Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Paperback)

~ (Author), Dennis Ross (Foreword) "Hamas, both an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement) and an Arabic word meaning "zeal," is a Palestinian Islamist group that emerged in..." (more)
Key Phrases: hamas political leadership, economic jihad, dawa activities, West Bank, United States, Gaza Strip (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Levitt, formerly a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and now a deputy assistant secretary in the Treasury Department, has completed a timely assessment of one of the world's most prolific terrorist organizations. As Hamas wields increasing power within the Palestinian Authority, Levitt offers a sobering analysis of the group's likely priorities and of the quickly dimming prospects for peace in this most intractable of conflicts. Probably the most comprehensive study of the tactics, finances and structures of the Islamic resistance movement ever published, many of the details will primarily interest the specialist. In nine heavily annotated chapters, Levitt explores Hamas's infrastructure, laying out detailed blueprints for indoctrination, money laundering, public outreach and militant activities, charting the anatomy of a typical attack down to the cost of each bullet. Levitt's well-documented assertion that there is essentially no separation between Hamas's military wing and its myriad charitable activities leaves him less sanguine than many commentators in the wake of the recent legislative elections. Levitt is likely to gain some enemies with evidence that, for instance, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is implicated in fund-raising for Hamas, but all his information is impeccably researched and compellingly presented. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

In the spring of 1995 in Gaza City, I met Musa Ziyada, a 15-year-old boy with huge almond eyes. He had apparently been recruited by Hamas, the radical Islamist group, to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel -- a plot foiled at the last moment by Ziyada's alert uncle, an intelligence officer in the Palestinian Authority police force. Attracted to his local mosque from the age of 10, Ziyada was considered something of a prodigy in Koranic studies. He also played soccer on the mosque's Hamas-affiliated team, which refused to wear shorts. He was lured to his near-death -- or "martyrdom" -- with the promises that he would be rewarded with 70 virgins in Paradise and a free pass there for 70 relatives and friends.

In those days, the Palestinian Authority was on to Hamas, eager to prove to Israel that it was fighting terror. But after the Islamists' surprise victory in the Palestinians' January 2006 parliamentary elections, Hamas is the Palestinian Authority -- a development that makes Matthew Levitt's revealing study both incredibly relevant and somewhat behind the times.

Ziyada crops up in Levitt's book (in an account drawn from news reports about the jihadist boy wonder) as one example of Hamas's propensity for cynical exploitation. Levitt's point is that Hamas uses its religious, social welfare, educational and political structures not only to curry popular favor among Palestinians but also to propagate its murderous agenda -- and sometimes to provide logistical and financial support for what he calls Hamas's "overarching apparatus of terror." Therefore, argues Levitt, a former FBI analyst now working on terrorism-finance issues at the Treasury Department, no distinction can or should be made between Hamas's various wings; the group's political and charitable arms are mere fronts for its bombers.

For those pundits, academics, outside do-gooders or policymakers still wavering on how best to deal with Hamas, Levitt provides a thoroughly documented exposure of the organization's dark side. (Be warned: The detail is sometimes impressive, sometimes mind-numbing and repetitive.) Extensive research -- based on declassified intelligence documents, court records, media reports, academic studies and interviews conducted by the author, mostly with unnamed security sources rather than with Hamas operatives themselves -- throws up some intriguing tidbits. For instance, Levitt reports that three members of the cell responsible for the 2002 Passover eve bombing of the Park Hotel in Netanya, a watershed attack, belonged to a singing troupe that went around the West Bank lauding Hamas's actions. One bomber, he adds, dropped out at the last minute, having come down with a cold.

Much of Hamas, though, reads like a long policy paper -- which it essentially is, having been written while Levitt was working at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. As such, it offers policy recommendations on how to neutralize Hamas, such as cutting off all the organization's funding and channeling more international aid via moderate or secular Palestinian elements. Levitt also points to one mind-twister for American policymakers: Hamas's desire to preserve its fundraising network inside the United States has so far helped dissuade the organization from directly attacking U.S. targets; a U.S. crackdown on the group's stateside money trail could make Hamas less restrained.

