Hamas in their own words

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The leading personalities within Hamas.
The Hamas leaders:



Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin (Arabic: الشيخ أحمد إسماعيل حسن ياسين; June 1936 – 22 March 2004) was a Palestinian politician and imam who founded Hamas, a militant Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organization in the Gaza Strip, in 1987.

Yassin was born in Ashkelon, in Mandatory Palestine in 1929 or 1936. His family fled or were expelled during the 1948 Palestine War to Gaza City. Yassin, a quadriplegic who was nearly blind, had been reliant on a wheelchair due to a sporting accident at the age of 12.

After its founding, he served as the spiritual leader of Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and other countries. The Israeli government held him responsible for the killing of several Israeli civilians. In 2004, he was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at him as he was being wheeled from Fajr prayer in Gaza City. The attack, which also killed both of his bodyguards and nine bystanders, was internationally condemned. 200,000 Palestinians attended his funeral procession in Gaza.




Yahya Sinwar (Arabic: يحيى السنوار, romanized: Yaḥyá al-Sanwār; born 29 October 1962), also spelled Yehya Sinwar, is a Palestinian politician who has been leader of Hamas, the Sunni Islamist political and military organization that rules the Gaza Strip, since 2017.


Hamas leader 'back from the dead' to attack Israel: Spies believe kidnapping specialist who appeared to have died nearly a decade ago is alive and masterminding campaign of terror after hiding in tunnels beneath Gaza for years.Mohammed Sinwar (Arabic: محمد السنوار, born September 16, 1975), is a leader of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, based in the Gaza Strip. His brother is the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar. He spent several years in Israeli jails in the 1990s and became the leader of Hamas' Khan Younis Brigade in 2005. He has been subject to several assassination attempts by Israel.

In 2023, Mohammed Sinwar is believed by Israeli intelligence to be one of the masterminds of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7. Israel has made him one of the most wanted men in its military operation in Gaza, placing a $300,000 bounty on information of Mohammed Sinwar's whereabouts. He is reportedly a close confidant of his brother, Yahya Sinwar, during the war.


Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Sinwar on an old archive image of Hamas


Osama Hamdan (Arabic: أسامة حمدان; born 1965) is a former senior representative of Hamas in Lebanon and is a member of the organization's politburo. He is the chief of Hamas foreign relations member of the Arab National Congress and of the Arab Islamic Conference of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Institute in Lebanon. In 2018 He said that even if a ceasefire is reached between Israel and Hamas, Hamas would still seek Israel's destruction. He repeated to Al-Quds TV an old blood libel saying that Jews mixed Christian blood into their matzot (Passover bread).


Husam Badran is the former leader of Hamas’s military wing in the northern West Bank. He was the orchestrator of several suicide bombings during the Second Intifada with the highest number of fatalities including the 2001 bombing which resulted in the Dolphinarium discotheque massacre in Tel Aviv which killed 21 people. Currently Badran serves as the international spokesperson for Hamas using Twitter, Facebook, and news media to encourage Hamas militants to commit acts of political violence against ]font color="1979e6"]Israelis[/b][/b][/b] and the Israeli government. He lives in Doha, Qatar.[citation needed]

Badran was born on January 11, 1966 and is originally from Nablus, in the West Bank. [/font][/i]


Ghāzi Hamad, a member of Hamas's political bureau, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Beirut, Lebanon, October 26, 2023. (AP/Bilal Hussein). Ghāzi Hamad (Arabic: غازي حمد; born 1964) is a senior Hamas member. He formerly was chairman of the border crossings authority in the Gaza Strip and Deputy Foreign Minister in the Hamas government of 2012.

According to the New York Times, Hamad left Gaza for Lebanon weeks before the Hamas 7 October 2023 attack upon Israel that triggered the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.


Nizar Awadallah (Arabic: نزار عوض الله, born December 11, 1957) is a Palestinian politician. He is a member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip. Nizar Awadallah was born in the Gaza Strip in 1957. His family originates from the Palestinian town of Hamama, which became Northern Ashkelon after 1948. Awadallah studied civil engineering at Ain Shams University in Cairo. He served as the secretary of an organization called Mujama al-Islamiya, also known as the Islamic Centre, and was considered close to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (June 1936 – 22 March 2004). He was arrested and imprisoned for six years (1989–1995) in an Israeli prison due to his involvement in an armed group called Mujahadin al-Filastayeen, translated as ‘Palestinian Holy Warriors’. He was assigned to lead the Hamas movement after the movement's victory in the 2006 legislative elections. He led the negotiations on behalf of Hamas in the Gilad Shalit deal. He was elected a member of the Hamas Political Bureau in 2009. His house was bombed by Israeli Air Force planes during the 2008–2009 Gaza war and the 2014 Gaza War.


