Hamas vs. America

Daniel Pipes on why we should take the threat of Hamas very seriously....and not 'come to terms with them'.

Hamas has gone global. Reports indicate it is active, planning attacks against American forces, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait. Of particular note, it was a Palestinian with possible ties to Hamas, Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali, who shot three American corrections officers at a prison in Kosovo in April 2004.

Palestinian anger could prompt violence in America. Ken Piernick, who had headed the FBI counterterrorism efforts against Hamas, told the New York Sun: "In time, a very volatile and vitriolic hostility brewing in Gaza in particular will slowly suffuse itself to Hamas and Hezbollah cells in America. In the past couple of years we have already seen inflammatory rhetoric from their supporters in the United States. At some point in time it's like the glass rod will snap."

Potentially violent Hamas operatives in America have already turned up.

* In November 2003, the Israelis arrested Jamal Akkal, 23, a Canadian immigrant of Palestinian origins and a year later, he pleaded guilty to planning to kill Israeli officials traveling in the United States as well as leaders of the American and Canadian Jewish communities.

* In August 2004, a longtime Hamas money-man, Ismail Selim Elbarasse, was arrested for videotaping the details of Maryland's Bay Bridge. This "set off alarms among U.S. counterterrorism investigators," the Baltimore Sun reported. They treated the incident as a Hamas reconnaissance of the bridge and "as a potential link between Hamas and Al Qaeda." In court papers, authorities alleged that the images Elbarasse's shot of the bridge included close-ups of features "integral to the structural integrity of the bridge."

Hamas, in short, can attack America at will, something that should not be forgotten.