Content area
Full Text
Dr. Meir Litvak is a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Department of Middle Eastern and African History.
Anti-Semitism is a major pillar in the ideology of Hamas (acronym of Harakat al-muqawama al-Islamiyya - Islamic Resistance Movement), a Palestinian national-Islamic movement, which perceives and articulates its conflict with Israel in Manichean and absolutist religious terms. Like most other Islamic movements in the Middle East, Hamas regards the conflict with the latest and most fateful phase of the relentless onslaught waged by western imperialism and culture against Islam since the Crusades. Hamas publications portray the Jews as instruments of the West or, alternatively, as the power that controls and manipulates the West in this war. Concurrently, it views the current struggle as the last link in the war, which the Jews have been waging against Islam since its essence. Consequently, Hamas emphasizes the emphasis on the "Islamic essence" of the Palestinian cause."
As such, the struggle is portrayed as an unbridgeable dichotomy between two absolutes: a "war of religion and faith," between Islam and Judaism and between Muslims and Jews, rather than one between Palestinians and Israelis or Zionists.
It is a historical, religious, cultural and existential conflict between the true religion, which supersedes all previous religions, i.e. Islam, and the abrogated superseded religion, Judaism. It is a war between good personified by the Muslims who represent the party of God (Hizballah) against "evil incarnated.... the party of Satan" (hizb al-shaytan) represented by the Jews. 1
1. Ibrahim Quqa to al-Anba (Kuwait), 8 October 1988; "Hiwar shamil maca qiyadat Hamas," Filastin al-Muslima [FM], April 1990; Ila Filastin, February 1990; Nida al-Aqsa, January 1989.
Justifying the Self and Demonizing the Other
Every conflict involves justification of the Self and the demonization of rivals and enemies, or in Hamas' case the Jews as the "enemies of God and of humanity." Such an accusation, in the words of Bernard Lewis, applies to all enemies of Islam since, if according to the Quran the fighters for Islam are fighting in holy war "in the path of God" and for God, then their opponents are fighting against God and are, therefore, his enemies. 2 However, such depiction is used more forcefully and more often against the Jews in view of their...