Hudayfa Samir Abdallah al-Kahlout (Arabic: حذيفة سمير عبدالله الكحلوت; born February 11, 1985), known by the nom de guerre Abu Obaida (Arabic: أبو عبيدة, romanized: Abū ʿUbayda), also spelled Abu Obayda, Abu Ubayda and Abu Ubaydah, is a Palestinian militant who has been the spokeperson for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, since at least 2007.


Essam al-Da'alis (Arabic: عصام الدعاليس, romanized: Issam Al-Da'alis, born 1966), also spelled Daalis or Dalis, is a Palestinian politician and Hamas member who, on 13 June 2021, was appointed as head of the Government Administrative Committee of the Gaza Strip, a position also referred to as "head of Government Follow-up Committee" and often compared to that of Prime Minister or head of government. He was appointed by the Hamas-aligned Palestinian Legislative Council, which was meeting in Gaza.

Despite performing, from 2021 up until the beginning of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, day-to-day work in the Gaza Strip akin to that of a head of government,[4] Da'alis, in contrast with most other Hamas's leaders, has not been the target of Western sanctions.


Member of Hamas Political Bureau Essam Al-Dalis (L) as Hamas delegation head to the Egyptian capital Cairo to continue talks regarding the upcoming Palestinian elections on 15 March 2021 in Gaza [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]


Khalil al-Hayya (Arabic: خليل الحية) is a senior Hamas official who was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council on 25 January 2006 as a representative of Gaza City. He resided in the neighborhood of Shuja'iyya.

Khalil al-Hayya said they attacked Israel on October 7th since it was necessary to "change the entire equation and not just have a clash," he also said: “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm." To NYT, he said that Hamas's goal is not "to run Gaza and bring it water and electricity" but to renew attention on the Palestinian cause, and he said Hamas began October 7 to tell people that the Palestinian cause would not die.

Seven or eight of his relatives, including two of his brothers, were killed by Israeli strikes on his home in 2007. One of his sons was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 2008 while leading a rocket brigade. Another son, daughter-in-law, and grandson were killed by an airstrike on his home in July 2014 during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.

al-Hayya has called on the United Nations to recognize Palestine within its pre-1948 borders.


Khaled Mashal (Arabic: خالد مشعل, romanized: Khālid Mashʿal, Levantine Arabic pronunciation: [ˈχæːled ˈmeʃʕæl]; born 28 May 1956) is a Palestinian political leader who is the former head of the militant organization Hamas.


Fathi Ahmad Hamad (Arabic: فتحي أحمد حماد, also spelled Fathi Hammad; born 3 January 1961) is a Palestinian politician and member of the Hamas political bureau. He was Interior Minister in the Hamas-administered Gaza Strip from 2009 to 2014. Hamad is viewed in Gaza as a powerful, but extreme, loose cannon, who operates independently of and kept at arm's length by Hamas. He is well-known as one of the most radical figures in Hamas. In July 2019, Hamad urged members of the Palestinian diaspora to kill "Jews everywhere". His comments were characterized as incitement to genocide by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. His rhetoric was widely condemned by other Palestinians and he later stated that he supports the Hamas policy of "limiting its resistance to the Zionist occupation that usurps Palestine’s land and defiles its holy sites". The killing of civilians is nonetheless prohibited in Islamic law.


Fathi Ahmad Hamad is a Palestinian politician and member of the Hamas political bureau. Hamad is viewed in Gaza as a powerful, but extreme, loose cannon, who operates independently of and kept at arm's length by Hamas.


Ismail Haniyeh (born 29 January 1962) is a Palestinian politician who is widely considered to be the chief political leader of Hamas, which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007. He is the current chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau. As of 2023, he lives in Qatar.


Mohammed Deif (Arabic: محمد الضيف), born Mohammed al-Masri (محمد المصري), is a Palestinian militant and the head of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamist organization Hamas.


Mahmoud al-Zahar (Arabic: محمود الزهار Maḥmūd az-Zahhār; born 6 May 1945) (Second from the left) is a Palestinian politician. He is a co-founder of Hamas and a member of the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip. Al-Zahar served as foreign minister in the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority Government in Gaza of March 2006 (also known as the First Haniyeh Government) that was sworn in on 20 March 2006.

www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-mahmoud-zahar-no-two-state-solution-israelis-leave-netanyahu-to-lieberman-russia


Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook (Arabic: موسى محمد أبو مرزوق; born 9 January 1951) is a Palestinian senior member of Hamas.


