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

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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

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.

Matthew Levitt takes no prisoners. His starting point is terrorism is terrorism is terrorism. In the context of the Middle East many will argue the toss - that he ignores decades of Palestinian frustration and suffering; that the tactics adopted by Hamas could be from today's update of the manual written by Jewish fighters who carved out the state of Israel; that Washington and Jerusalem's new-found urge to do business with the more secular Fatah movement ignores the historic reality that Hamas' late arrival on the Palestinian scene is proof of so much past failure; that desperation produces more desperation.

But for all that, Levitt's exhaustive 324-page HAMAS: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad is engrossing, particularly on how Hamas is perceived from the intelligence bunkers of the US and Israel. Its layers of detail, drawn from a mountain of official documents, is as revealing of Hamas as it is of the attempts to thwart its rise - without bravely or deliberately confronting the root causes of the Middle East crisis.

Levitt has gone the Izzy (I.F.) Stone route - trawling thousands of documents, many of them on the public record, for a back-story that gels with the post 9/11 mindset that resistance equals terrorism and that resistance movements, somehow, should grow up. But a reader does not have to don a white or black hat to be fascinated by what he draws from the Israeli records of the interrogation of Hamas captives; from documents captured from the Palestinian security agencies and other institutions; and from his revealing analysis of the Hamas global money trail - particularly in the US.

An FBI counterterrorism analyst before his appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Department of Treasury, Levitt now directs a program on terrorism, intelligence and policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He argues that Hamas' extensive social welfare work is a cover for terrorism. But there is a subtle distinction in a quote he takes from the senior Hamas figure Mahmoud Al-Zahar - try `adjunct' rather than `cover'. Al-Zahar told Al-Jazeera in 2005: "Hamas responds to all questions related to the life of the citizens not only in the case of confrontation but also in the political, economic, social, health and internal relations field. This movement has proved that it is one organic movement. Mistaken is the one who thinks that the military wing acts outside the framework of Hamas or behaves recklessly".

Does it matter? In a time of conflict one man's `overarching apparatus of terror', as Levitt describes Hamas, is another's well-oiled machine. The Israelis' observation in June of the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, in which they seized control of the West Bank and Gaza, was marked with much hand-wringing over their failure to capitalise on the 1967 military victory which, in turn, merged with a newer sense of crisis in the aftermath of Israel's bungled invasion of Lebanon last summer. These are days when many Israelis observing Hamas' discipline, morale and determination might feel envious ... even despite the new chaos as Fatah and Hamas have embarked on their own civil war in the Occupied Territories.

The Middle East crisis is a war and in wars terrible things happen - on all sides. Compartmentalising the conduct of one side in the context of the chequer-board squares of a post-9/11 paradigm does not end the outrage or ameliorate the defeat represented by war. Just where readers position themselves on the rhetorical and moral snooker table that is today's Middle East, will guide their sense of shock or approval for the breath-taking logistical and military sophistication of the Hamas operation.

Levitt wants readers to be shocked, and there's the rub. Sympathisers will argue that notwithstanding it is at war, Hamas has steadily moved towards the middle - it stubbornly refused to take part in the democratic process and then it did, confounding many by winning the election that Washington said they had to have; it still refuses to amend its Charter opposition to Israel's right to exist, but its acknowledgement of a two-state solution is implicit acceptance of that reality; it despatches suicide-bombers, but it has also demonstrated that it can observe cease-fires with remarkable discipline.

Levitt dissects Hamas mosques, schools, orphanages, summer camps, and sports leagues as recruitment centres for would-be suicide bombers and nerve centres for incitement and radicalization of civil society. But he also observes that the appalling nature of the Palestinian social condition creates the very circumstances that, as he puts it, Hamas exploits.

Levitt's Hamas is not a narrative read - but this is not a criticism. Rather, the author deals sectionally with the organisation's dramatic rise and perseverance - where it came from; the leaders; the source of funds; operational logistics - military and welfare; and, lastly, an examination of the evidence on the likelihood of Hamas taking its fight beyond the Occupied Territories and Israel.

