The Investigative Project on Terrorism – IPT News Steven Emerson, Executive Director January 21, 2009
The U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) published a monograph last month by Sherifa Zuhur entitled, “Hamas and Israel: Conflicting Strategies of Group-Based Politics,” a fairly bland heading that only hints at its deeply disturbing content. This monograph is more accurately described as an apologia for Hamas, a violent Islamist organization dedicated to jihad and the destruction of the State of Israel. Hamas was first designated by the United States (U.S.) government as a terrorist organization in 1995 by a presidential executive order and then again as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) in 1997. Hamas has remained on the FTO list ever since. The essay also consistently demonizes Israel and its legitimate defense of national sovereignty under international law.
The U.S. Army War College is an official educational facility of the Department of Defense, and is accredited by the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. The mission of the Carlisle, Pennsylvania-based War College is to prepare its students for strategic leadership positions in the U.S. military and senior levels of civilian policymaking. American taxpayers fund the War College and its Strategic Studies Institute.
According to the monograph’s forward (written by SSI Director Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.), “Hamas and Israel” provides “an orientation to HAMAS and its base” that demonstrates how “efforts.to separate HAMAS from its popular support and network of social and charitable organizationshave not been effective in destroying the organization, nor in eradicating the will to resist among a fairly large segment of the Palestinian population.”[1] The pronounced bias in support of Hamas and against the State of Israel that suffuses this monograph shows in the absence of any explanation for why Hamas would continue to be engaged in resistance of any sort through the end of 2008, much less incessant rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilian population centers, more than three years after Israel withdrew completely from Gaza. Instead, key recommendations include the need for “Israel and the United Statesto abandon their policies of non-negotiation and non-communication with HAMAS.”[2] Additionally, according to Zuhur, Israel needs to “abandon the aspects of its new defensive strategy which are calculated to thwart peace efforts,”[3] by “[d]ismantling the settlements in the West Bank”[4] and recognizing what Zuhur calls “Hamas’ political and strategic development”[5] instead of villainizing the group. She claims that “Israel could not tolerate Palestinian Arabs’ resistance of their [sic] authority on the legal basis of denial of self-determination”[6] and slips in a stab at what she terms “Israel’s rejection of all comprehensive peace offers by the Arabs.”[7] Statements like these betray the actual purpose of this monograph: to criticize Israel for exercising its sovereign right to self-defense while giving Hamas a free pass for terrorist assaults that deliberately target Israel’s civilian population. It should be noted that this monograph was published the very week that Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip on 27 December 2008.
American dedication to free speech should not extend to using taxpayer money to pay for a paean to Islamist terrorism, backed by shoddy research and written at what is supposed to be this nation’s premier U.S. Army institute for national security research and analysis. Unfortunately, there is precedent at SSI for this genre of terrorist apologia. Sherifa Zuhur, an American citizen who is Research Professor of Islamic and Regional Studies at SSI, is the same author who penned an April 2008 SSI monograph, “Precision in the Global War on Terror: Inciting Muslims Through the War of Ideas.”
That monograph takes the form of a Glossary of Terms, from A to Z, which Zuhur uses to identify “a trend of pathologizing beliefs and practices that are at the core of Islam.”[8] Her definitions invariably deny any link between Islam and terrorism and claim that the violence of the suicide bomber is “not a manifestation of belief nor a natural outcome of Islamism or fundamentalism,’ but rather a tactic, labeled with the religious principle of Jihad, that is intended to build an ethos, a camaraderie, and dependency on others engaging in violence.”[9]
Zuhur overlooks the Hamas charter, a theological covenant with Allah, which takes the motto of its parent organization, The Muslim Brotherhood, as its own:
Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model to be followed,
the Koran its constitution, Jihad its way,
and death for the sake of Allah its loftiest desire
Article Seven of the covenant justifies its anti-Semitic mission to obliterate Israel with the notorious hadith authenticated by the two most authoritative hadith scholars in Islam, Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim:
The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight
The Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones,
And each tree and stone will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah,
there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him
Had Zuhur included something more than false, dismissive references to the Hamas Covenant in her latest monograph, she may have had a much harder time excoriating Israel for its “stance towards the democratically-elected Palestinian government headed by HAMAS [which] has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking.”[10] Zuhur describes the charter as “defunct” and claims that Hamas leadership no longer “cites or refers to” it while generally playing down its aggressive anti-Israel elements.[11] Yet, as recently as 2007, the Hamas leadership issued an official statement to defend itself against criticism from Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two. “We will not betray promises we made to God to continue the path of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine,”[12] according to the statement. This statement not only clearly reaffirms Hamas’ commitment to the destruction of Israel, but notably as well underscores the theological character of the Hamas Covenant, which declares “promises we made to God.”