Mousa Abu MarzookMousa Mohammed Abu Marzook (Arabic: موسى محمد أبو مرزوق; born 9 January 1951) is a Palestinian senior member of Hamas. Following the eight-day cross-border battle between Israel and Hamas in November 2012, Moussa Abu Marzouk said that Hamas would not stop making weapons in Gaza or smuggling them to the territory. According to the Associated Press, Moussa Abu Marzouk is the No 2 leader in Hamas.[

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Oct 10, 2023

The Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023 stunned the world. In this timely conversation, political scientist Ian Bremmer explains the historical context of the conflict, how Israel might respond and what it means for Jews, Palestinians and the world at large. Listen in for analysis of the unprecedented events, how the US may factor into the global response and how to find reliable information amid the breathless media coverage and the fog of war.

This interview, hosted by TED's Helen Walters, was recorded on October 9, 2023 as part of the series "TED Explains the World with Ian Bremmer."



Ian Bremmer

Ian Arthur Bremmer (born November 12, 1969) is an American political scientist, author, and entrepreneur focused on global political risk. He is the founder and president of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm. He is also founder of GZERO Media, a digital media firm.

Early life and education

Bremmer is of Armenian, Syrian (from his maternal grandmother), Italian, and German descent, the son of Maria J. (née Scrivano) and Arthur Bremmer. His father served in the Korean War, and died at the age of 46 when Bremmer was four. Bremmer grew up in housing projects in Chelsea, Massachusetts, near Boston. He enrolled in St. Dominic Savio High School in East Boston at age 11. At 15, he enrolled in university and went on to earn a BA degree in international relations, magna cum laude, from Tulane University in 1989. Bremmer subsequently obtained an MA degree in 1991 and a PhD in 1994, both in political science from Stanford University. His doctoral dissertation was "The politics of ethnicity: Russians in the Ukraine".

Career

Eurasia Group

Bremmer founded the political risk research and consulting firm Eurasia Group in 1998 in the offices of the World Policy Institute in New York City.[9] The firm opened a London office in 2000; a Washington, DC office (2005); a Tokyo office (2015); San Francisco and São Paulo offices (2016); and Brasilia and Singapore offices (2017). Initially focused on emerging markets, Eurasia Group expanded to include frontier and developed economies and established practices focused on geo-technology and energy issues. Bremmer has co-authored Eurasia Group’s annual Top Risks report, a forecast of 10 geopolitical risks for the year ahead.

Writing

Bremmer has published 11 books on global affairs, including the New York Times best-sellers, Us vs Them: The Failure of Globalism and The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats—And Our Response—Will Change the World. In addition, he is the foreign-affairs columnist and editor-at-large for Time and a contributor for the Financial Times A-List.

Appointments

In 2013, he was named Global Research Professor at New York University. and in 2019, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs announced that Bremmer would teach an Applied Geopolitics course at the school.

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Hamas and its Positions Towards Israel

Understanding the Islamic Resistance Organization
through the concept of framing


Floor El Kamouni-Janssen , Research Fellow bij de Conflict Research Unit van Instituut Clingendael

www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/20090200_cscp_security_paper_jansen.pdf

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The Guardian report of the Israel-Palestinian conflict before 7 october 2023





The Guardian is a Center Left, progressive, liberal British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, before it changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.

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Interview with the American Jewish author Nathan Thrall whom lives and works in Israel (Jerusalem). Interview hosted by Nermeen Shaikh of Democracy Now and the American Jewish leftist journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Democracy Now has a Pro-Palestinian stance.





Nathan Thrall



Nathan Thrall is an American author, essayist, and journalist based in Jerusalem. Thrall is the author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, which was named a best book of 2023 by over ten publications, including The New Yorker, The Economist, Time, the Financial Times, The New Republic, The Millions, Mother Jones, The Forward, Booklist, The New Statesman, and The Irish Times, and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. His first book, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, was published by Metropolitan/Henry Holt in 2017. He is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, the London Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books.

Thrall is the former Director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, where he covered Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel's relations with its neighbors from 2010 to 2020. Thrall is a professor at Bard College.

Background and education

Thrall is Jewish and his mother is a Jewish émigrée from the Soviet Union. Thrall identifies as Jewish. Thrall received a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara's College of Creative Studies and an M.A. in politics from Columbia University. A former member of the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books, he was hired at the International Crisis Group by Robert Malley. At the start of his tenure at the International Crisis Group, Thrall lived in Gaza.

