Comparison Between Hamas and Likud Disingenuous

To the editors:

I am writing this letter in reference to the Feb. 6 op-ed entitled “Now Playing: Hamas,” which I found both disappointing and misleading in its comparison of Hamas’ electoral victory to that of the Israeli Likud party in 1977.

The comparison between Hamas and Likud is inaccurate on a number of levels. The first regards religiosity. While Likud was seen as an ultra-nationalist party in 1977, Hamas combines ultra-nationalism with fundamentalist Islamism. It does not merely pursue an international policy that is uncompromising, and territorially maximalist, but also formally seeks the implementation of sharia as the law of the land—with all of the complications that such a program would pose for Muslim women and for the myriad Arab-Christian groups living under its authority.

Furthermore, Likud’s position on relations with the Arabs is diametrically opposed to Hamas’ position on relations with the Jews. Despite the article’s characterization of Likud as a party of bloodstained terrorists, within two years of taking office Likud had made peace with Egypt, Israel’s oldest and most powerful enemy, by ceding to them the Sinai Peninsula, which included both thousands of Israeli citizens and numerous oil fields. Twenty-two years later it was another Likud government—that of Ariel Sharon—that ceded yet more territory to the Arabs when it completed the disengagement from Gaza this past summer.

Hamas, on the other hand, still loudly and proudly calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and encourages the legions of suicide bombers of Islamic Jihad and other militant groups to continue to murder innocent Jews. A potentially appropriate parallel for Hamas in Israel would be the Kach party, which was religiously fundamentalist and territorially maximalist, calling for the removal of all Arabs from Israel and the territories and the annexation of all territories captured in war. The party won one seat in the 1984 Knesset, but was banned in subsequent elections for being anti-democratic and racist.

The op-ed goes further in its irresponsible comparisons, drawing a parallel between former Israeli prime minister Menachim Begin and Hamas leader Mahmoud a-Zahhar. Unlike a-Zahhar, Begin, by his election in 1977, had already served in a democratic parliament for 29 years and been three decades removed from the activity of the militant Irgun group, which was formally dissolved at the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Thus, despite his participation in attacks against the British army under the mandate, both the Likud and Begin were far removed from the activities and the ideology of the Irgun. A-Zahhar, in contrast, was elected in large part because of his recent promotion of terrorism; Hamas, which is recognized by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization, is not only responsible for hundreds of deaths, including those of Americans, in the past, but is also still armed and still promoting terrorism.

Although the op-ed’s condemnation of Hamas’ election is hopeful, its irresponsible simplification of contemporary politics and historical inaccuracies are dangerous. So long as Hamas’ charter calls for the obliteration of Israel through physical force, its electoral victory should be cause for extreme concern.

AMY M. ZELCER ’07
February 9, 2006

The writer is president of Harvard Students for Israel.