At this point, the book starts to feel dated. A crackdown on Hamas's funding might have helped when the group was filling the gap between a notoriously corrupt, Fatah-dominated Palestinian administration and a largely impoverished Palestinian population. But now that Hamas has taken over the government, the parameters have changed.

Hamas's ascension to power has brought a host of new confounding problems. For example, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the routed Fatah faction, made a deal with his Hamas rivals last year, promising them a political role in his regime in return for a ceasefire. Both parties so far have stuck to the bargain, but if Hamas is starved out of government as the result of an international economic boycott, we can assume that there will be more Park Hotels. What's more, given local pride in the democratic process that brought Hamas to power in the first place, anti-Western sentiment would only increase among the ever-poorer Palestinians if the world drummed the Islamists out of office.

I do not know what happened to Musa Ziyada; back in 1995, having narrowly been saved from blowing himself apart along with as many Israelis as possible, he told me that he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. Meanwhile, Ziyada's former patrons in Hamas have gone from running free clinics in the Gaza Strip to taking over the Palestinian Ministry of Health and from training toddlers in local kindergartens for martyrdom to managing the Ministry of Education. Levitt's rich study does not take that startling rise to power into account -- and therefore offers no practical solutions for it. Of course, he is hardly to blame for that: By all accounts, Hamas was as shocked by its success at the ballot box as everybody else. Desperate to receive international aid yet determined to stick to its guns, Hamas, it seems, had not really thought through the possibility either.

Reviewed by Isabel Kershner
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300122586
• ISBN-13: 978-0300122589
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #698,896 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad research in the service of bad policy, May 10, 2007

By	Pete W. Moore (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Did anyone at Yale University Press actually review this manuscript? Or does the Washington Institute for Near East Peace send junk to YUP and say here publish this? Matthew Levitt's book is a series of amateur disasters: exclusive reliance on highly suspect evidence, misrepresentation of some of the sources, primitive arguments which do not address any debate, poorly written, and apparently no one at Yale checked his citations or Arabic transliterations because they are hilariously bad. Levitt practices the kind of social science found only inside the beltway. It helps explain why the American government consistently pursues destructive policies in the Middle East. Here is how it goes: start with your conclusion first, select evidence that fits conclusion, glorify the evidence because it was classified at one point, and for god's sake conclude with policy.

Levitt wants to justify the status quo policy isolating the Palestinian government headed by HAMAS, albeit with an insane twist. To do this, he first backtracks by creating a debate in the academic literature that does not exist. Levitt wants the reader to believe that academics and experts "continue to subscribe to the shallow argument that terrorist groups maintain distinct social, political, and militant wings." (p.6) Who argues this? No cite is ever given. Against this straw man, Levitt advances his own myth; HAMAS is an unchanging monolith. Once we buy this then HAMAS is either completely bad or completely good (can't shade monoliths). Guess which one Levitt chooses? And then it's just a skip to conclude no negotiation with HAMAS, rather we need to replace it.

Levitt seems uninformed that scholars view HAMAS and similar organizations (Tamil Tigers, ANC, etc.) as having interrelated parts. Levitt himself endorses this view: "HAMAS is composed of three interrelated wings." (p.9) There is no argument about the separation of wings; rather there is investigation into these groups' social, political, and economic sources of power. What are the constraints and opportunities which HAMAS operates under? What are the costs and the benefits to violence? Answers to these questions are the foundation of a realistic policy. Levitt ignores this and the wider work on Islamist groups (Clark Islam, Charity, and Activism: Middle-Class Networks and Social Welfare in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen (Indiana Series in Middle East Studies), Schwedler Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen, Wiktorowicz Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach (Indiana Series in Middle East Studies), Gerges The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge Middle East Studies), etc) because to do so would not support his policy goal.

Levitt claims his book, "employs evidence that is qualitatively and quantitatively unmatched on the subject" and "makes use of previously undisclosed intelligence material" all "supplemented by open source materials and extensive personal interviews..." (p.7). Really? Let's consider Levitt as a researcher and his evidence. In writing a book on HAMAS, an organization made up of Palestinians living primarily in Gaza and the West Bank, one might assume the researcher knows something of these areas. Does Levitt speak or read Arabic at any level? Has Levitt ever lived, studied, or conducted research in the societies about which he writes? I would wager that we could drop Matthew in the middle of Ramallah and he could not find a falafel stand.

