Aside from its use of political violence in pursuit of its goals, the Palestinian political and military organization Hamas has been widely criticised for a variety of reasons, including its:
use of hate speech by its representatives, use of human shields and child combatants as part of its military operations, restriction of political freedoms within the Gaza Strip, and human rights abuses.
Hate speech
The ideology of Hamas has a strong anti-Jewish stance, manifesting in the use of tropes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the use of derogatory descriptions the Jews and equating the Jews to the Nazis.
According to academic Esther Webman, antisemitism is not the main tenet of Hamas ideology, although antisemitic rhetoric is frequent and intense in Hamas leaflets. The leaflets generally do not differentiate between Jews and Zionists. In other Hamas publications and interviews with its leaders, attempts at this differentiation have been made. In 2009 representatives of the small anti-Zionist Jewish group Neturei Karta met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, who stated that he held nothing against Jews but only against the State of Israel.
Hamas has made conflicting statements about its readiness to recognize Israel. In 2006 a spokesman signaled readiness to recognize Israel within the 1967 borders. Speaking of requests for Hamas to recognize agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, senior Hamas member Khaled Suleiman said that "these agreements are a reality which we view as such, and therefore I see no problem." Also in 2006, a Hamas official ruled out recognition of Israel with reference to West and East Germany, which never recognized each other.
Statements by Hamas members and clerics
Statements to an Arab audience
In 2008, Hamas imam Yousif al-Zahar said in his sermon at the Katib Wilayat mosque in Gaza that "Jews are a people who cannot be trusted. They have been traitors to all agreements. Go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing."
Another Hamas legislator and imam, Sheik Yunus al-Astal, discussed a Quranic verse suggesting that "suffering by fire is the Jews' destiny in this world and the next." He concluded "Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews."
Following the rededication of the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem in March 2010, senior Hamas figure al-Zahar called on Palestinians everywhere to observe five minutes of silence "for Israel's disappearance and to identify with Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque". He further stated that "Wherever you have been you've been sent to your destruction. You've killed and murdered your prophets and you have always dealt in loan-sharking and destruction. You've made a deal with the devil and with destruction itself—just like your synagogue."
On August 10, 2012, Ahmad Bahr, Deputy Speaker of the Hamas Parliament, stated in a sermon that aired on Al-Aqsa TV:
If the enemy sets foot on a single square inch of Islamic land, Jihad becomes an individual duty, incumbent on every Muslim, male or female. A woman may set out [on Jihad] without her husband's permission, and a servant without his master's permission. Why? In order to annihilate those Jews. ... O Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. O Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. O Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.Hamas leader prays for annihilation of Jews, Americans by Greg Tepper, The Times of Israel, August 20, 2012.Hamas top official: Kill every last Jew and American (video), Jewish Journal, August 24, 2012.
In an interview with Al-Aqsa TV on September 12, 2012, Marwan Abu Ras, a Hamas MP, who is also a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, stated (as translated by MEMRI):
On December 26, 2012, Senior Hamas official and Jerusalem bureau chief Ahmed Abu Haliba, called on "all Palestinian factions to resume suicide attacks ... deep inside the Zionist enemy" and said that "we must renew the resistance to occupation in any possible way, above all through armed resistance." Abu Haliba suggested the use of suicide bombings as a response to Israel's plans to build housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In 2014 Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan defended a video of his repeating the blood libel myth in an interview.
Statements to an international audience
In an interview with CBS This Morning on July 27, 2014, then Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal stated: