Hamas's letter to the Palestinian people, particularly those in Gaza
And a challenge to the Zionists. Read the letter in full here.
Hasbunallah wa ni’mal-wakil
Allah alone is sufficient for us and He is the best disposer of affairs.
If you understand Arabic and have followed the events in Gaza since October 7, you would have become intimately familiar with this Qur’anic verse by now. Despite the death of their mothers, their fathers, their children, their brothers, their sisters, and the total destruction of their painstakingly built homes and entire neighbourhoods by the relentless Israeli bombings for the last eight months, the Palestinians have continuously proclaimed “Hasbunallah wa ni’mal-wakil,” and gone about collecting the remaining pieces of their devastated lives.
Eight months of continuous bombardments, dispossessions, starvation, deaths, and living through a genocide has not made them hostile to the resistance, fighting for their liberation. But it hasn’t stopped the Israelis from trying.
The Zionists’ extermination campaign in Gaza is multi-pronged. They are not just relentlessly killing people and destroying all structures necessary to sustain life, but they are also busy conducting psychological operations over the besieged population to get them to give up on the resistance.
In one such attempt, Israeli war minister Yoav Gallant presented a plan in March. It envisaged a post-genocide Gaza free of Hamas and even the collaborationist Palestinian Authority rule in favour of Gazan tribes. The plan was to be overseen by Israel in collaboration with Egypt and the United States. However, it never had any legs to stand on. Palestinians rejected the plan the moment it became public, as the Commissioner-General of the Supreme Authority of Palestinian Tribes in Gaza, Akef al-Masry, issued a warning against it.
From drones that produce sounds of crying babies to lure Palestinians out of their homes to food cans-shaped bombs and from bombing civilians converging on food trucks to killing family members of municipal workers just because Hamas pays their salaries, the Israelis have betrayed no moral scruples in their war of extermination.
The Israelis are already on to their next psychological operation over the captive Gaza population. Haaretz reported on 22 May that the Zionists are now running an extortion campaign in Gaza, whereby they are dropping leaflets with the names of residents they claim spied for Hamas, effectively telling the people, “Contact us or we’ll say you reported your neighbors to Hamas.”
This particular psyop is especially deceitful as the Israelis extensively surveil all Palestinians — in Gaza and the West Bank — and use the data about their proclivities to blackmail them into collaborating with the occupiers.
A Guardian report from 2014 quotes an Israeli intelligence official confessing to extremely intrusive surveillance by the Zionists, including the medical records of those surveilled:
Whether said individual is of a certain sexual orientation, cheating on his wife, or in need of treatment in Israel or the West Bank – he is a target for blackmail.
Since the Israelis control who gets out of Gaza even for medical assessments, those seeking treatment for chronic illnesses — and their family members — are often coerced by the Israelis into collaborating with them just to be allowed out for treatment.
In the Guardian article, the Israeli goes on to confirm what everyone knows:
The notion of rights for Palestinians does not exist at all. Not even as an idea to be disregarded.
The latest psyop is unlikely to yield the Zionists any positives. Even the aforementioned Haaretz report casts doubts about the effectiveness of this new Israeli project:
[P]eople don’t know whether they’ll be killed the next day or not and are busy looking for water and food, there is little chance that the exposure of the names of alleged informants will evoke much furor, or that Israel’s psychological warfare will work.
In this milieu, the Hamas leadership on Friday (24 May) issued a beautiful letter addressed to the Palestinian people, particularly those in Gaza, signing paeans to their strength and steadfastness as they have endured the brutal extermination campaign over the last eight months with a resolve and patience that has few parallels in history.
As the Palestinian people endure, their resistance leaders continue to fight ethically and exercise exceptional moral restraints despite facing what has to be the most immoral and unethical enemy to ever exist. One of the many examples of the resistance’s ethical fighting has been its continued refusal to target medevacs of the Israeli troops (something Jon Elmer has regularly pointed out in his resistance updates for the Electronic Intifada livestreams), despite the repeated targeting of patients, doctors, and hospitals by the Zionists.
The letter also goes on to throw an ominous challenge to the Zionists, who are struggling to get any kind of foothold in Gaza despite months of destruction with the help of some of the most powerful militaries in the world. The Hamas leadership, which recently accepted a ceasefire proposal backed by the US but promptly refused by the Israelis, and has been eager to negotiate an end to the ongoing barbarity but to no avail, asks the Zionists“Can you remain for a moment in your positions of occupation or continue your ground operations safely? Can you build fortifications to protect yourselves from our resistance or live a moment of safety in our land?!”
Here is Hamas’s letter in full translated by the Resistance News Network:
A message of the Islamic Resistance Movement - Hamas to our Palestinian people in general and to the people of Gaza in particular
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
"Moses said to his people, 'Seek help from Allah and be patient. Indeed, the earth belongs to Allah. He gives it as an inheritance to whom He wills of His servants, and the [best] outcome is for the righteous.'"
This is the truth of Allah Almighty.
To our Palestinian people, to the honorable people of Gaza:
The pen fails to write, words fail to express your grace and generosity, and the entire universe itself cannot match your firmness and steadfastness.
Hamas, with its brigades and resistance, cannot repay your patience and sacrifices, even though it is part of you and for you and offered its best youth and greatest leaders alongside you. Blood has flowed like rivers to water the homeland and, Allah willing, will bloom into a noble and honorable victory worthy of your sacrifices.
