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America’s Hamas Dilemma: Spreading Democracy or Combating Terrorism?

 
Filed under: Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Radical Islam, U.S. Policy
Publication: Jerusalem Issue Briefs

Vol. 5, No. 8     November 1, 2005

  • The Bush administration had not agreed for some time with the Israeli position that Hamas be excluded from the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary elections. At Princeton University on September 30, 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was absolutely clear that Palestinian violence could not co-exist with Palestinian politics in the future. She also reiterated that Hamas was a terrorist organization. Where she was fuzzy was about whether the disarming of Hamas had to precede the Palestinian elections.
  • Hamas leader Dr. Mahmud al-Zahar has explicitly stated that the goals of Hamas extend beyond the West Bank and Gaza, or even the destruction of Israel, and also affect the future stability of neighboring countries: “Our main goal is to establish a great Islamic state, be it pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic.” Al-Zahar puts Hamas squarely in the camp of militant Islam: “The Islamists’ view, which Hamas adheres to, is that a great Muslim state must be established, with Palestine being a part of it.” In the past, Hamas had sent a small number of operatives for training in bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan, and even established operational links with a Pakistani al-Qaeda cell in Britain, but it obfuscated these connections and had never been so explicit about identifying with global jihadi goals.

  • Originally, the realpolitik thinking underpinning the Bush administration’s support for democratization of the Middle East was based on the assumption that democracies are inherently peaceful and will not encourage extremist political systems that might host terrorist groups. Non-democratic regimes need to produce an external enemy as a control mechanism over their populations. What happens if democracy empowers a political movement like Hamas, whose core ideology is based on belligerency, regardless of whether it needs a control mechanism or not?

  • Westerners engaging in a dialogue with Hamas have also been speaking with the Muslim Brotherhood, the original Egyptian fundamentalist organization, founded in 1928, from which Hamas grew as its Palestinian branch. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has the status of being “illegal but officially tolerated.” Some have observed that voter participation increased in the 2005 Egyptian presidential elections because the Muslim Brotherhood called on voters to go to the polls. Organizations like the International Crisis Group have already recommended that the Muslim Brotherhood be decriminalized and permitted to take a more active role in Egyptian politics. In the Middle East, however, both intellectuals and officials, like Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, have warned against legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood. A former Kuwaiti education minister reminded his readers in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in July 2005 that all of al-Qaeda’s terrorism started from the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.

  • Today, the Muslim Brotherhood remains fiercely anti-Western. Its newly-appointed head in 2004, Muhammad Mahdi Othman ‘Akef, denied that al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks and calls the U.S. a “Satan” that will soon collapse. The Muslim Brotherhood has published an Arabic weekly in London called Risalat al-Ikhwan, the “Message of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Several months after 9/11, it changed its masthead, which until November 2001 did not even pretend to hide the organization’s global intentions. It read: “Our mission: world domination.”

 

 

Disarming Hamas Before or After the PA Elections?

All eyes were riveted on President George W. Bush during his joint press conference on October 20, 2005, with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmud Abbas. Would the U.S. insist on Hamas being excluded from the upcoming Palestinian legislative elections, now scheduled for January 2006? Bush cautioned the Palestinian leader that “the way forward is confronting the threat armed gangs present to creation of a democratic Palestine.” But Bush did not directly question Abbas’ intention to permit political participation by Hamas and other Palestinian groups that have carried out terror attacks against Israelis.1

Political commentators immediately noted that Bush was defining the threat of Palestinian militancy in terms of “armed gangs,” without mentioning Hamas. Indeed, on October 24, 2005, Bush appeared on al-Arabiyya, the Saudi-owned Arabic satellite channel, and in answering a question about whether he would like Abbas to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad prior to elections, he said he would be satisfied if Abbas followed through on his commitment “to make sure that there’s no armed presence on the streets.”2 Was the U.S. essentially about to tolerate Hamas involvement in the elections?

