John Brown University's Student Newspaper
On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists committed the most violent attack in the history of modern Israel. Starting at 6:30 a.m., militants from Gaza launched approximately 5,000 missiles into the central and southern parts of the country. Ground raids soon followed, taking the lives of 1,400 innocent people and more than 200 hostages by the end of the day.
Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement). The party is a Suni-Islamic fundamentalist Palestinian nationalist organization. It is one of the two major political parties within the Palestinian territories, and it has been the de facto authority in the Gaza strip since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by both the United States and Israel, despite a 2018 United Nations resolution rejecting this characterization. Shortly after the first intifada (a series of Palestinian protests and violent riots), Hamas published the Hamas Charter on August 18, 1988, wherein they called for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in historic Palestine. Hamas would later publish a revised edition of the charter in 2017, but for the purposes of this analysis, we will look at the language of the 1988 edition exclusively.