Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad by Matthew Levitt
November 30th 2006 07:08
Hamas by Matthew Levitt
Matthew Levitt comes with an impressive resume. He is a fellow at Washington Institute for Near East Policy nad has served as an FBI analyst specialising "specializing in tactical and strategic analysis in support of counterterrorism operations." Hir recent book is called Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad.
The book describes in detail how Hamas was created and how it went on to become a dominant political force in Palestinian politics. People are often confounded by the fact that Hamas at once seems to be a both a religious charitable organization and a terrorism group at the same time. Hamas has often exploited this ambiguity in the perception of it status.
Levitt shows how its charitable activities actually enable Hamas to organise and carry out terrorism. Central to this structure is a program called dawa. Dawa means using charity and welfare as a proselytizing tool in Islam. But, Hamas uses its dawa program to finance terrorism. As quoted in the book, Hamas distributed $2-$3 million dollars anually in 2001 in monthly handouts to Palestinian terrorists. A family of a suicide bomber can get upto 500-50,00 dollars payment and a monthly $100 stipend. But, apart from directly remitting payments for suicide bombings, Hamas dawa actually allows it to reach and recruit its suicide bombers.
Leviit on Hamas
Levitt writes a factual book which collects and collates a wide number of sources, omitting tendentious opinion to the minimum. I personally cannot comment on the authenticity of these facts but as a reader eager to know more about terrorism myself, I found the book an easy, accesible entry to understanding one of the most diabolical heads of this multi-headed hydra. Its not topheavy with figures and stats(something that always loses my attention) and is designed to be understood by a popular audience.
Levitt devotes one small chapter to whether Hamas is a threat to the West. Two years ago, I saw on telivision a Hamas activist saying that their battle was not with America but with Israel and they will be content with that battle. A couple of days ago, senior Hamas figures has issued disturbing Anti-American warnings. I wondered at the change in confidence and style and the shift in its own perception of its ambitions.
When it won the Palestinian elections, I was not as much opposed to it as the mainstream opinion. After all, there should be an alternative to the so-called secular party of Arafat and Abbas and I understood Hamas to be an inevitable reactionary Islamic response to the domination of Palestinian politics by PLO. But my opinion has changed as Hamas went on to morph from a rightist party albeit an ultra-right one of a local Palestinian situation to an armed wing of global Islamist movement.
Read Levitt. A highly useful book in understanding Hamas and Islamic terrorism in general.
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