Tellingly, Zuhur’s monographs lack citations from recognized Islamic authorities, legal texts, or scriptures. Such quotations would refute her premise that the violent intolerance intrinsic to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Shari’a is not based explicitly in Islamic doctrine.
She also neglects to cite key references in her attempt to portray the Brotherhood as an organization “committed to global change for many decades”[13] that has “restricted its activities to Muslim education and social support.”[14] Here, she conveniently ignores the self-described mission of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S., which was revealed in a Brotherhood document first introduced into evidence at the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial:
Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America: The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands”[15] (emphasis added)
Zuhur’s protestations on behalf of Hamas’ “charitable social services”[16] make a false distinction between those affiliated with al-Qaeda (acknowledged as violent) and those connected to Hamas, which has “carefully separated political and military wings.”[17] Similarly, she claims that “Hamas shares an acceptance of the scientific rational traditions of the West along with moderate Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.”[18] In the rush to publish, Zuhur must have missed reports that the Hamas parliament voted in December 2008 to legalize Shari’a hudud punishments like amputation, flogging, and crucifixion.[19]
In publishing these two monographs by Sherifa Zuhur, the U.S. Army War College exposes itself to serious questions about its advocacy and promotion of views it knows or should have known are deeply inimical to U.S. national security interests. These two publications are each described on their title pages as “a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101.”[20] But their author shills for a foreign terrorist organization. She attacks Israel, a friend and ally of the U.S. and an outpost of liberal democracy in the Middle East, which has been forced to fight jihadist efforts to destroy it for the entire 60 years of its existence. It is fine to present students with varying perspectives on a conflict, but when taxpayer money is used, a higher standard should be demanded. Congress should investigate why the US Army is funding papers supporting Hamas.
[1] Zuhur, Sherifa, “Hamas and Israel: Conflicting Strategies of Group-Based Politics,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, December 2008. (pg. v)
[2] Ibid, pg. 63
[3] Ibid, pg. 18.
[4] Ibid, pg. 65
[5] Ibid, pg. x
[6] Ibid, pg. 1
[7] Ibid, pg. 14
[8] Zuhur, Sherifa, “Precision in the Global War on Terror: Inciting Muslims Through the War of Ideas,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, April 2008. From the Forward, pg. v.
[9] Ibid, pg. 110
[10] Zuhur, “Hamas and Israel,” pg.1
[11] Ibid, pg. 30-31
[12] Al-Mughrabi, Nidal, “Hamas says still seeks Israel’s destruction,” Reuters, March 12, 2007.
[13] Zuhur, “Hamas and Israel,” pg. 63
[14] Ibid, pg. 91
[15]From On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America’ (5/22/1991); entered into evidence at the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas, TX. While this federal prosecution ended indecisively, Zuhur would have known before “Hamas and Israel” was published in late December 2008 that on November 24, 2008, a unanimous jury conviction on 108 counts was returned in the retrial against five former Holy Land Foundation officials for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
[16] Zuhur, “Hamas and Israel,” pg.18; also “Precision in the Global War on Terror,” pg. 114, where she protests that “with the War on Terror came an attack on many Islamic charitable associations, both those somehow linked to al-Qa’ida and to organizations that most Muslims regard as nationalist and more moderate like Hamas.”
[17] Ibid (“Hamas and Israel”), pg. 39
[18] Ibid, pg. 60
[19] “Hamas Sanctions Sharia Law,” CBNNews.com, December 24, 2008. http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/507872.aspx
[20] Zuhur, “Hamas and Israel,” from the bottom of the monograph’s title page
Following is the summary of Zuhur’s monograph as shown on the SSI website. The full report, in PDF is available on the website and here
HAMAS and Israel: Conflicting Strategies of Group-Based Politics
Authored by Dr. Sherifa D. Zuhur.
A Summary
This is an excerpt of the summary without endnotes. The original summary with endnotes can be found in the full text PDF.
The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has heightened since 2001, even as any perceived threat to Israel from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, or even Syria, has declined. Israel, according to Chaim Herzog, Israel’s sixth President, had been “born in battle” and would be “obliged to live by the sword.” Yet, the Israeli government’s conquest and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza brought about a very difficult challenge, although armed resistance on a mass basis was only taken up years later in the Intifadha. Israel could not tolerate Palestinian Arabs’ resistance of their authority on the legal basis of denial of self-determination, and eventually preferred to grant some measures of self-determination while continuing to consolidate control of the Occupied Territories, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. However, a comprehensive peace, shimmering in the distance, has eluded all, even as inter-Israeli and inter-Palestinian divisions deepened as peace danced closer before retreating.