It's an approach that specialists will appreciate - these are meticulously footnoted chapters that can be read in any order; and its one to which interested lay readers will quickly adjust. And for the critics who inevitably will challenge his quotes from or analysis of his source material, Levitt generously and laboriously provides almost 60-page of notes on where readers can make their own judgement by accessing the material themselves - much of it is available on-line.

When the US led the charge into Iraq, it ignored warnings that crisis and likely failure lay ahead. But with nerves of steel, Levitt argues a unilateral campaign against Hamas: "Denying Hamas the logistical, financial, and recruitment networks provided by the dawa [welfare] infrastructure would go far toward disrupting its ability to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks that are its hall mark."

He's putting his money on Washington's renewed attempt to undermine social and political support for Hamas by pouring funds into the Fatah-controlled West Bank while the Hamas-controlled communities of crowded Gaza go without. But at the same time he warns of more grind unless there is a united international front - a precondition that Washington has not achieved.

Levitt's analysis of Hamas' political, charitable, and military activities has produced a worthwhile and serious work. The ideological or rhetorical blinkers of either side in the Middle East crisis are not needed to appreciate its fine and comprehensive detail.
Paul McGEOUGH, Sydney, Australia

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.

Hamas's election victory shocked the West."I don't see how you can be a partner for peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform," President Bush said at a January 26 news conference after the results were announced. Subsequently,Washington cut off aid money to the new Hamas-dominated government, yet the White House's resolve was not matched elsewhere. Two weeks after the election, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party feted Hamas political leader Khalid Mishaal, a wanted terrorist. And earlier this month the Swedish government broke European consensus to issue a visa for a Hamas minister to attend a conference calling for the Jewish state's destruction. Moscow has even suggested supplying arms to Hamas.

How timely it is then to read Matthew Levitt's "Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad" (Yale University Press, 334 pages, $26). In an age of instant experts and television terrorism analysts, Mr. Levitt is the real thing. A former FBI counterterrorism analyst, he currently serves as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for intelligence and analysis.

Mr. Levitt parses many news reports, NGO studies, court proceedings, and legal documents (although he draws on very little Arabic-language material) to separate the false rhetoric from the reality about Hamas. He lays bare the popular notion preached by European diplomats that Hamas sports distinct political, social, and military wings, or that it differentiates between military and civilian targets. For example, the political leader of Hamas in Tulkarm, Abbas al-Sayyid, put on his military hat to mastermind the March 27, 2002, bombing of a Netanya hotel Passover Seder, a civilian target. Hamas participates in the political process and supports social networks only to advance its core mission, the destruction of Israel.

Mr. Levitt's sketch of Hamas's history and development is also useful. It has become trendy in certain circles to suggest Hamas's rise to be blowback from earlier support by Israel. A Center for Strategic and International Studies Middle East analyst, Tony Cordesman, for example, told United Press International that Israel "aided Hamas directly--the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance for the PLO." Mr. Levitt corrects such musings in a chapter tracing the group's deep roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. It is true that Israeli officials lent support to nonviolent Islamist organizations during the first intifada (1987-93), but Hamas was not among them, even if Hamas later absorbed once non-violent civil society organs. Perhaps Israeli officials were naive to engage moderate Islamists, but if so, Western calls for outreach to Hamas simply replicate past mistakes.

Mr. Levitt's analysis is nuanced further through its juxtaposition of the seeming moderation of some Hamas officials inside the West Bank and Gaza and the external radicals. Here he warns against comparison: In the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas moderates its rhetoric and actions out of fear of the Israeli military, not of conviction. It is simply easier for the Damascus-based Mr. Mishaal to solicit Iranian funds than for those in Gaza within reach of Israeli forces.

