Grandiloquent inquisitor of the Qatar-based Doha Debates, Tim Sebastian grills a top Hamas official. I think it was Winston Churchill who said that a fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Mahmoud al-Zahar, Part I
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Mahmoud al-Zahar, Part II
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Here, in a 2004 interview, Sebastian goes round and round with another Hamas official, Izzam Al-Tamimi:
TS: And for that, continuing violence – that's
what Hamas and your friends in Hamas speaks for?
AT: We don't call it 'violence'. We call it 'legitimate struggle'; we call it
'jihad'.
TS: You call that 'struggle' – when a suicide
bomber goes into a market and kills people indiscriminately, whether it's women
or children – you call that 'struggle'?
AT: When you force people to ...
TS: 'Yes' or 'no'? Please Dr Tamimi answer the question.
AT: Of course it is a struggle; of course it is
a struggle ...
TS: It's murder isn't it?
AT: It is a struggle ...
TS: It's murder.
TS: When I asked one of your spokesmen, Mahmoud
al-Zahar a couple of years ago in Gaza and I asked him what it would take to
stop the fighting he couldn't give me a straight answer and in the end when I
asked him a couple of times he said: I'm
telling you frankly the attitude of Islam is not to accept a foreign state in
this area.
TS: Does Israel have the right to exist?
AT: No, as far as the Palestinian is concerned ...
TS: You said on an internet chat forum early in
2003: 'For us Moslems martyrdom is not the end of things but the beginning of
the most wonderful of things'. If it's so wonderful to go and blow yourself up in a
public place in Israel why don't you do it?
AT: Martyrdom is not necessarily suicide bombings as you
call them. Martyrdom is ...
TS: No, please answer my question. It was a serious question.
AT: I'm trying to answer it ...
TS: Why don't you do it?....
AT: Unless you give me a chance to explain ...
TS: Please ... Please ...
AT: Not a single person of those who bomb themselves,
bomb themselves because they are desperate or poor. It doesn't happen because of this. They do it because they want to sacrifice
themselves for a cause....
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