As Robert Satloff, the director of the Washington Institute, noted in The New Republic, the Bush administration had not agreed for some time with the Israeli position that Hamas be excluded from the elections. Indeed, he notes that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel to help the PA hold West Bank elections, with full Hamas participation: “This is going to be a Palestinian process and I think we have to give the Palestinians some room for the evolution of their political process.”3

Rice also commented on the same subject in response to a question at Princeton University on September 30, 2005. She was absolutely clear that Palestinian violence could not co-exist with Palestinian politics in the future. Where she was fuzzy was about whether the disarming of Hamas had to precede the Palestinian elections or would be a consequence of the political process.

She used two contradictory examples: there was the British model of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, where the IRA was admitted into the political process with the assumption that it would eventually disarm, and in contrast there was the U.S. model which did not permit Afghan warlords to participate in the 2005 Afghan election without first disarming. Rice was unclear over whether the U.S. was following the precedent set by Prime Minister Tony Blair or by President Bush when it came to Hamas.

To make matters worse, Israel itself appeared to be folding on the issue. On October 24, 2005, the New York Times headlined a story by its bureau chief, Steven Erlanger: “Israel Retreats from Objection to Hamas Role in Elections.”4 The article cited an unnamed “senior Israeli official” who stated that it would be impractical to try to hinder the elections. This same unnamed official also told the Associated Press: “Are we going to war on this issue or interfere on this issue? No.” According to the AP, Israel was “acknowledging defeat” in its campaign to ban Hamas from the Palestinian elections after the Bush-Abbas summit.5

Still, two days later, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz tried to correct the impression created by the unnamed Israeli official; he told President Husni Mubarak of Egypt that Hamas continues “producing terrorist acts and at the same time they want to run in the elections; they can’t have it both ways.” Even if Hamas members are elected, he warned that Israel would not speak with them.6

In the aftermath of the Islamic Jihad suicide bombing attack in Hadera on October 26, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan also appeared to try to correct the impression of the U.S. stand on Hamas. While he mistakenly attributed the attack to Hamas, he asserted that “our stance on Hamas is well-known. It must be disarmed. A terror organization can’t be involved in politics and carrying out terror attacks. The PA must make it clear to Hamas that as long as they continue to operate militarily, they have no place in the political system.”7

 

Hamas Identifies with Global Jihadi Terrorism

U.S. spokesmen still insist that Hamas is an international terrorist organization. Rice stated at Princeton: “We’ve been very clear that Hamas is a terrorist group and it has to be disbanded, both for peace and security in the Middle East and for the proper functioning of the Palestinian Authority. After all, it is a roadmap obligation of the Palestinian Authority to disband militias and armed resistance groups.”8 Furthermore, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Mahmud al-Zahar, has explained that his organization’s cessation of violence at different times is only conditional and in any case will come to an end in December 2005.9 In other words, Hamas has not agreed to the roadmap’s very first requirement of “an unconditional cease-fire,” but instead has chosen a less obligatory tahdiyya (or calm) that has already been broken with massive Kassam rocket fire on Israel whenever Hamas sees fit.

Al-Zahar has also explicitly stated that the goals of Hamas extend beyond the West Bank and Gaza and even affect the future stability of neighboring countries: “Our main goal is to establish a great Islamic state, be it pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic.”10 He added: “In the past, there was no independent Palestinian state; there was no independent Jordanian state; and so on. There were regions called Iraq or Egypt, but they were all part of one country. That is why it is not permitted to [agree to] establish separate countries.” Al-Zahar puts Hamas squarely in the camp of militant Islam: “The Islamists’ view, which Hamas adheres to, is that a great Muslim state must be established, with Palestine being a part of it.”