What about the intelligence studies? Most of the selective intelligence sources come from Israeli and US government sources. Is it possible that these sources might not be forthright? Where Levitt claims he uses extensive international intelligence and supposedly pro-Arab sources (48-50) he actually only cites one unavailable 2002 report from Canada, one 2004 Dutch report, an undocumented assertion that Jordanian intelligence agrees with him, and one interview with a Romanian intelligence official (p.306). That's it.

The problem here is selection bias. How do we know these intelligence analysts and analyses are representative? What do other analyses that Levitt did not see or share conclude? What about cross contamination between Israeli reports and American conclusions? Most odious, Levitt passes on what Palestinian prisoners tell their Israeli captors as an unbiased source of data. His use of supposedly primary source Palestinian intelligence documents held by the creepily named, Center for Special Studies is doubly troubling. This Israeli NGO (?) has documents seized by the IDF during its attack on Palestinian urban areas in 2002. Conclusions Levitt draws from this material are dubious because there is no chain of evidence. To be clear, the issue is not whether munitions were found in this or that place but if all we have is anecdote after anecdote from unverified documents one must ask how wide spread is the phenomena under investigation? How many of the thousands of Palestinian hospitals, clinics, schools, and mosques are HAMAS controlled and how many of these are linked to the stories in this book?

The interviews are the worse of all. A quick count came up with 10 interviews, only 4 attributed, and all but one were government officials. Levitt even bait and switches his sources. On page 247, he gives us direct quotes from a convicted HAMAS commander and this is sourced (ftn38) to "Author Interview with Israeli intelligence officials..." Where is the data from these interviews and why are they unnamed? This is lazy research, borderline unethical, and certainly not worthy of a university publisher. There is no use of the extensive Palestinian public opinion polling. There are no interviews with Jordanian or Palestinian analysts, political opponents of HAMAS, or even HAMAS spokesmen. If you think Israeli and US government sources are questionable, how truthful do you think unelected officials of an unelected monarchy in Jordan would be? There are no interviews with NGO personnel or even with Israeli academics, like say Mishal and Sela The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, And Coexistence. What in the hell was Levitt doing in Israel during the fall and summer 2004 that limited him to 10 unrecorded interviews?

Levitt's simplified image of HAMAS distorts the actual challenges faced and leads to crazy policy reasoning like this: if HAMAS is an indistinguishable monolith bent on evil and it is fed by its control over social welfare institutions, then we must cut off all humanitarian aid to those institutions. Next, we simply fund and create a new welfare infrastructure. That's right, in 2006 someone in Washington actually published a book suggesting we take the Iraqi nation building adventure on tour. Yipee, C.P.A. Jenin here we come! Maybe the up side is that we would get Israeli help this time.

Pete W. Moore

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Terrible structure and no organization, February 15, 2008

By	Matthew Smith "Roger Mexico" (TN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This book is structurally, organizationally and its content is irrevocably flawed. This book has some good information in it and it will certainly make the reader think, but the flaws are just too much for me. Poor structure and no organization plus the author does not do an adequate job fully and completely covering the topic is why I had to give this book a poor rating.

First off the book follows no linear chronological time line whatsoever. Instead the book jumps around constantly. The book has no semblance of continuity at all. The author can start out a paragraph discussing something from the 90s then jump to the 21 century then next thing you know you're back in the late 80s.The author very easily could have structured this book in a way that would have followed Hamas from its preconception to conception all the way to the present but the author does not do this, and so the reader must suffer the consequences. This lack of structure makes the book a very cumbersome read to say the least.

Next the author reuses paragraphs throughout the book. I counted at least three times the author repeated verbatim a paragraph he had previously used earlier in the book. This to me seemed lazy for a book that was obviously heavily researched and was years in the making. I don't know if it was poor editing or poor writing but it simply contributed to my overall dislike of this book.

Next the author throws numbers at the reader but he never gives them a context or organizes them in such a way as to give the reader a clear picture of what all these numbers mean. The amounts of money that the author throws at the reader range from a few hundred dollars to well over a hundred million dollars, and with the author not providing the reader with any tables or graphs or simply organizing the numbers in a single chapter so the reader can actually see all the numbers in one place and really get a true concept of what they actually mean. This work screams out for tables or graphs or anything remotely resembling structure for these numbers, but yet the author does not provide the reader with anything like structure so the numbers take on an arbitrary character that has no meaning to the reader.

