Editor’s note: Below is the latest profile of Frontpage’s new series, “Voices of Palestine,” which will illuminate the core beliefs, in their own words, of leading figures in the Palestinian death cult. Click the following to view the profiles of Ahmad Bahr, Mahmoud al-Zahar and Ibrahim Mudayris.
While Hamas has been dedicated since its founding to the annihilation of Israel and the creation of an Islamic state, it has never lost sight of its larger goal: the creation of an Islamic caliphate that runs across the entire globe.
As Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar once said, Hamas won’t stop its resistance “until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe.” Sharing in Hamas’s Islamist vision is a host of like-minded Islamic terror and militant groups, including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
While Hamas and its Islamist compatriots have yet to fulfill their ultimate dream, some have predicted it is only a matter of time. One such person was Yasser Ghalban, a top Hamas leader who, shortly before his death in 2006, predicted the West’s demise, a prognostication that in many ways is on track.
Yasser Ghalban was a field commander in the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. Since its founding in 1992, the Al-Qassam Brigades have been behind a litany of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets.
On June 16, 2006, Ghalban, along with his brother and cousin, were killed in an ambush in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis by members of the Preventive Security Service “Death Squad,” a rival Palestinian faction. The “death squads,” according to Hamas, were being run by Fatah in the West Bank and Gaza with the aim of assassinating Hamas leaders and activists.
A week after Ghalban’s death, Hamas released a series of tribute videos to the slain terrorist. The central theme of those videos was that the liquidation of Jews in Israel by jihad would pave the way for Islam to rule the world. One video starred Ghalban himself, in which he declaimed his own particular vision of how that jihad would unfold. He said:
We will rule the nations, by Allah’s will, the U.S.A. will be conquered, Israel will be conquered, Rome and Britain will be conquered … The Jihad for Allah … is the way of Truth and the way for salvation and the way which will lead us to crush the Jews and expel them from our country, Palestine. Just as the Jews ran from Gaza, the Americans will run from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians will run from Chechnya, and the Indian will run from Kashmir, and our children will be released from Guantanamo. The prisoners will be released by Allah’s will, not by peaceful means and not by agreements, but they will be released by the sword, they will be released by the gun.
If Ghalban were alive today, he would be pleased with many developments in the region and beyond. For example, in December 2011 the United States is scheduled to pullout all its troops from Iraq, leaving behind a country still racked with sectarian violence and a government seemingly committed to an alliance with the Islamist Republic of Iran.
In Afghanistan, American and NATO coalition forces are scheduled to withdraw by the end of 2014, despite the fact that a weak and corrupt Afghan government shows no signs of being able to fend off both the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Since 2002 over 500 of Guantanamo Bay’s prisoners have been voluntarily released, with a reported 87 having gone back to join the jihad. Moreover, Attorney General Eric Holder has recently said that the Obama administration is still committed to its efforts to close the detention facility “as quickly as possible.”
Finally, increased Muslim immigration to the United States and Europe have produced swells of Muslim communities that are highly resistant to assimilating into their newfound homes, the result being an explosion of Sharia-controlled communities and courts.
While Yasser Ghalban’s fate may have been sealed, his vision of where Israel and the West is headed is still alive and well among the many Palestinians who carry on his legacy.
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