During a rally held on March 23, 2014 in Gaza to mark the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Hamas’s founding “spiritual guide,” Sheik Ahmad Yassin, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya admonished the gathered crowds to, “establish the balance of terror. Out of the ruins, we shall rock Tel Aviv.” The Muslim masses responded with chants of “Strike, strike Tel Aviv.” Echoing the ancient sentiments of Islam’s prophet and prototype jihadist, Muhammad*, extolled as the ultimate “Jihad Model” by “moderate” head of the International Union of Islamic Scholars, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Haniya added the jihadist matrydrom mantra**,
“we are a people that yearn for death, just as our enemies yearn for life. We yearn for martyrdom for the same goal for which our leaders died”
More ominously, Haniya’s speech alluded to Hamas’ now well-established massive network of underground infiltration tunnels:
From below ground and above ground, you, the Occupiers, will be dismissed.
You have no place in the land of Palestine.
Currently, as Israel’s Operation Protective Edge continues, necessitated by Hamas’ latest round of unprovoked missile barrages targeting civilian population centers, the Israeli counter-attack is appropriately focused on an aggressive campaign against the tunnels. Monday, 7/21/14, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) thwarted a jihad terror assault after two groups of Hamas terrorists (about ten in number) infiltrated from Gaza to Israel through a tunnel, ostensibly on their way to conduct a mass casualty attack at Kibbutz Erez and/or Kibbutz Nir Am. Earlier, IDF forces halted several other attempted attacks by Hamas near Kibbutz Sufa and Kibbutz Nirim which also utilized attack tunnels. Dozens of tunnels in Gaza, adjacent to Israel’s border, have been uncovered, and destroyed. Reaching lengths of up to 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles), some of these tunnels penetrate deep into Israeli territory.
Hamas Prime Minister Haniya’s explicit March 23, 2014 reference to jihad terrorism waged “from below ground,” unmasked what Israeli President Shimon Peres observed with regard to the recently thwarted attack on Kibbutz Sufa: a planned campaign by Hamas to inflict wholesale, deliberate slaughter of Israeli non-combatants.
Notwithstanding over a quarter century of morally bereft wishful ignorance, and deliberate obfuscation, the enduring motivations for Hamas’ genocidal wishes—and accompanying actions—vis-à-vis Jews, were laid out unambiguously in its August 18, 1988 covenant. Moreover, within 6-months of the publication of Hamas’ foundational covenant, the late historian David Littman waged a unique, heroic personal campaign—in public, at the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), beginning January, 1989 (see “Human Rights and Human Wrongs,” World Union for Progressive Judaism, Geneva, 1989, N° 6, p. 3, statement by David G. Littman, E/CN.4/1989/SR.2)—to elucidate key aspects of the jihad terror organization’s genocidal ideology.