Hamas Speaks

On its website, Hamas has addressed the murder of the Fogel family on the West Bank. Actually, as Al Mutarjim notes at Big Peace, Hamas talks about the murders twice, once on the English portion of its website and again in Arabic. In English, Hamas denies responsibility for the murders and distances itself from them:

Palestinian National Movement Hamas official Ezzat Al-Rashak said that the movement is not responsible for the murder of the five family members from the Itamar settlement.
Al-Rashak confirmed that harming children is not part of Hamas’ policy, nor is it the policy of the resistance factions.
He also confirmed that the possibility that the incident was carried out by settlers for criminal motives should not be ruled out.

The message in Arabic, however, is quite different. As translated by Al Mutarjim, Hamas wrote, in part:

Five Zionist usurpers were killed the morning of Saturday, 12 March 2011, in a knife-stabbing carried out by a Palestinian in the usurper (settlement) of Itamar east of the city of Nablus.
Our correspondent in Nablus reported that a Palestinian mujahid was able to break into the usurper (settlement) of “Itamar” south of Nablus in the occupied (West) Bank, and stabbed five Zionist usurpers.
Zionist media sources said that “A Palestinian broke into the usurper (settlement) between the hours of 9:30 – 11:00 PM, and killed five usurpers from one family while they were sleeping.” They confirmed that the perpetrator of the act was able to escape. …
Eye-witnesses informed our correspondents that Zionist airplanes, powerful forces from the military and police, and ambulances rushed to the scene and transported the wounded and slain, while occupation forces spread throughout the vicinity of the village of Awarta, and fired dozens of flares. …
Also, the al-Qassam Brigades were able to execute a series of operations in August of last year, which were named “Stream of Fire,” by which the mujahideen of al-Qassam were able to kill four Zionists. Intelligence officials from both the military and Abbas’s militias in the West Bank were confounded by these operations, and worked with all diligence to try to discover the perpetrators.

Al Mutarjim says that all of the approximately 35 comments on the Arabic post applaud the murders. For example:

Allah is great, to Allah be the praise. The separate factions of the resistance should change their tactics, and rely more heavily on individual operations, which cannot be detected and thwarted by the lackeys of the authorities, rather than forming cells. They should devise new methods for combat by knife, strangulation, breaking necks, poison, and every method which is not known by your enemy.

Here is another one:

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, who healed our hearts by this blessed operation. May Allah guide the strikes of our brothers the mujahideen in Gaza and the (West) Bank.

It is noteworthy that, while the English report on the Fogel murders suggests that they may not have been committed by Palestinians, no such doubt is expressed in Arabic. On the contrary. For many years, the simple expedient of saying one thing in English and another in Arabic has worked remarkably well to placate Westerners–especially, for some reason, those who claim to be experts in the region.

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