This morning Australian print mastheads the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald ran a piece called “What is Hamas?” Written for a dumbed-down Gen Z readership it tried to piece together the unfolding chaos in Israel since Hamas broke though the Gaza Strip last weekend wreaking a trail of bloodshed in southern Israel.

The one thing this article did not do though—was answer the question.

According to the article’s Dubai-based journalist Lucy Cormack:

“Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist militant group dedicated to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.”

No. What Cormack should have said was:

Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist militant group dedicated to the creation of an independent Palestinian ISLAMIC STATE.

That is a big difference for the hopes of a secular and pluralistic Middle East. It is also why across the globe, including in Australia, Hamas is deemed a terror organisation.

Hamas was secretly formed in 1986 in opposition to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The PLO around that time sought peace negotiations with Israel. Hamas saw that as “against Allah’s will”.

Therefore, Hamas seeks a unilateral “Islamic State” in the full 21st Century meaning of that term. Think Afghanistan. And no negotiation with Jews.

That is the most precise way to explain them.

Hamas is the Taliban of Palestine complete with misogyny and strict Sharia Law.

By that token until now Hamas was most infamous for its jihadist suicide bombings on buses spanning the late 1990s into the 2010s. According to author Mosab Hassan Yousef, “jihad” is Islam at its essence.

This weekend, however, with the help of Iran, Hamas upped the jihad ante and became a version of ISIS—and like Syria and Iraq it will not stop until it is destroyed.

That is why Israel declared “war” on Hamas late last weekend.

Hamas’ attack on the Jewish Sabbath and High Holy Day marking the end of the Tabernacles festival was not a mere volley of rocketry aimed at Israeli civilian locations. It was not even just the unprecedented paramilitary incursion into Israeli territory by an armed militia from Gaza.

It was the deliberate unleashing of fanatical, trained thugs into the Israeli populace with the intent to kill, rape and kidnap infidels. The proof comes from Hamas’ own hubris, streaming evidence of their atrocities, of stripped women, and of prisoners paraded through the streets. Open source intel speaks of beheading videos online.

That is Hamas in 2023. And like ISIS aka ISIL in Iraq, the only way to stop them is to eradicate them.

Israel’s strategy today in blockading the Gaza Strip—shutting off food, water and utilities—is a crude attempt when viewed in the West to incite a Gazan civil war against Hamas. We do not yet know what role the Palestinian Authority (the successor to the PLO) will play in this good cop-bad cop theatre.

But ISIS did not fall without a phenomenal and tragic civil war involving the militaries of Russia, Iran, USA, NATO and Israel.

Like the world accepting Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, who used chemical weapons during that civil war to keep all opposition at bay, Israel may too accept a corrupt Palestinian Authority in Hamas’ place if it sincerely offers itself as a partner in peace—or more likely in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s status quo ante.

Anyway, that is what Hamas is. That is the story unfolding today.

© 2023 Adam Parker.

Picture Credit: For an interesting source on the rise of Hamas check out “Son of Hamas”, Tyndale House Publishers, 2011. Indeed, written by the son of one of Hamas’ leaders and heir apparent—on seeing Hamas’ horror he switched sides, became a Christian and helped Israel. Author’s copy.