The blessed battle of Al-Aqsa Flood marked a strategic turning point at a decisive moment in the history of the Palestinian cause. The resistance leadership in Gaza, amid the siege, decided to exercise its right to resist as a natural response to the crimes in the occupied West Bank, its division, the construction of zionist settlements on it, Judaization of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, its partition, complete control over Al-Quds' mosques and churches, racial discrimination against our people in the occupied interior, the ongoing brutal aggression against our free prisoners, and its expansion and presence in the region, as if "israel" is preparing to control the entire region in all fields, under an extremist zionist government.
This letter, O our family, our people, our relatives in every place, we send to you from the midst of the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood with pride, honor, and respect for you. You have endured what nations before you could not bear; rather, many states, unions, and empires have fallen and crumbled in days and weeks against wars far less severe than the Nazi, fascist, zionist genocide war against us in Gaza, the West Bank, Al-Quds, the occupied interior, and in all places. Yet, you remain steadfast and firm, teaching the world the meanings of patience, steadfastness, love for the homeland, and sacrifice for the dignity and honor of your nation, despite the betrayal, silence, and abandonment, leaving us to face this vicious war alone. It is as if fate has chosen its men, and today it is being written by your hands.
You, our people and our family, have written with your blood what no historians could write, what all wise men could not say, what no chronicles could mention, what all writers could not list, and what all anthologies could document not in poetry. You have performed excellently, disgracing your enemy, and creating unmatched glory with the blessed battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, for you have become a unique school—people and resistance—teaching generation after generation. Thus, all the pains will turn into hopes realized one after another amidst these difficult days, as the enemy gathers its strength and tyranny to uproot us from our land and burn everything green and dry within and around us, hoping to achieve its goals and dreams, or perhaps prolong the life of its evil, strange entity on our land.
But Allah's decrees prevail.
"The assembly will be defeated, and they will flee."
O patient and steadfast people of Gaza:
We are humbled before you, your sacrifices, your support, and your embrace of our resistance, for we emerged from the womb of your suffering, your pain, your anguish, your sacrifices. We fought with all honor and bravery, seeing victory being written by your hands. How could it be otherwise when we emerged from every camp, neighborhood, house, street, and alley, seeing you compete to offer the greatest sacrifices and devotedness for this land in the path of Allah? We witnessed the greatest meanings in a mother bidding her son farewell to Allah as a martyr with ululations, takbeer, cheers, and praise and thanks to Allah.
In light of all this, we have written our letter from our hearts to you, and we confess frankly that we are utterly incapable of thanking you or offering what is necessary in loyalty to you, and that we are working in all directions and fighting on all fronts with our brothers in the Palestinian factions, hoping through this to offer you even a little in return, and to correct the paths to rectify the missteps and mistakes that occurred and continue to occur as a result of the genocidal war and systematic targeting of every step we take, to improve the reality and build a cradle to support your fighters and mujahideen, your sons who emerged from your loins and wombs. Perhaps in this way, we can continue to serve you—and no matter what we do, we are unable fully achieve this. However, we are working diligently and often in emergency committees to correct governmental, relief, humanitarian, security, and economic paths. We have succeeded and erred, and we will keep trying and trying until Allah decrees what He wills.
We direct a special message to our mothers, sisters, and daughters...
You are the symbols of this stage and the preserved honor of the nation. You are the best women of this land and you are, Allah willing, the symbols of victory, because we know how much pain you have endured, how much sorrow you have faced, and how much loss of loved ones you have faced that has overwhelmed the hearts of men. So how must it be for you? We send you our salutations, gratitude, and appreciation, and we ask Allah to help us fulfill your rights and honor your patience. May Allah heal your hearts through the hands of the fighters.
In conclusion:
We say to the zionist occupation: You have indeed achieved a great and overwhelming victory in revealing the true face of the crime and terrorism of your temporary entity, a truth we could not have exposed even if we spent years trying. However, your Nazi behavior has provided a gift, exposing your reality to the entire world. You managed to advance and infiltrate through the killing of thousands of civilians and the scorching the earth of Gaza's neighborhoods and cities, for you have destroyed hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, infrastructure, universities, civil and governmental institutions, and international facilities and targeted medical, relief, humanitarian, governmental, and international teams, and you have closed the borders and land crossings.
But our question to you is: Can you remain for a moment in your positions of occupation or continue your ground operations safely? Can you build fortifications to protect yourselves from our resistance or live a moment of safety in our land?! We will not answer you, but our answer will be what you see [through our actions], not what you hear, and then the believers will rejoice in the victory of Allah, and He will heal the hearts of a believing people.
"And Allah is predominant over His affair, but most of the people do not know."
May Allah's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you.
The leadership of the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas
Friday: 16 Dhul-Qi'dah 1445 AH
Corresponding to: May 24, 2024
The old Jeffersonian chestnut about getting the leaders you deserve never rang more true.
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Israeli culture is the canary in the coal mine of neoliberal capitalism. It has tipped over into full blown fascism at this point, and this is a fast spreading cancer worldwide.
The steadfastness and patience of the Palestinian people as they endure these horrific crimes against humanity is humbling beyond words. An incredible letter. Palestine will be free.