As recent victors in the Palestinian elections, Hamas have recently been receiving fresh attention worldwide. A Terrorist organization - or a political party? Here's our review of the web on the subject. Disagree? Comment below, or in our forums.
Definitions - official and unofficial
A good place to start is always the Hamas entry on Wikipedia. The web's foremost free encyclopedia is famous for its guiding Neutral Point of View principle, which founder Jimbo Wales considers "non-negotiable". Unfortunately, the neutrality of Wikipedia's Hamas article is currently the subject of a fierce dispute on Wikipedia's talk page so the info therein, just like many other sites im about to mention, should be taken with a pinch of salt.
The wikipedia dispute centres largely around whether Hamas should be listed as a terrorist organisation or not. Many Western government sites are less ambiguous. The US State department lists them as such in its biennial list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations, as do the governments of many other Western states.
Name - an acronym - see the wikipedia article
A lot of the controversy stems from Hamas' charter, which is reproduced on MidEastWeb, an Israeli based NGO promoting peace and dialogue about Middle Eastern issues.
Comment, opinion and analysis on the elections and beyond
For a different take, see Khalid Amayreh's comment on the Palestinian elections on The Palestine Information Centre. Or see the PIC's more recent analysis on the implications of the election, discussing the controversy over withdrawing financial support for a democratically elected government. For the PIC, the term is certainly islamic resistance movement rather than terrorist organisaition.
In fact, the spread of media opinions is enormous. So to are they people watching media opinions. Supposed "liberal media bias" is a big deal, especially in America. Check out, for example, this CyberWatch article, on ABC, NBC and CBS use of the word terrorist to describe Hamas. Which one of them refuses to say it? They also link through to this provocative Newsbusters piece on the "senseless objectivity" of not calling Hamas a terrorist organisation. In the end, its the definition of terrorism, not the definition of Hamas, that is being wrangled over, but its a very powerful word.
In Haaretz, in Israeli daily newspaper, Aluf Benn points out that other regional players may benefit from Hamas' succesful election campaign.
Also hard to resist a plug for our sister site, openDemocracy, and Jim Lederman's piece on why Hamas won the election.
Media
CFR offers a conversation with left wing media darling Jimmy carter on the trade off between peace and democracy in the area.
A Time Magazine photo essay follows members of the Israeli Defence Force on a mission targeting members of Hamas - make of it what you will.
Voice of America, an online newspaper, provides thousands of audio clips, including Condoleezza Rice's recent comments on Hamas.
The ever fascinating YouTube has far too much to cover here. The first thing to spring up is this recent pro-Hamas concert, but theres plenty more.
Academic
From the avowedly pro-American Middle East Forum, an article on how Hamas is certainly a lot more than just a military operation, highlighting some of the other roles it plays in the Palestinian community.
Conclusion
The web never ceases to amaze. From columns to charters, opinions to opinion trackers, terrorist lists to music videos, there are plenty of Hamas related resources out there. Whatever your take on their politics, and deliberately no conclusions are offered here, we hope this short survey turned up some interesting sites and interesting opinions.
Jon Bright
