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Hamas Rejects EU Appeal to Keep It on Terror Watch List
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
January 19, 2015
All Rights Reserved.
Crying foul to the European Union, the Islamist group
Hamas cited the EU extreme bias toward Israel.
“The European Union’s insistence on keeping Hamas on the list of terror
organizations is an immoral step and reflects the EU’s total bias in favor of
the Israeli occupation,” said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. Hamas doesn’t accept any of its
military tactics, including rocket attacks, abductions, suicide bombing,
targeted assassinations or any other military tactic, including its 2014
six-week war with Israel as terrorism, only “resistance.” European’s General Court decided to
remove Hamas Dec. 17, 2014 from a terrorism list, irking Israel and other
Western states. “It provides it
[Israel] with the cover for its crimes against the Palestinian people,” said
Zuhri, referring to the six-week-long Gaza war and current military operations
inside the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
While railing against the EU’s appeal to keep Hamas on the terrorism
list, 200 Hamas-friendly protesters in Gaza tried to storm the French Cultural
Centers, threatening to kill staff because of French satiric magazine Charlie
Hebdo’s latest cartoons depicting a tearful Mohammed. Hamas-friendly Islamists don’t mourn
the 17 dead from the Jan. 17 Paris terrorist massacre, killing 12 members of the
magazines journalistic staff.
“Damnation upon France!” shouted protesters outside Gaza’s French Cultural
Center, waving black flags similar to the barbaric Islamic State, routinely
murdering anyone opposing the group’s imposition of strict Sharia law in parts
of Iraq and Syria seized during the last year.
Praizing the martyrs of Paris terrorists Cherif and Said Kouach, Hamas
protesters screamed death threats to French civilians at the humanitarian French
Cultural Center.
Hamas wants off the terrorism watch list but doesn’t want to acknowledge
terrorist tactics in its ongoing war against the Jewish State. When Hams officially joined the PLO
April 17, it brought with its contempt for 40 years of peacemaking. Talking about “occupied
territories,” Hamas doesn’t’ refer to the post-1967 Six Day War borders. Hamas wants Israel out of the
British Mandate that officially became Israel’s borders when the British
bequeathed the territory to Israel in 1948.
Before the British took over the territory in 1922, the Ottoman Empire
held the territory since 1516.
Nowhere in the last 600 years did Palestinians hold sovereign territory in the
holy land yet Hamas claims the territory.
Before the 1967 War, Egypt, Jordan and Syria held sovereign territory in
the holy land, not ceding Palestinians one inch of sovereign land before Egypt,
Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon attacked Israel in 1967.
Israel seized the Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West
Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights as buffer zones following the
Six Day War. Hamas rejects the EU
decision to appeal a lower court ruling ending Hamas designation as a terror
group. EU top foreign policy chief
Federica Mogherini asked the appeals court to retain Hamas a terror group in the
wake of the Paris massacre. “Leave
Gaza, you French, or we will slaughter you by cutting your throats,” threatened
Hamas-backed Gaza protestors, ironically making Hamas look bad. Whatever problems the French have
with North African and Mideast immigrants, watching the Paris massacre has
soured many non-Muslims on North African and Mideast immigrants. Since last weeek’s attacks at Charlie Hebdo and a Le Marais Kosher market killing four
Jews, non-Muslim French have grown skeptical.
Hamas thinks the U.S. isn’t an impartial judge when it comes to brokering
a Mideast peace with Israel. State
Departments officials led by Secretary of State John Kerry spent nine months
trying to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the peace table, before the
six-week Gaza War left some 2,200 Palestinians dead and billions in property
damage. Since joining Hamas April
17, PLO’s 79-year-old Mahmoud Abbas rejected more direct talks with Israel. Since rejected Dec. 30, 2014 for
statehood in the U.N. Security Council, Abbas has pursued the International
Criminal Court, hoping get injunctive relief.
State Department officials have warned Abbas against steering away from
direct peace talks. With the Paris
attacks and Hamas-backed protesters threatening Gaza’s French Cultural Center,
the PLO-Hamas entity is rapidly loosing credibility in the European Union.
Overreacting to Charlie Hebdo’s satiric cartoons, Islamic immigrants in
the EU don’t accept the strong value placed on freedom of speech. Radical Islamists seek any excuse to
lash out at Western targets.
Threatening a French Cultural Center in Gaza shows why Hamas-backed protesters
need to refrain from intimidation and violence, if they want the Palestinian
group removed from the terror watch list.
“We do expect they will correct this procedural error that was
identified,” said Hamas’s Zuhri.
“The ruling by the EU’s second highest court had said that the blacklisting of
Hamas in 2001 was based not on sound legal judgments but on conclusions derived
from the media and Internet,” said Zuhri, watching Hamas-backed protesters shout
angry slogans at the French in Gaza. “You
will go to hell, French journalists,” read one of the signs, sending a very
different message than the Hamas spokesman.
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