On a different occasion, al-Zahar had no qualms identifying Hamas with the global jihad by expressing his confidence that Israel’s Gaza disengagement, for which Hamas took credit, “will lift the morale of the Arab and Islamic world and will affect the battle for Afghanistan and Iraq.” Openly sympathizing with the ousted Taliban regime, al-Zahar has been fiercely anti-Western in his most recent interviews.11 He plainly admits: “We are part of the great world plan whose name is the world Islamic movement.”12 In the past, Hamas had sent a small number of operatives for training in bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan, and even established operational links with a Pakistani al-Qaeda cell in Britain, but it obfuscated these connections and had never been so explicit about identifying with global jihadi goals.13

 

U.S. Policy Choices

If this is the Hamas position, then why is the U.S. not doing everything in its power to keep Hamas out of the Palestinian elections? On October 6, 2005, President Bush delivered a major address on the subject of the war on terrorism in which for the first time he identified the enemy as Islamic radicalism. He went into considerable detail about the global jihadi network: “Many militants are part of global, borderless terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, which spreads propaganda, and provides financing and technical assistance to local extremists, and conducts dramatic and brutal operations like September the 11th. Other militants are found in regional groups, often associated with al-Qaeda – paramilitary insurgencies and separatist movements in places like Somalia, and the Philippines, and Pakistan, and Chechnya, and Kashmir, and Algeria. Still others spring up in local cells, inspired by Islamic radicalism, but not centrally directed.” He warned that these groups want “to establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.”14 Hamas was not mentioned by Bush, but it certainly fit perfectly into the definition of who the U.S. was categorizing as its primary adversaries.

It seemed that when it came to the question of the January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, the U.S. faced a tough dilemma of choosing between its support for the spread of democracy and its war on radical Islamic terrorism.15

Originally, the realpolitik thinking underpinning the Bush administration’s support for democratization of the Middle East came from the observation that democracy would help defeat terrorism. Thus, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated at her confirmation hearings in January 2005:

The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the “town square test”: if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a “fear society” has finally won their freedom. In the Middle East, President Bush has broken with six decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the hope of purchasing stability at the price of liberty. The stakes could not be higher. As long as the broader Middle East remains a region of tyranny and despair and anger, it will produce extremists and movements that threaten the safety of Americans and our friends.16

Her analysis was correct. It was based on the assumption that democracies are inherently peaceful and will not encourage extremist political systems that might host terrorist groups. Sharansky himself explained in the book, to which Rice referred, that non-democratic regimes need to produce an external enemy as a control mechanism over their populations.17 But there is one caveat. What happens if democracy empowers a political movement like Hamas whose core ideology is based on belligerency, regardless of whether it needs a control mechanism or not? Actually, Sharansky warns in his book that elections alone are not a true test of democracy. Democracy requires, as a prerequisite, the emergence of a political culture that is supportive of freedom. Can a radical Islamist group like Hamas, that envisions the militant takeover of neighboring states, be regarded as a partner in such a democratization process? The question is especially pertinent since the Islamist organizations across the Middle East, with which Hamas so closely identifies, have openly declared war on the very idea of democracy.

 

The False Analogy of Northern Ireland

Another argument that might be affecting the U.S. position is the hope that elections will actually moderate or transform Hamas by imbuing its members with more democratic values. U.S. officials have not stated this, but Secretary Rice’s references to the Good Friday Agreement indicate an effort to learn from the British experience with the IRA. Ze’ev Schiff, the national security correspondent for Ha’aretz, has revealed that recently “an intensive public relations campaign has been conducted on behalf of Hamas in various parts of Europe and the U.S.,” led by former intelligence officials like Alistaire Crooke, from Britain’s MI-6.18 Former U.S. intelligence operatives have also joined Crooke in a series of meetings with Hamas, including the CIA’s Milton Beardon who brokered the U.S. relationship with the Afghan mujahidin against the Soviets, Graham Fuller who was with both the CIA and the Rand Corporation, and Fred Hoff who worked on the Mitchell Report. A former Saudi official also joined the group.19 Some of these individuals have made inroads in the past into the American and British foreign policy establishments.