Israel’s stance towards the democratically-elected Palestinian government headed by HAMAS in 2006, and towards Palestinian national coherence–legal, territorial, political, and economic–has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking. The reasons for recalcitrant Israeli and HAMAS stances illustrate both continuities and changes in the dynamics of conflict since the Oslo period (roughly 1994 to the al-Aqsa Intifadha of 2000). Now, more than ever, a long-term truce and negotiations are necessary. These could lead in stages to that mirage-like peace, and a new type of security regime.
The rise in popularity and strength of the HAMAS (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, or Movement of the Islamic Resistance) Organization and its interaction with Israel is important to an understanding of Israel’s “Arab” policies and its approach to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. The crisis brought about by the electoral success of HAMAS in 2006 also challenged Western powers’ commitment to democratic change in the Middle East because Palestinians had supported the organization in the polls. Thus, the viability of a two-state solution rested on an Israeli acknowledgement of the Islamist movement, HAMAS, and on Fatah’s ceding power to it.
Shifts in Israel’s stated national security objectives (and dissent over them) reveal HAMAS’ placement at the nexus of Israel’s domestic, Israeli-Palestinian, and regional objectives. Israel has treated certain enemies differently than others: Iran, Hizbullah, and Islamist Palestinians (whether HAMAS, supporters of Islamic Jihad, or the Islamic Movement inside Israel) all fall into a particular rubric in which Islamism–the most salient and enduring socio-religious movement in the Middle East in the wake of Arab nationalism–is identified with terrorism and insurgency rather than with group politics and identity. The antipathy to religious fervor was somewhat ironic in light of Israel’s own expanding “religious” (haredim) groups. In Israel’s earlier decades, Islamic identity politics were understood and successfully repressed, as Israelis did not want to allow any repetition of the Palestinian Mufti’s nationalism or the Qassamiyya (the armed brigades in the 1936-39 rebellion).
Yet at the same time, identity politics and religious attitudes were not eradicated, but were inside of Israel, bringing about great inequality as well as physical and psychological separation of the Jewish and non-Jewish populations. This represented efforts to control politically and physically the now 20 percent Arab minority, and dealt with the demographic threat constantly spoken of in Israel by warding off intermarriage, limiting property control and rights, and physical access. Still today, some Israeli politicians call for an exodus by Palestinian-Israelis (so-called Arab-Israelis) in some areas, who they wish would resettle in the West Bank, in the permitted areas of course.
For decades, Muslim religious properties and institutions were managed under Jewish supervision–substantial inter-Israeli conflict over that supervision notwithstanding–and this allowed for a continuing stereotype of the recalcitrant, anti-modern Muslims and Arabs who were punished for any expression of Palestinian (or Arab) nationalism by replacing them–imams or qadis, for instance–with more quiescent Israeli Muslims, and by retaining Jewish control over endowment (waqf) properties and income.
Contemporary Islamism took hold in Palestinian society, as it has throughout the Middle East and has, to a great degree, supplanted secular nationalism. This is problematic in terms of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians because the official Israeli position towards key Islamists–Iran, Hizbullah, and the Palestinian groups like HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, or Hizb al-Tahrir–characterizes them as Israel-haters and terrorists. They have become the existential threat to Israel (along with Iran) since the demise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Israel steadfastly rejected diplomacy and truce offers by HAMAS for 8 months in 2008, despite an earlier truce that held for several years. By the spring of 2008, continued rejection of a truce was politically risky as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert teetered on the edge of indictment by his own party and finally had to announce his resignation in the summer. In fact, on his way out the door, Olmert announced a peace plan that ignores HAMAS and many demands of the Palestinian Authority as a whole ever since Oslo. If the plan was merely to create a sense of Olmert’s legacy, it is not altogether clear why it offered so little compromise.
On the other hand, Israelis have for over a year been discussing the wisdom of reconquering the Gaza strip (a prospect that would aid the Fatah side of the Palestinian Authority) and also engage in “preemptive deterrence” or attacks on other states in the region. This could happen at any time if the truce between Israel and HAMAS breaks down, although the risks of any of these enterprises would be high. A deal with Syria was also announced by Olmert, similarly, perhaps, to stave off his own resignation, and Syria made a counteroffer. Turkish-mediated indirect talks were to continue at the time of this writing, though they might be rescheduled. Support for an Israeli attack on Iran continues to play well in the Israeli media, despite the fact that Israelis argue fiercely about the wisdom of such a course. All of this shows flux in the region, with Israel in its customary strong, but concerned position.
HAMAS emerged as the chief rival to the secularist-nationalist framework of Fatah, the dominant member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This occurred as Palestinians rebelled against the worsening conditions they experienced following the Oslo Peace Accords. HAMAS’ political and strategic development has been both ignored and misreported in Israeli and Western sources which villainizes the group, much as the PLO was once characterized as an anti-Semitic terrorist group. Relatively few detailed treatments in English counter the media blitz that reduces HAMAS to its early, now defunct, 1988 charter.
