Even in English, Hamas has been careful not to call it a charter, or to say that it replaces the Hamas charter that refers to antisemitic Islamic sayings, such as "The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.'"
I've been reporting since February that Hamas is not calling this a new charter. Still, too many Western reporters and even some experts have claimed that this is a new Hamas charter that eliminates the doctrinal antisemitism and explicit call to destroy Israel that the charter has.
Today, ahead of the photo-op in Doha where Hamas will introduce the new document with much fanfare, Hamas again said in Arabic that this is not a new charter. Felesteen, a Hamas newspaper, says "Hamas denied that the document is an alternative to the Charter of the movement, which was released to coincide with its founding, at the end of the 1980s, stressing that it is a 'political vision and ideology of the movement.'
The entire purpose of the document is to present a false, moderate face to the West.
The new document will deny that Hamas has anything against Jews, and it is only against "Zionists." It will also say that Hamas would accept a Palestinian state in the "1967 borders," a position that will fool more credulous journalists and editorialists into thinking that Hamas supports a two-state solution.
Hamas has claimed that it is not antisemitic for years despite its still-extant charter. Here is a laughable attempt from 2009:
GAZA CITY, May 14 (2009) (IPS) - A founding member of Hamas says he hates all weapons and insists that his organisation is not anti-Jewish.Hamas fetishizes weapon, as this anniversary parade shows:
In an interview with IPS, Sayed Abu Musameh described frequent claims in the European and U.S. press that Hamas's charter is based on enmity towards Jews as a "big lie".
"In our culture, we respect every foreigner, especially Jews and Christians," he said. "But we are against Zionists, not as nationalists but as fascists and racists."
Musameh also contended that Hamas has long been ready to agree a truce - known in Arabic as a hudna - with Israel but that Israel had refused all offers and imposed a crippling economic blockade on Gaza. The firing of Qassam rockets on the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Sderot was designed "not to destroy Israel or to destroy Israeli people" but to "make them notice our siege."
"I hate all kinds of weapons," said Musameh. "I dream of seeing every weapon from the atomic bomb to small guns banned everywhere."
And that same 2014 parade is proof that Hamas is a Jew-hating organization. It placed a picture of the Jewish Temple on a coffin:
On another coffin, it proudly displayed daggers stabbing the heads of four rabbis who had been slaughtered in a synagogue earlier that year:
Hamas also created a stereotypical Jew, with a white shirt, side curls, beard and a black hat, to burn in effigy:
This all happened years after Hamas claimed to not have anything against Jews.
Yet perhaps the best evidence that Hamas is an officially Jew-hating organization is that it refuses to replace its charter, even as it has claimed over and over again to Western audiences (like this 2011 essay) that the charter is not relevant.
Any reporter that gives credence to this Hamas publicity stunt is not a reporter, but a propagandist for one of the world's most successful and bloodthirsty Islamist terror groups.