The Northern Ireland model of peacemaking, which has informed the British component leading this effort, is a poor example upon which to base a Western dialogue with Hamas. The Good Friday Agreement was not the success story that is often presented, despite its being perceived by parts of the British establishment as a crowning achievement of its foreign policy initiatives.20 For example, the inclusion of the IRA in the political process in 1998 did not bring about immediate disarmament of the group thereafter; rather, the issue of decommissioning the IRA’s weapons dragged on for years and its commitment to non-violence was highly questionable. IRA members were caught red-handed in 2001 in Colombia engaging in new arms deals with anti-government rebels. The IRA was later linked to bank robberies and murders in 2004 and 2005. But more importantly, the IRA and Hamas have very different sorts of political aims; for years the IRA sought to remove the British presence from Northern Ireland and unify the districts of the north with the Irish Republic in the south. But the IRA did not seek to destroy Great Britain. In contrast, as already noted, the Hamas leadership has made absolutely clear, right up to the present, that it seeks to eliminate the State of Israel. The scale of hostility in the two conflicts cannot be compared, so there is little reason for concluding, on the basis of the Irish example, that moderating the goals of Hamas through a political process is a realistic option.

 

The Broader Debate Over the Muslim Brotherhood: The Parent Organization That Spawned Hamas

Those engaging in a dialogue with Hamas have also been speaking with the Muslim Brotherhood, the original Egyptian fundamentalist organization, founded in 1928, from which Hamas grew as its Palestinian branch. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has the status of being “illegal but officially tolerated.” Brotherhood leaders have stated that the group disavows violence today, even though it was involved in political assassinations and terrorism in the past. Independent members of the Egyptian parliament identify themselves with the Muslim Brotherhood, so that indirectly it is part of the political system, in addition to its penetration of Egyptian professional associations and the religious establishment. Since the 1980s it has sought to coordinate its political moves with non-fundamentalist parties like the Wafd and more recently with Ayman Nour. Some have observed that voter participation increased in the 2005 Egyptian presidential elections because the Muslim Brotherhood called on voters to go to the polls. Outside organizations like the International Crisis Group have already recommended that the Muslim Brotherhood be decriminalized and permitted to take a more active role in Egyptian politics.21 Is this model inspiring those who advocate engaging Hamas?

In the Middle East, however, both intellectuals and officials have warned against legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood. A former Kuwaiti education minister reminded his readers in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in July 2005 that all of al-Qaeda’s terrorism started from the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, tracing the doctrine of takfir (claiming that other Muslims are apostates and hence worthy of death) to Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood leader in the 1960s. A Kuwaiti political scientist, writing in both the Kuwaiti and Egyptian press, challenged the U.S. to place the Muslim Brotherhood on its terrorism list, considering that Middle Eastern leaders like Prince Nayef, the Interior Minister of Saudi Arabia, also attributed the rise of terrorism to the Brotherhood (Nayef’s own backing of radical Wahhabi charities notwithstanding). In answer to a question about the Muslim Brotherhood from Der Spiegel, in an interview published on December 20, 2004, President Mubarak came out firmly against the group: “The Muslim Brotherhood has a terrorist past. They have killed a prime minister and others who don’t agree with their political goals. In 1954, they even tried to blow up President Gamal Abdel Nasser. No, the last thing our country needs is a group like the Muslim Brotherhood.”22 It is true that the Mubarak regime maintains contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood, but it does so through Egyptian security organs – not through the political system.

Today, the Muslim Brotherhood remains fiercely anti-Western. Its newly-appointed head in 2004, Muhammad Mahdi Othman ‘Akef, denied that al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks and calls the U.S. a “Satan” that will soon collapse.23 Further evidence of its orientation can be gathered from its official publications. On the Muslim Brotherhood website, ‘Akef asserted: “I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America.”24 While Muslim Brotherhood publications are illegal in Egypt, nonetheless the Muslim Brotherhood has published an Arabic weekly in London called Risalat al-Ikhwan, the “Message of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Several months after 9/11, it changed its masthead, which until November 2001 did not even pretend to hide the organization’s global intentions. It read: “Our mission: world domination.”25

 

