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I offer before you selections from four different documents. Your task is to read them and determine which one belongs to Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel or the PLO. The answers are at the end of this blog. After you have made your determinations and checked at the end, please return to the remainder of the blog.

1. We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help…
2. “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious”, and calls for the creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian territories and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.
3. “liberation of Palestine through armed struggle”. In 1993, as a result of the Oslo Accords, they recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace, and rejected violence and terrorism.
4. “our struggle will only end when the entity is eliminated”.

How does one create peace with those sworn to your destruction? Can you name any country on the globe surrounded on all four sides by genocidal enemies, ready at any moment to lob 3,000 missiles directly towards civilian population centers?

The attitude of the majority of the world is pathetically compromised by its antisemitism. Where was the hue and cry as President Assad murdered over 380,000 of his citizens, and used banned chemical weapons? How is it that UNRWA, the longest living proponent of Palestinian suffering continues, as Israel’s Arab neighbors have refused succor to their brothers since 1948, damning them to life in refugee camps? How is it that over 5.6 million Syrians have fled Syria, creating a vast humanitarian refugee crisis that the UN ignores? Where is the NATO support for the Ukraine while Russia annexed Crimea and continues to battle with Ukrainians? Where is the outcry as the Rohingya are murdered and chased into neighboring Bangladesh? Where is the outcry as the Chinese Uighur are rounded up and forcibly moved to resettlement camps, forced by their government to give up their rich Islamic culture and traditions and assimilate into China? Governments continue to act brazenly without fear of repercussions, as there are none.

Israel created a set of systems to protect its citizens, including the defensive Iron Dome and the mandate that all dwellings must have a safe room. Hamas takes the millions of dollars that the world doles upon it and builds tunnels to protect its missiles. Despite the aforementioned atrocities across the globe, only one country continues to be singled out: Israel. We must call this what it is: antisemitism. A more moral army is not to be found on this planet, yet Hamas revels in the death of its own people that it should be protecting, as publicity for its victimhood is far more important than human life. What society uses its own citizens to protect its missiles, and not protect its citizens from missiles as Israel does? The residents of Gaza deserve better from their leaders. They should be able to live in peace and prosperity. And so should the citizens of Israel.

I do not know the source of this gem, but it continues to ring true. If Hamas put down their weapons and wanted to live peacefully with Israel, there would be peace. If Israel put down her weapons, all of her citizens would be annihilated.

Does Hamas have the ability to seek a lasting peace to benefit all Gazans? Of course it does. Does Hamas have the desire? It has not proven so. That is the real tragedy of this story.

Answers to above texts: 1) Israel’s Declaration of Independence; 2) the Hamas Charter; 3) the PLO charter; 4) the Hezbollah Manifesto.