Not only that but sometimes the numbers themselves are contradictory like on page 54 where the author gives an estimate of Hamas' annual budget at between 30-90 million dollars. First off that is a huge gap, but what's more is on page 191 the author uses a source that says that certain Saudi contributions for a two year period, 2000-2 gave 133 million dollars. That means they gave a little over 65 million a year for those two years which would be in excess of 2/3 of Hamas' budget. The problem is that the author also asserts that the Holy Land Foundation for the Relief and Development, a Hamas front, had a total revenue of 13 million dollars for the year 2000. Next the author estimates that the Iranian level of contributions for the year 2000 would be somewhere in the range of between 20-50 million dollars. If the reader then does some rudimentary calculations they will find that the low end estimate of Hamas' budget is worthless and apparently the high end is extremely low since if from only three sources Hamas received in excess of their 90 million cap the amount of the other donations from around the world would certainly have pushed their budget well over a 100 million dollars. This is only one instance in a book that is filled with similar inconsistencies. The reader will have a hard time distinguishing between which numbers are arbitrary and which ones should be focused upon.

Next this book really has little to do with Hamas as a whole but instead is a work devoted singularly to the Hamas leadership and its financing. The author does not devote even a single chapter to the grassroots level activists or the charity workers or organizations. The fact is that Hamas has many facets and if the author wants to posit the idea that all these contribute to the terror organization that is fine, but that study is incomplete if the author does not even write about the other aspects of this organization. The fact is that there has to be a reason so many relatively, secularist Palestinians have turned to Hamas, and there has to be a reason why so many nations and people around the world have apparently been duped by this organization. There has to be real, good, altruistic people within this organization or it would have never received the support it has achieved internally or externally, but the author treats his subject as if it is a monolith and the work suffers terribly for it. The author only speaks to the leadership and the terror apparatus, and I repeat that if the author wishes to assert the claim that the charitable is tied to the militant that is fine but that does not mean the author can completely ignore the charitable aspect of his subject and still have a truly whole work on this topic.

Next the author treats the subject as if it operates in a vacuum when the reality is that Israel and the PA, along with many other factors, are major causes for the popularity and success of Hamas. Now I understand that the author wished to limit this work and focus on Hamas but how can any study of Hamas truly be a complete and accurate work if it says nothing at all about the relationship between these other entities. The fact is that Hamas owes its rise to the incompetence and corruption of the PA and the occupation and heavy handedness of Israel, and how any author can feel as though they have adequately covered a subject as complex as Hamas without even adding a single chapter devoted to the affect of these two is beyond me. Now some may disagree as to the level of responsibility that should be meted out to either the PA or Israel but that certainly doesn't mean the topic shouldn't be raised.

All in all there is some very good information in this book, and it has certainly made me look at this organization in a different light. With that said this work is a very incomplete book that, in my opinion, has some glaring omissions and huge problems. Usually whenever a book forces me to rethink my previously held beliefs I automatically give that book a good rating but I cannot do that with this work. The structure was just too lousy, the lack of organization or tables for the financing chapters and the lack of discussion concerning outside factors was too much for me to ignore. I guess all I can say is venture at your own risk.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid introduction to Hamas, June 24, 2009

By	Michael Griswold (Rockford, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad sets out to put into question and discredit the idea that the Political, Chairitable, and Social Wings of Hamas are seperate and instead offers that they are acting covertly as one large unit with varying wings. Starts off kind of slow, to me at least, but really picks up in the middle. The chapter on the recruitment of suicide bombers within the education system is scary, but facinating stuff. One may ask how could anyone support an organization like Hamas ? The answer as hammered home in this book is that Hamas won the hearts and minds of the Palestinan people by providing the social services like food, school, and medical treatment to their sick and wounded where Fatawh and others had failed and opted instead to line their own pockets greedily. The Hamas model was basic : give the people what they need and you will be rewarded. Due to recent developments in Palestine and Israel's efforts, this book may be a little dated, so it should not be the only book read on Hamas, but it's a pretty good start.