Democracy Based on Standards

The dilemmas facing U.S. policymakers go beyond the question of Hamas and the Palestinian elections. In confronting radical Islamic militant groups, should Washington try to isolate purely jihadi movements, like al-Qaeda, by drawing other Islamist movements into the beginnings of a democratic political process? This is a very dangerous option because radical Islamist groups have shown that they can expertly utilize the language of political pluralism and tolerance without altering their highly aggressive ideological agenda. Forcing Egypt to accept the Muslim Brotherhood or insisting that Israel accept Hamas as a partner in a future Palestinian government will likely accelerate a radical Islamist takeover across the Middle East.

In the Palestinian case, if Abbas shares power with Hamas in the future, wouldn’t he be even weaker than he is today? Hamas could still resist calls for it being disarmed; it could point to the precedent of Lebanon, where Hizballah has representatives in the Lebanese parliament and yet maintains a separate militia, distinct from the Lebanese Army. Once elected to the Palestinian parliament, Hamas representatives will have little incentive to change. If Abbas provides Hamas members with Palestinian Authority ministries as part of a power-sharing arrangement, who is going to prevent international assistance going through these ministries to Hamas charities, where they can be used to build up the military infrastructure of Hamas? And once Hamas has been legitimized in this way by the electoral process, it will be extremely difficult for the U.S. and its allies to criticize the Saudis and others who have funded Hamas in the past, for by aiding Hamas they will be assisting part of the Palestinian Authority.

There are precedents for handling the problem of terrorist groups seeking to enter the democratic process. In 2002, Spain banned the political arm of the ETA, the Basque separatist group, from running for office. France and The Netherlands have also dissolved political parties “that aim to promote violence.”26 It would be the height of hypocrisy if European states did not insist on the same preconditions for political participation that they use to protect their own societies, when they are asked their view on the Palestinian elections. The U.S. could use this argument with its Quartet partners, but it first must establish a position no less firm than that of the EU regarding the exclusion of terrorists from democratic politics.

The key to handling these movements in the Middle East is to demand that they disarm before entering the political process, and totally renounce violence. They must also accept the rules of the political process which they seek to join: inside Arab states, they must recognize the legitimacy of their political opposition and accept the will of the majority. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, they must accept the legitimacy of the State of Israel and express willingness to reach a permanent peace, and not just a temporary cease-fire from which they can resume their war at a later time. Unless these minimal standards for democratic inclusion are first set and then firmly maintained, the entire drive for democratization in the Middle East could prove self-defeating.

