The Hamas charter: quoting it accurately

Before you quote any of this

Quoting from memory is how people lose this exchange. The passages below are short, one wrong word hands an opponent the whole argument, and you should copy them rather than carry them.

The second warning matters more than anything else here. The document tells you about an organisation. It tells you nothing about Palestinians and nothing about Muslims, and used as though it did it will lose you the room. Read the section at the foot of this page before you use anything above it.

What the 1988 document is

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement is dated 18 August 1988. Hamas issued it in its own name, in the year after the movement was launched, and it runs to thirty-six articles. Its own introduction says the Covenant “clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims”, which is a founding document describing itself as one rather than a leaflet written for a season.

The claim an opponent will attack is the one about status, so keep it to what is checkable: no later Hamas document amends this text and none repeals it.

The English here is the Avalon Project’s text, held at Yale Law School, which numbers the articles in words.

The passages, in article order

The preamble, under an epigraph attributed to Hassan al-Banna: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”.

The introduction: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.”

Article Seven describes the movement as universal, then closes on a hadith adopted as its own programme. “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 Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”

Article Eleven puts the land beyond anybody’s power to concede. “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.” It goes on: “Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that.”

This is the article people skip, and it explains the others.

Article Thirteen closes the negotiating exit. “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” Later in the same article: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

Article Twenty-Two is the conspiracy article. “With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.” It continues: “They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there”, and “With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others”. Then the wars: “They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate.”

Article Thirty-Two names the source. “Their plan is embodied in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.” The same article ends by calling Islamic groupings “the best-equipped for the future role in the fight with the warmongering Jews”.

The word the text uses

State this once, precisely, then stop. The introduction says “Our struggle against the Jews”. Article Seven’s hadith is about killing the Jews. Article Twenty says “the Jews made no exception for women or children”. Article Thirty-Two says “the warmongering Jews”. Not Zionists, not Israelis, not the occupation, not a government.

Be exact about Article Twenty-Two, because this is where a careless advocate gets caught. Article Twenty-Two itself says “the enemies” and “they”. It is Article Twenty, two articles earlier, that supplies the noun. So quote Twenty-Two for what it says about money, media and revolutions, and quote the introduction, Seven, Twenty and Thirty-Two for the word.

The 2017 document

Most people get caught here, so learn it rather than dismissing it. On 1 May 2017 Khaled Meshaal, then head of the Hamas political bureau, announced a new political document at a press conference in Doha. Middle East Eye published it in full the following day. It runs to 42 articles. The Protocols material is not in it and neither is the hadith.

Give the other side its strongest passage first, in full. Article 16: “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”

Do not wave that away. It is a real drafting change and denying it is refutable in one click.

Then Article 20 in full, both halves, because nearly everybody who cites it quotes the second half alone. “Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”

Article 19 is one line and it sets what that formula is worth: “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity.”

Now the fact the section rests on. The 2017 document does not mention the 1988 Covenant anywhere in its 42 articles. It does not amend it, replace it or repeal it. There is no revoking clause.

Hamas figures said as much at the time. Meshaal told Al Jazeera that “The old charter was a product of its era, 30 years ago. We live in a different world today”, which dates a text rather than cancels it. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas figure in Gaza, told reporters that the document was not a substitute for the founding charter: “The charter is the core of (Hamas’s) position and the mechanism of this position is the document.”

A movement that had changed its mind had one sentence available to it, and did not write that sentence.

How to use it without getting caught

Give the article number, every time. A quotation with no number invites the reply that you made it up, and an audience half believes it. “Article Seven of the 1988 Covenant” costs you four words.

Name the document and its date. The two get conflated constantly, including by people arguing your side. Attribute the Protocols line to the 2017 document and you have lost, because it is not there.

Do not say the 2017 document is meaningless. It exists, Hamas published it, and it drops the conspiracy material. Say what it did and did not do: it changed the drafting, it revoked nothing, and Articles 19 and 20 hold the position. That version survives a follow-up question. “It is all public relations” does not.

Translation. The English texts in circulation are translations, and an opponent may go after a rendering rather than the substance. Name your source and stop: this is the Avalon Project’s text, and there are others, including the 1993 Maqdsi translation. Then ask which word they say is wrong and what it should be instead. Improvising about Arabic you cannot read is what loses.

The misuse that loses every room

The Covenant is evidence about the organisation that wrote it. It is not evidence about Palestinians, who did not write it and were not asked. It is not evidence about Muslims, who had no part in it. It is not a description of what anybody’s colleague believes, or of what is taught in a mosque down the road.

Somebody who reaches for Article Seven to explain a Palestinian neighbour has stopped arguing about Hamas and started arguing about a people. Every listener in the room hears that switch, including the ones who were with you, and it hands the other side a reason to stop listening.

So make the distinction out loud, before anybody asks for it. One sentence, before the quotations rather than after. If you cannot bring yourself to say it, leave the material alone.

The five lines this material needs

Say them out loud once before you use any of it. Four of the five are protective: they are what stops a true quotation costing you the room.

“This is what that organisation wrote about itself. I’m not saying a thing about anybody else, and I want that clear before I quote it.”

“Article Seven of the 1988 Covenant. I’ll give you the number every time, so you can go and read it.”

“The 2017 document isn’t public relations and it isn’t a revocation either. It changed the drafting and left Articles 19 and 20 standing.”

“I work from the Avalon Project’s translation. Which word do you say is wrong, and what should it be?”

“You’re asking me about your neighbour. I’m talking about a charter. Those aren’t the same conversation.”

Tonight, with both documents open

Fill in the blanks192 words

Two questions answered from memory, because getting either wrong in a room ends the exchange. What changed between the 1988 document and the 2017 one, and what did not? And which article number do you cite, rather than paraphrasing it?

Then open the Avalon text and the Middle East Eye text and write out five passages by hand with the article number and the document date beside each. The preamble line, Article Seven, Article Eleven, Article Thirteen, and Article 20 of the 2017 document in full. That is the whole preparation, and it is what lets you answer the second question rather than repeat your first answer.

Then the one you will need: if somebody tells me the charter was replaced in 2017, then I will agree that a new document exists, say what it changed, and ask them to show me the clause that revoked the 1988 Covenant.

And a coping plan for the likelier failure, your own: if I notice I am about to use the charter to explain what somebody other than Hamas thinks, then I will stop the sentence and say what the document is actually evidence of.