Mahmoud Zahar a/k/a al-Zahar, a Hamas terror hardliner and “the real power behind the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh,” claimed today that his terrorist group’s rocket attacks on Israel are not a problem.

Zahar readily admits to smuggling $42 million U.S. dollars in cash into Gaza for Hamas, telling Der Spiegel: “I personally once brought $20 million from Iran to the Gaza Strip in a suitcase. No, actually twice — the second time it was $22 million.”

Sunday Times reporter Christine Toomey, suggests that Zahar should not be taken at his word. When she wrote an investigative piece trying to figure out what happened to captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the right-hand man to Hamas’ Ismail Haniyah gave her this cagey response:

“Nobody from the political or military wing of Hamas knows where Shalit is,” he says, disingenuously, sitting by my side in a starched safari suit. “Only the small group who kidnapped him know. They are very secretive.”

In a 2006 interview with another Sunday Times reporter, Zahar vowed that Hamas didn’t have to give up weapons for peace. “Why, why do we have to give up our weapons?” When asked how Hamas would make internal political decisions if it assumed power in Gaza, Zahar retorted: “”Why are you interested in that? We have no problems. We are not using guns to choose our representatives. We are not using guns in the primaries. We use knives.” And he refused to answer journalist Stephen Farrell’s question on whether Hamas “moved from being the IRA to being Sinn Fein”, laughing instead.

Zahar believes that “Christian Zionism” (i.e., Christians who support Israel) is “criminal.”

Zahar openly vows never to recognize Israel’s existence: “Israel is not a legitimate entitity, and no amount of pressure can force us to recognize its right to exist.”

In the calculated cruelty that is Hamas, the English-language web site operated by the radical Islamic terrorist group’s “military arm” set up a horrific poll concerning the fate of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.


Using web-savvy marketing tactics — replete with English typos — Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades put a poll on their website asking visitors to guess the fate of Gilad Shalit, more than two years after he was kidnapped from inside Israel by Palestinian terrorists and brought back to Gaza.

The poll asks users to vote on what the “Faith [sic] of Shalit will be”:

The terrorist minds inside Hamas show their true colors, asking whether Shalit’s fate will be like Ron Arad, whether he will be part of a successful prisoner swap, or whether he will die.

The fact that Hamas appears to have posted this sick poll just after Sunday Times reporter Christine Toomey’s account investigating Gilad Shalit’s well-being and whereabouts in Gaza seems less than coincidental.

Toomey spoke with Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas co-founder and right-hand man to Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza; and Ahmed Yousef, another Hamas top political advisor; and to an unnamed member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, suggests that Hamas opted to continue it’s disgusting position of playing games with Gilad Shalit’s family, the Israeli public, and all those who oppose terror.

Christine Toomey, a reporter for the Sunday Times, went to Gaza to ask competing Palestinian terrorist groups and clans an important question: where is kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit?


She didn’t receive any clear answers.

Three competing groups originally claimed responsibility for kidnapping the 19-year-old Israeli soldier from inside Israel and taking him back into Gaza:

• Hamas, via the terrorist group’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades;
• The Popular Resistance Committees, a loose amalgam of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad terror factions, and;
• The Army of Islam, a previously unknown group claiming links to al Qaeda.

She met with Mahmoud Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas whom she called “a militant hardliner..the real power behind the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, and the one person who might be expected to deliver answers about Shalit.”

Zahar claims to know nothing about Shalit’s whereabouts. “Nobody from the political or military wing of Hamas knows where Shalit is,” he alleged, “only the small group who kidnapped him know. They are very secretive.”

Next on Toomey’s list is Ahmed Yousef (inset, right), a Hamas top political adviser. Swtiching from talking about his job as a consultant to Tom Clancy, Yousef spouts conspiracy theories that he claims make people refuse to talk about Shalit.  Israel “can smell what we’re eating,” he spins, “so nobody will talk about Shalit. It puts them in great danger if they do.”

Next Toomey goes to Gaza’s Doghmush clan, leaders of a sophisticated crime syndicate and strong-arm force that was “happy to brag about how well [Gilad] is being treated.”

51-year-old Abu Khatab Doghmush pointed the finder at Hamas, saying that “the only faction that controls his life now is the Qassam Brigades.” But for someone who claims to know nothing about Shalit’s whereabouts, Doghmush oddly claimed to know a lot, alleging “that Shalit is living in a paradise.”

To bolster this incredible allegation, Doghmush claims intimate knowledge of Shalit’s treatment: alleging that “every year a party is held to celebrate his birthday. Yes, there is a cake and candles, music, everything.”

Toomey then travels to Rafah, Gaza’s notoriously porous bordertown alongside Egypt, where she tries to talk with heavily armed members of Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, but they refer her back to Hamas leaders like Mahmoud Zahar.

Toomey speaks with 24-year-old Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, a group which claims to have coordinated kidnapping Gilad Shalit form inside Israel. But when asked where he is, and how he is being treated, the PRC hack “repeats the mantra that he is being treated well, “according to our religion”. Only a small group know where Shalit is held, he claims, and they communicate by means of dead letter drops, mobile phones being too easy to track.”

Talking with parents of two Gaza terrorist killed by IDF soldiers during the capture of Shalit don’t reveal anything about Shalit’s whereabouts.