Any serious terrorism analyst understands the importance of a money trail. Mr. Levitt makes an exceptional contribution with a chapter on "economic Jihad." He demonstrates how Hamas launders money and uses charities to subsidize terrorism. One fatwa--issued from a Saudi governmental body--even makes it permissible to use non-Islamic, interest-bearing banks to transfer money, so long as it is used to finance jihad. On April 28, President Chirac of France argued, "[F]inancial aid to Palestinians has to be maintained for human and political reasons." Mr. Levitt shows how Hamas twists such humanitarian aid to prove that the policy is inane. The group emphasizes early education radicalization and teaches elementary school students to venerate suicide bombers. Incitement matters. Between 2003 and 2004, children's involvement in terrorism increased by 64%.

Hamas's financial operations extend to America. The FBI has investigated Hamas's links to drug trafficking, credit card fraud, sale of counterfeit products, and cigarette tax fraud. Such operations provide between $20 million and $30 million annually to Middle Eastern terrorist groups like Hamas.

Most gripping is Mr. Levitt's breakdown of the cost of an attack. A November 27, 2001, shooting attack on the Afula central bus station cost $31,000; the July 31, 2002, attack on a Hebrew University cafeteria that killed seven, including five Americans, cost $50,000. In contrast, the Holy Land Foundation, a prime financier of Hamas, raised $57 million between 1992 and 2001.

Not all cash goes directly to operations, though; donations also finance aid to the families of suicide bombers and Hamas's social service-recruitment division. While no formal affiliation exists between Hamas and Al-Qaeda, Mr. Levitt highlights numerous financial links between the groups and raises questions about whether such ties could be made operational, either officially or through rogue cells.

While Mr.Levitt focuses on Hamas, J. Millard Burr and Robert Collins look more broadly at terrorism finance in "Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World" (Cambridge University Press, 343 pages, $28). The two are well-matched to collaborate: Mr. Burr,a former USAID relief coordinator in Sudan, provides practitioner reality, while Mr. Collins, a well-published African historian, adds academic depth. They begin with an examination of zakat, Islamic alms. They explain the difference among zakat, religious gifts, and endowment, and show how they can all be used to similar ends.

Lay Muslims once looked at zakat as just another tax levied by their governments. However, the Muslim Brotherhood-run mosques began collecting alms to fund jihad. Messrs. Burr and Collins demonstrate this with a number of case studies covering Afghanistan, Sudan, the Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Holy Land, Europe, and North America. Throughout, the Saudi royal family played a pernicious role, founding and promoting charities to spread militant Sunni Islam, not only as an inoculation against resurgent Shi'ism from revolutionary Iran, but also to radicalize the Muslims in Europe and America. Western bungling amplified the charities' success: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika enabled Islamist charities to sink roots in Chechnya, while in the next decade, the Clinton administration delayed investigations into charities like the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation out of deference to its Saudi royal family patrons.

Messrs. Burr and Collins's examination of Islamic banking is rich with both historical background and contemporary detail, some of which may surprise: They show how groups like Palestinian Hamas, Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front, Tunisia's al-Nahda, and Egypt's Jama'at al-Islamiyya all held shares in the Saudi-based al-Taqwa bank. And though the authors do not discuss Turkey, the fact that Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey has quietly replaced every member of the Turkey's banking board with members drawn from Islamic banks is another cause for concern. Still, even though Islamist terrorists began targeting their Saudi patrons, Messrs. Burr and Collins demonstrate how there remains virtually no government oversight into charitable donations anywhere in the Muslim world.

While "Hamas" and "Alms for Jihad" detail the networks through which terrorist groups grow, Fawaz Gerges, a professor at Sarah Lawrence University, takes a more holistic approach in "Journey of the Jihadist" (Harcourt, 296 pages, $25). He seeks to "delve into the world of Islamic militancy," but his narrative falls flat. Based on interviews with a few Islamists, Mr. Gerges's account is all color and no substance. To conclude, he paraphrases an Egyptian Islamist who faults American policy for forcing a reaction from Islamists; this is the logical equivalent of exculpating rape because the victim wore a short skirt.

Messrs. Levitt, Burr, and Collins demonstrate that terrorism is not the spontaneous response to grievance. Never has the gap between reality and the conventional wisdom peddled by Middle Eastern studies doyens like Mr. Gerges appeared so great.

New York Sun