Clearly learning a lesson from Iran, how a “charm offensive” can make your terrorism and anti-social behavior completely palatable to the West, some Hamas officials and ideologues and throwing out ideas on how to clean up their public image and gain global acceptance for their war on Israel.
Though their brutality, Islamic extremism and terrorist behavior are similar if not the same as ISIS and al-Qaida, Sheikh Ahmad Yousef, one of Hamas’s ideologues, doesn’t want Hamas associated with al-Qaida or ISIS anymore, according to a report in the British Independent.
Both terrorist groups, al-Qaida and ISIS, are considered enemies by Iran, which would certainly explain why Hamas, an Iranian client, doesn’t want their image associated with their fellow Islamic terrorists with whom they share so much in common.
To some extent, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to get the West to see the similarity between Hamas and ISIS worked, and that effort didn’t go unnoticed by Hamas.
As part of cleaning up their public image, the British Independent reports that Mousa Abu Marzouk, the deputy political chief of Hamas said,
“We have negotiated with Israel using weapons; so it is possible to negotiate with words.”
Sheikh Ahmad Yousef wants direct talks not just with Israel, but also the West, just like Iran:
“We have to acknowledge that there is a negative image of us among some in Europe and America. We can carry on and let that continue, or we can talk to these countries, put forward our case, exchange ideas: that seems to us to be the practical way forward.”
According to the Independent, the Sheikh continued,
Hamas needs to rethink its whole strategy, held Sheikh Ahmad, looking at what has been learnt from successive rounds of conflicts and negotiations and also be prepared to make changes to its 27-year-old manifesto, especially the parts in it which can be viewed as anti-Semitic. At the same time everything possible must be done to distance the movement from al-Qaeda and Isis, “making it very clear that the Islam we believe in is very different from theirs”.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, which hasn’t given up its efforts to build a nuclear bomb as it gets sanctions removed from a gullible West, is clearly a good teacher.
Hamas isn’t changing its plan to destroy Israel, but now they’ll put a happy face sticker on it.
