of non-human predators. As a result, the noble culture of resistance has been infected by a disease of armed violence for the sake of violence alone, which we completely rejected because we were – and still are – the noblest in all that is connected to the forms and methods of resistance. Speech in the name of justice, the legitimate goals that draw inspiration from the spirit of international law and human rights, and commemorating expressions of love and our loyalty to peace – all of these were reasons for the continuation and legitimacy of the Palestinian revolution, and for the Palestinian national liberation movement serving as a symbol for the liberation movements of the world…
We only began to hear slogans such as ‘blood will bring [more] blood’ – as if we were in a situation of vendettas between tribes or families, or ‘we will splatter Jewish blood in every direction and reach Paradise through it’ – as if we were in a sectarian religious war, after the door was opened for Islamist organizations to enter the Palestinian street with full force…
Since we are the truth and the source in this land, it is impossible that we would be like those who have invaded our land, and like those who are occupying our land, who attack us with soldiers who were given Talmudic (i.e., Jewish) teachings that sanctify the Jewish sword and permit spilling the blood of the other (the Palestinians) [parentheses in source], with no consideration for our human value!
We will not adopt their method, we will not be like them in their worldviews and actions, and we will not mimic their behavior in war, because at our essence we are civilized…
We are not fighting anyone due to religion, race, gender, or color; we are dealing in resistance in a dignified manner when the occupiers force us to fight. We are defending our lands, our belongings, and our people, and we do not agree to our sovereignty and independence being harmed…
The danger came upon us suddenly when the sheikhs of the Muslim Brotherhood organization’s Palestinian branch – called Hamas – began to spread mistaken worldviews regarding the culture of resistance and attributed them to the Quran or the Hadiths (i.e., sayings and practices attributed to Islam's Prophet Muhammad). They have reduced the great culture of Jihad down to just killing and bloodshed…
They have succeeded in turning the noble resistance into just a wild desire to kill that is only motivated by hatred towards the other! They have replaced the concepts of ‘occupier’ and ‘colonialist settler’ with the concept of ‘Jew,’ while knowing that the Palestinian people and its national liberation movement have no connection to religious conflict…
We fear the spread of a discourse of bloody violence and murdering the other due to their religion, or even because of their political affiliation, because we will be the first victims of this criminal method. We will see how those who adopt this method turn into a destructive force within Palestinian society that sees no path to coexistence, and that sees only explosive belts as a solution to imposing its worldviews and negating the existence of the Palestinian other in the homeland.”
Hamas Political Bureau member Fathi Hammad gave a speech during a March of Return riot on the Gazan border with Israel on July 12, 2019, in which he clearly connected the March of Return riots to terror attacks being carried out against Israel, spoke explicitly of Hamas factories manufacturing explosive belts for attacks against Israel, and called for the murder of every Jew in the world, in contradiction of Hamas' revised 2017 charter stating that its enemy is Zionism, not the Jews. Hamas' original 1988 charter wrote that the Palestinian war was against Jews. It stated that “Hamas aspires to the realization of Allah's promise," and then quoted a Hadith that in the end of times Muslims will exterminate the Jews.