After stewing on last week’s entry, I felt disturbed for two main reasons: Netanyahu and his government’s treatment of Palestine, and the one sided entry. As I committed to at the onset of this blog, I felt that I needed to dive deeper into the other side. Hence, for this week, I look into Hamas. According to this BBC News article, Hamas is a relatively new organization that was founded during the first Intifada in 1987. An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization was originally chartered to provide aide and social services to Palestinians, and to fight against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. As the article describes, that second resolution came to drastic fronts when Hamas carried out a series of vastly deadly suicide bombings in the mid 1990s. Political practices though, as the article states, did not become prevalent until the mid 2000s when the organization was voted into power in the Gaza strip. Since then, Hamas has led numerous violent attacks on Israel that have led to the mass killings of innocent Palestinians.

Looking towards more recent news, this Atlantic article skips straight to the underlying issue with Hamas. As the article so eloquently states, “While Hamas is expert at getting innocent Palestinians killed, it has made clear that it would rather kill Jews.” Just as the above article stated, this Atlantic piece identifies Hamas as a terrorist organization that has but one goal in mind: the destruction of the Jewish people.

After spending so much time investigating the atrocities levied against the Palestinians by the Israelis, it is easy to gloss over the terrorist organization that is Hamas. Yet in digging through the various articles, I am saddened just the same by the actions that this group partakes in. As evidenced above, Hamas could even be considered worse than the Israelis as this organization would knowingly bring death to its people to further its religious agenda. A far cry from withheld tax reimbursements, or rolling power “outages,” Hamas’ deadly attacks, mixed with their chartered, and continually restated organization goals, are exactly the opposite of what needs to take place for the Palestinian people and their plight towards recognition and fair treatment. Furthermore, just as Israel shall be held accountable for their actions, Hamas should be to.

Unfortunately though, I can not say that I am surprised at Hamas’ rise to power. For in the absence of strong, corruption free, truly democratic leadership, the religious extremists in general are, and have been for recent years, quickly grasping at power. As most of the countries that were a part of the Arab Spring can attest, the rise of religious political powers is steering states in directions far worse than the overthrown governments that preceded them could ever have imagined. In the case of Israel and Palestine, such religious extremism, evidenced on both sides in the form of pro-Jewish legislation or Hamas and its goals, is continuing to degrade any hopes of a peace agreement.