May 1, 2017

This evening, in Doha, Hamas will officially unveil its new “political document.”

Even in English, Hamas has been careful not to call it a charter, or to say that it replaces the Hamas charter that refers to antisemitic Islamic sayings, such as “The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.'”

I’ve been reporting since February that Hamas is not calling this a new charter. Still, too many Western reporters and even some experts have claimed that this is a new Hamas charter that eliminates the doctrinal antisemitism and explicit call to destroy Israel that the charter has.

Today, ahead of the photo-op in Doha where Hamas will introduce the new document with much fanfare, Hamas again said in Arabic that this is not a new charter. Felesteen, a Hamas newspaper, says “Hamas denied that the document is an alternative to the Charter of the movement, which was released…

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