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.”

The IDF launched a much anticipated ground offensive in Gaza against Hamas on Saturday evening, January 3, 2009.


Some Israelis are hoping that the military operation will be able to finish what Israel’s Air Force started. Alex Fishman writes in Yedioth Ahronot that “Hamas’ military wing was not destroyed, it was simply destabilized for the first 48 hours of the operation, at least.”

Ophir Falk warns that:

“the IDF’s victory over the Hamas must be conclusive, leaving no room for commentary as to the triumphant side. Anything short of this will serve as another Hamas, Iranian and Hizbullah building block.”


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A ceasefire that does not achieve the dismantlement of Hamas’ military capabilities would be counterproductive and eventually lead to another round of bloodshed. New rules of engagement must be set, whereby Hamas is disarmed and a sustainable truce is achieved. If this mainstay of Sunni terrorism remains capable of attacking Israel, a renewed assault will be inevitable.

Therefore, after the unconditional return of the abducted Israeli soldier [Gilad Shalit], the immediate objective of Israel and the international community must be a permanent disarmament of Hamas and organizations of its ilk. The only way to achieve this goal is to pound Hamas until it is forced to disarm, and then reinforce the truce with effective international force.

It is predictable that Hamas will continue to use civilians as human shields, firing from mosques and U.N.-run schools.

Will this U.N. do anything to disarm Hamas? It seems unlikely, especially given the amount of heavy weaponry that Hamas has brought into Gaza’s U.N.-operated institutions.

The same thing occurred when militant Sunni group Fatah al-Islam installed itself inside U.N.-run Palestinian camps last year in Lebanon. What did the U.N. do to prevent, stop, and disarm Fatah al-Islam? Absolutely nothing. Fatah al-Islam reportedly brought battle-hardened terrorist fighters to Gaza where they likely taught Hamas military skills and terror techniques.

With Iran’s military, financial, and technical training, Hamas has remained not a strong terrorist group with its operational base in Gaza. Its practices of torturing and assassinating Palestinians are not the stuff from which democracies are made.

Khaled Meshal, the Hamas terror chief whom Syria has a given safe haven for years, boasted that Hamas would have “a second, third, and fourth Gilad Shalit” if the Israeli Defense Forces sent ground forces into Gaza.

According to al Jazeera Meshal met with other terror supporters and figureheads in Damascus yesterday, including Saeed Jalili, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary-General and Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, head of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

As this blogger has repeatedly stressed, Iran continues to train, arm, and fund Hamas terror operations. “Iran is our mother,” a senior Hamas guerilla commander told The Sunday Times in March 2008, bragging that “300 of the group’s ‘best brains’ had been secretly sent to Tehran.”

Nizar Rayan, a senior Hamas military commander was successfully eliminated by the IDF today.

A proponent of using civilian human shields to protect wanted Hamas members, on November 19, 2006, Hamas’ Rayan promised on Palestinian TV that the terrorist group would use “the bodies and souls” of [Palestinian] civilians to protect the houses of terrorists (he called them “jihad fighters”).

Rayan was a senior political-military liaison for Hamas.

According to Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, IDF officials confirmed that:

[A] one-ton bomb was used to attack Rayan’s home, and that weapons stored inside set off secondary explosions. Eleven other people, including two of Rayan’s four wives and four of his 12 children, also died, Palestinian health officials said.

Rayan purportedly helped train and mold Hamas suicide bombers. Picture (below) show him emerging from, and standing by what appear to be heavily fortified Hamas tunnels in Gaza — the same tunnels that Hamas tries to persuade public opinion into thinking that they are used solely to smuggle food and medicine into Gaza, while in reality, their existence is overseen by Hamas and used to smuggle in sophisticated military equipment like long-range Grad missiles used to target Israeli cities from inside Gaza.

In May, the respected London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat reported on a high-level meeting between Iran’s and Hamas figurehead Khaled Meshaal. The alarming report stated that Iranian Brigadier General Ahmad Wahid — a key leader of the country’s missile program — promised Meshal that Iran would “provide very advanced missiles that are currently being produced at the Martyr Bakiri Complex in Tehran especially for Hamas.”