blogging the Hamas charter (2)

Continuing the project of blogging the Hamas charter, let's take a look at the first few articles in its charter.

Article 1 states that Hamas is an Islamic movement.

Article 2 states that "The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine."

Just so we're clear - the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 and has been centred on antisemitic hatred from the beginning. In cooperation with Yasser Arafat's close cousin, the notorious Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini (Hitler's chief Arab propagandist), the Brotherhood organized mass demonstrations in Egypt with slogans "Down with the Jews." As Matthias Kuentzel notes:

Their Jew-hatred was also inspired by Nazi influences: Leaflets called for a boycott of Jewish goods and Jewish shops, and the Brotherhood’s newspaper, al-Nadhir, carried a regular column on “The Danger of the Jews of Egypt,” which published the names and addresses of Jewish businessmen and allegedly Jewish newspaper publishers all over the world, attributing every evil, from communism to brothels, to the “Jewish danger.”

Documents seized from German sources during and after the second world war show that the Brotherhood received subsidies from the Third Reich for its activities. This is the organization that is still calling for Jewish boycotts, now dressed up in anti-Zionist and "human rights" language. Frankly, it is the same boycott with the same purpose. Leftist and trade union organizations need to understand the real origin of the boycott calls in order not to be misled and misused.

Articles 3, 4 and 5 are more reaffirmations of the Islamic basis of the movement.

We'll take a look at Article 6 next time.