Disagreements within the Israeli military and political establishments over the national security objectives of that country reveal HAMAS’ placement at the nexus of Israel’s domestic, Palestinian, and regional objectives. This process can be traced back to Ariel Sharon’s formation of the KADIMA Party and decision to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza without engaging in a peace process with Palestinians. This reflected a new understanding that Arab armies were unlikely to launch any successful attack against Israel, but Israel should focus instead on protecting its Jewish citizens via barrier methods.
This new thinking coexists alongside the long-standing policies described by Yitzhak Shamir as aggressive defense; in other words, offensives aimed at increasing Israel’s strategic depth, or attacking potential threats in neighboring countries-as in the raid on the nearly completed nuclear power facility at Osirak, Iraq, in 1981, or the mysterious Operation ORCHARD carried out on a weapons cache in Syria in September 2007, or in the invasions and ground wars (1978, 1982, 2006) in Lebanon.
Israelis considered occupied Palestinian territories valuable in land-for-peace negotiations. During the Oslo process, according to Israelis, Israel was ready to withdraw entirely to obtain peace. Actually, the value of land to trade for peace and costs of maintaining security for the settlers there, as well as containing the uprisings, were complicated equations. Palestinians and others argue that, in fact, Israel offered no more in the various proposed exchanges than the less valuable portion of the western West Bank and Gaza, and refused to deal with outstanding issues such as the fate of Palestinian refugees (4,913,993 Palestinians live outside of Israel and the occupied territories; 1,337,388 UNRWA–registered refugees–live in camps, and 3,166,781 live outside of camps), prisoners, water, and the claim of Jerusalem as a capital.
Many Arabs believe that Israel never intended the formation of a Palestinian state, and that its land-settlement policies during the Oslo period provide proof of its true intentions. Either way, the “Oslo optimism” faded away between Israelis and Palestinians with the al-Aqsa (Second) Intifadha in October 2000.
The Israeli Right, and part of its Left, claimed that the diplomatic collapse, plus Arafat’s government’s corruption, showed there was no “partner to peace.” Another segment of the Israeli Left has continued until this day to argue for land-for-peace and complete withdrawal from the territories.
According to Barry Rubin, the Israeli military felt the Palestinian threat would not increase, and that if settlers could be evacuated and a stronger line of defense erected, they might better defend their citizenry. That defense could not be achieved with suicide attacks ongoing in Israeli population centers. When earlier Israeli strategies had not achieved an end to Palestinian Islamist violence, Israelis had pushed this task onto the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the 1990s. Pointing to the failures of the Palestinian Authority, the new Israeli “securitist” (bitchonist, in Hebrew, or security-focused) strategy moved away from negotiations, and called for further separation and segregation of the Israeli population from Palestinians. Neither a full-blown physical resistance by Palestinians, including suicide attacks, or the missiles launched from Gaza could be dealt with in this manner. The first depended on granting Palestinians rights to partial self-government, and the missile attacks were negotiated in Israel’s June 2008 truce.
Israel claimed significant victories in its war against Palestinians by the use of targeted killings of leadership, boycotts, power cuts, preemptive attacks and detentions, and punishments to militant’s families, relatives, and neighborhoods etc., because its counterterrorism logic is to reduce insurgents’ organizational capability. This particular Israeli analysis rejects the idea that counterterrorist violence can spark more resistance and violence, but also admitted that Israel had not “defeated the will to resistance” [of Palestinians]. This admission suggests that the tactics employed might not be indefinitely manageable, and that Palestinians, despite every possible effort made to weaken or incriminate them, to discourage or prevent their Arab non-Palestinian supporters from defending their interests, and to buy the services of collaborators, could edge Israelis back toward comprehensive negotiations, or rise up again against them. Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second Prime Minister, once asked: “Do people consider that when military reactions outstrip in their severity the events that caused them, grave processes are set in motion which widen the gulf and thrust our neighbors into the extremist camp? How can this deterioration be halted?”
HAMAS and its new wave of political thought, which had supported armed resistance along with the aim to create an Islamic society, had overtaken Fatah in popularity. Fatah, with substantial U.S. support edged closer to Israeli positions over 2006-07, promising to diminish Palestinian resistance, although President Mahmud Abbas had no means to do so, and could not even ensure Fatah’s survival in the West Bank without HAMAS assent, and had been routed from Gaza.
Negotiating solely with the weaker Palestinian party–Fatah–cannot deliver the security Israel requires. This may lead Israel to reconquer the Gaza strip and continue engaging in “preemptive deterrence” or attacks on other states in the region in the longer term.
The underlying strategies of Israel and HAMAS appear mutually exclusive and did not, prior to the summer of 2008, offer much hope of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict. Yet each side is still capable of revising its desired endstate and of necessary concessions to establish and preserve a long-term truce, or even a longer-term peace.