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Notes

1. “Bush Expresses Confidence in Mideast Peace Process,” CNN, October 20, 2005; http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/20/bush.abbas.ap/index.html
2. “Interview of President Bush by Al Arabiyya,” White House, October 24, 2005; Question: So you would like him to disarm the Hamas and Jihad before the election? President Bush: Well, as he said, what he’s going to do is to make sure there’s no armed presence on the streets, and I would like for him to follow through on that. I believe that his party will win because his party is one of peace. And I think most people want peace. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051024-6.html
3. Robert Satloff, “Control Issues,” New Republic, September 22, 2005; https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=w050919&s=satloff092205
4. Steven Erlanger, “Israel Retreats From Objection to Hamas Role in Elections,” New York Times, October 24, 2005; http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/international/middleeast/24mideast.html
5. “Israel Bows to Pressure on Hamas Question,” AP, October 23, 2005.
6. Nir Hasson, “Mofaz: Hamas is a Terrorist Organization, Not a Party,” Ha’aretz, October 27, 2005.
7. Yitzhak Benhorin, “U.S. to PA: Ban Hamas from Elections,” Ynet News, October 26, 2005; http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3159902,00.html
8. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “Questions Taken at Princeton University,” September 30, 2005; http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/54178.htm
9. “Interview with Hamas Leader Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar,” MEMRI, August 19, 2005; http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=palestinian&ID=SP96405
10. Yaniv Berman, “Interview with Hamas Leader Mahmoud A-Zahhar,” Media Line, September 22, 2005; http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=11354. For background on the international Islamist orientation of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood (which became Hamas), beyond the struggle for Palestine, see Ziad Abu Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 23-25. In addition, the affinity of Hamas for groups that are part of the al-Qaeda network was dramatically demonstrated in 2004 when Hamas distributed computer CDs in the West Bank and Gaza that express the organization’s identification with Chechen terrorists and with other “holy wars” in the Balkans, Kashmir, and Afghanistan. Pictured together on these CDs are Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Chechen leaders al-Khattab and Shamil Basayev, and Osama bin Laden. See “Hamas Identifies With and Supports Chechen and International Islamic Terrorism on CDs Found in the Palestinian Authority-Administered Territories”; http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/9_04/chechnya.htm
11. “‘Hamastan,’ as Described in Interviews by Mahmoud al-Zahar,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, October 9, 2005; http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/eng_n/hamastan_e.htm
12. “Hamas: Disengagement Will Lift Morale of Global Islamist Forces, Affect Battle for Afghanistan and Iraq,” News First Class, August 17, 2005; http://www.nfc.co.il/archive/001-D-78357-00.html?tag=9-09-57
13. Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror and David Keyes, “Will a Gaza ‘Hamas-stan’ Become a Future Al-Qaeda Sanctuary?,” Jerusalem Viewpoints No. 524, November 1, 2004; http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp524.htm
14. “President Discusses War on Terror at National Endowment for Democracy,” White House, October 6, 2005; http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051006-3.html
15. There is a second U.S. policy dilemma with the inclusion of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. Although Israel no longer makes reference to the Oslo Agreements after their security provisions were massively violated by the Palestinian Authority, the U.S. has not been so clear on this matter. There is an explicit Palestinian obligation under Oslo not to nominate candidates in their election process who “advocate racism” or seek to advance their political aims by “unlawful means” [Oslo II Interim Agreement, Annex 2, Article 3, Paragraph 2]. Failing to insist that the Palestinians honor this commitment virtually buries what remains of the Oslo Agreements.
16. “Opening Remarks by Secretary of State-Designate Dr. Condoleezza Rice,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee, January 18, 2005; http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/40991.htm
17. Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer, The Case for Democracy; The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), p. 88.
18. Ze’ev Schiff, “Should the Hamas be Made Kosher?” Ha’aretz, October 14, 2005.
19. Marc Perelman, “Ex-officials Push Engagement with Hamas, Hezbollah: Americans, British Meet with Islamists,” Forward, October 21, 2005.
20. Dean Godson, “Lessons from Northern Ireland for the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Jerusalem Viewpoints No. 523, October 1, 2004; http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp523.htm
21. “Reforming Egypt: In Search of a Strategy,” International Crisis Group, Middle East/North Africa Report No. 46, October 4, 2005; http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3718&l=1. For background on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, see also Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 276-298.
22. “Kuwaiti Intellectual: The Muslim Brotherhood Organization Should Be Put On the U.S. Terrorist List,” MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series No. 843 – Persian Gulf, January 7, 2005; http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=persiangulf&ID=SP84305
23. “New Muslim Brotherhood Leader: Resistance in Iraq and Palestine is Legitimate; America is Satan; Islam Will Invade America and Europe,” MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series No. 655, February 4, 2004; http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID=SP65504
24. Ibid.
25. “London as Center Stage for Anti-American Incitement: The Moslem Brotherhood’s Weekly Magazine, Published in London and Distributed to Arab and Moslem Countries, Continues Its Calls for Active Resistance against the American Army in Iraq,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies; http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/bu/britain/sib3_10_03.htm
26. David Makovsky and Elizabeth Young, “Toward a Quartet Position in Hamas: European Rules on Banning Political Parties,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Peace Watch No. 515, September 12, 2005.

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Dr. Dore Gold, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in 1997-1999, heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. His book Hatred’s Kingdom surveys the rise of Islamic militancy in Saudi Arabia.