Hamas says: If elected, we’ll still destroy Israel

A few days ago, there was an article in the Jerusalem Post that I ignored. Here are the salient parts:

Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip on Thursday dismissed as “unacceptable” a call by the Quartet to exclude from any future Palestinian Authority cabinet members of any group that is not committed to Israel’s right to exist.

However, some Hamas leaders hinted that the movement would endorse a “pragmatic and realistic” strategy once its representatives join the PA establishment. They argued that the international community’s fears of Hamas’s rising power were “unjustified and exaggerated.”

Hamas leader Mahmoud a-Zahar said he did not rule out the possibility that his movement would even negotiate with Israel in the future. His remarks, like those of other top Hamas leaders, are seen as an attempt to send a message to the international community that would soften its position after next month’s parliamentary elections.

Sources close to Hamas told The Jerusalem Post that some of the movement’s leaders, who met recently in the Gaza Strip with EU representatives, stressed that Hamas was in the process of transforming into a political party.

The reason I ignored that? Because the palestinians have learned how to lie to the public to get what they want while they continue to murder Israelis and try to destroy the state of Israel. And yesterday, buried deep within an article about the chaos at the Rafah crossing, was this news:

Hamas’ political chief said Friday that the Islamic group’s decision to run candidates in the election did not mean it was willing to end its armed struggle against Israel.

“We will enter the parliament and (engage in) political work … without giving up one inch of Palestine,” Khaled Mashaal said in a speech in Damascus, Syria, marking the 18th anniversary of the founding of Hamas.

Followed yesterday night by this:

The political chief of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, has said the organisation would participate in upcoming legislative elections but would not negotiate with Israel, vowing to continue its armed struggle against the Jewish State.

“We will enter the parliament and engage in political work without giving up one inch of Palestine,” Khaled Mashaal said in a speech marking the 18th anniversary of the founding of Hamas.

[…] He said he rejected US and other demands to disarm and said: “We will show America, Israel and the international community… . We insist on combining the resistance with politics without compromising.”

“We will engage in politics in another language, without necessarily negotiating with the enemy,” he said.

Mashaal said his group would not stop its armed resistance until all the territory claimed by the Palestinians is free from Israeli occupation.

The last two paragraphs of the AP story are important, because they put the lie to the European claims that Hamas can be negotiated with, or turned into a political body that will stop murdering Jews. So of course, the AP puts those grafs at the end of the story–they’re the eighth and ninth–knowing full well that many local newspapers cut the story about four paragraphs in. Yes, even when the AP admits publicly they will continue to murder Jews, the AP whitewashes it.

Hamas is a terrorist organization every bit as evil as Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda will not stop until militarily defeated.

Neither will Hamas.