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This 2 young men could have been brothers. One of them is an Israeli Jew and the other is a Palestinian Arab. They are like the sons of Abraham ( אַבְרָהָם إِبْرَاهِيْمُ ) Ishmael the first son of the Egyptian slave mother Hagar and Isaac, the son of the Israelite, Hebrew, Jewish mother Sarah.

Ishmael is recognized by Muslims as the ancestor of several northern prominent Arab tribes and the forefather of Adnan, the ancestor of Muhammad. Muslims also believe that Muhammad was the descendant of Ishmael who would establish a great nation.

Isaac is one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites and an important figure in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Isaac first appears in the Book of Genesis, later adopted by the Hebrew tradition of the Torah, in which he is considered to be the son of Abraham and Sarah, the father of Jacob and Esau, and the grandfather of the twelve tribes of Israel. So, from Isaac, the Jewish people descent according to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

Quran

The Quran mentions Isaac as a prophet and a righteous man of God. Isaac and Jacob are mentioned as being bestowed upon Abraham as gifts of God, who then worshipped God only and were righteous leaders in the way of God:

And We bestowed on him Isaac and, as an additional gift, (a grandson), Jacob, and We made righteous men of every one (of them). And We made them leaders, guiding (men) by Our Command, and We sent them inspiration to do good deeds, to establish regular prayers, and to practise regular charity; and they constantly served Us (and Us only).
— Surah Al-Anbiya 21:72–73

And WE gave him the glad tidings of Isaac, a Prophet, and one of the righteous.
— Surah As-Saaffat 37:112

Sara and Isaac, the wife and second son of Abraham

God declared Sarai's new name: "Sarah", blessed her, and told Abraham, "I will give thee a son also of her". Abraham laughed, and "said in his heart, 'Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear ?'" Immediately after Abraham's encounter with God, he had his entire household of men, including himself (age 99) and Ishmael (age 13), circumcised.

Abraham


Abraham is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Jews and God; in Christianity, he is the spiritual progenitor of all believers, whether Jewish or non-Jewish; and in Islam, he is a link in the chain of Islamic prophets that begins with Adam and culminates in Muhammad.

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Ilan Pappé (Hebrew: אילן פפה [iˈlan paˈpe]; born 7 November 1954) is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. Pappé was also a board member of the Israeli political party Hadash, and was a candidate on the party list in the 1996 and 1999 Israeli legislative elections.

Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel. Pappé is one of Israel's New Historians; he has, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, offered an unconventional view of Israel's establishment in 1948 and the corresponding exodus of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from the land. He has written that the expulsions were not decided on an ad hoc basis, as other historians have argued, but constituted a planned ethnic cleansing in accordance with Plan Dalet, which was drawn up in 1947 by Israel's future leaders. Prior to coming to the United Kingdom, he was a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa (1984–2007) and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa (2000–2008). He is the author of Ten Myths About Israel (2017), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), The Modern Middle East (2005), A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (2003), and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988).

With regard to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Pappé supports the one-state solution, envisaging a unitary state for both Palestinians and Israelis. He left Israel in 2008 after being condemned in the Knesset. A minister of education had called for him to be sacked, his photograph had appeared in a newspaper at the centre of a target, and he had received several death threats. In a 2004 interview, Pappé said "The aim has always been, and it still remains, to have as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible." A strong critic of Zionism and the State of Israel, Pappé has called for an international boycott of Israeli academics.

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Michelle Wolf (born June 21, 1985) is an American comedian, writer, producer, and television host. She worked as a contributor and writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. She spoke as the featured performer at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner. She hosted the Netflix comedy talk show series The Break with Michelle Wolf and performed in the 2019 stand-up comedy special Joke Show.

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The author, a retired Israeli IDF lieutenant colonel Peter Lerner, is a communications and strategy consultant, Israel advocate and a former IDF spokesperson. A former decorated career officer in the IDF Spokesman’s Unit, the dapper and erudite Lerner gathered with his family and his wife Liat’s parents and their friends for an erev Simchat Torah barbecue on October 6, the day before the 7 October 2023 massacre. Director General at Histadrut living in Israel. I am a fan of IDF, Israel, and Media Relations. I’m also interested in Crisis Communications and International Relations.



Histadrut, or the General Organization of Workers in Israel, originally (Hebrew: ההסתדרות הכללית של העובדים בארץ ישראל, HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael), is Israel's national trade union center and represents the majority of Israel's trade unionists.

Established in December 1920 in Mandatory Palestine, it soon became one of the most powerful institutions in the Yishuv (the body of Jewish residents in the region prior to the establishment of the state). Today, it has 800,000 members.