This move could create an awkward situation with Iran, to say the least, and it is not the first we have heard of tension between the jihad terror group and their Iranian backers, including an earlier reduction in funds to Hamas. As the tide has turned against Assad, at the end of the day, Arab loyalties have trumped those to Iran and Sunni identity trumped the marriage of convenience with Shi'ite allies against Israel.
The ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a wing, in Egypt may also have emboldened the group in seeking no longer to be beholden to Shi'ites. "Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt," by Omar Fahmy and Nidal al-Mughrabi for Reuters, February 24:
CAIRO/GAZA, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas turned publicly against their long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule.The policy shift deprives Assad of one of his few remaining Sunni Muslim supporters in the Arab world and deepens his international isolation. It was announced in Hamas speeches at Friday prayers in Cairo and a rally in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas went public after nearly a year of equivocating as Assad's army, largely led by fellow members of the president's Alawite sect, has crushed mainly Sunni protesters and rebels.
In a Middle East split along sectarian lines between Shi'ite and Sunni Islam, the public abandonment of Assad casts immediate questions over Hamas's future ties with its principal backer Iran, which has stuck by its ally Assad, as well as with Iran's fellow Shi'ite allies in Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.
"I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, visiting Egypt from the Gaza Strip, told thousands of Friday worshippers at Cairo's al-Azhar mosque.
"We are marching towards Syria, with millions of martyrs," chanted worshippers at al-Azhar, home to one of the Sunni world's highest seats of learning. "No Hezbollah and no Iran.
"The Syrian revolution is an Arab revolution."
Contemporary political rivalries have exacerbated tensions that date back centuries between Sunnis - the vast majority of Arabs - and Shi'ites, who form substantial Arab populations, notably in Lebanon and Iraq, and who dominate in non-Arab Iran.
Hamas and Hezbollah, confronting Israel on its southwestern and northern borders, have long had a strategic alliance against the Jewish state, despite opposing positions on the sectarian divide. Both have fought wars with Israel in the past six years.
But as the Sunni-Shi'ite split in the Middle East deepens, Hamas appears to have cast its lot with the powerful, Egypt-based Sunni Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose star has been in the ascendant since the Arab Spring revolts last year.
HAMAS MAKES ITS CHOICE
"This is considered a big step in the direction of cutting ties with Syria," said Hany al-Masri, a Palestinian political commentator. Damascus might now opt to formally expel Hamas's exile headquarters from Syria, he told Reuters.
Banned by deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood has moved to the centre of public life. It is the ideological parent of Hamas, which was founded 25 years ago among the Palestinians, the majority of whom are Sunni Muslims.
Shi'ite Hezbollah still supports the Assad family, from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, which has maintained authoritarian rule over Syria's Sunni majority for four decades but now may have its back to the wall.
Hamas, however, has been deeply embarrassed among Palestinians by its association with Assad, as the death toll in his crackdown on opponents has risen into the thousands. [...]
The divorce between Hamas and Damascus had been coming for months. The Palestinian group had angered Assad last year when it refused a request to hold public rallies in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria in support of his government.
Hamas's exile political leader Khaled Meshaal and his associates quietly quit their headquarters in Damascus and have stayed away from Syria for months now, although Hamas tried to deny their absence had anything to do with the revolt.
Haniyeh visited Iran earlier this month on a mission to shore up ties with the power that has provided Hamas with money and weapons to fight Israel. It is not clear what the outcome of his visit has been, though the tone of the latest Hamas comments is hardly compatible with continued warm relations with Tehran....
If both sets of clowns start burning down Islam's circus tent, that's fine. Saves us the job!
Let the Iranians have their bomb. It will be fun watching them destroying the Kaaba.
Yep, Islam is evil, and evil is self-destroying.
OMG,
The US is injecting itself naively into the Syrian mud pit of intra-sectarian rivalry.
Thanks to the growing instability of the Syrian government, the alliances are shifting, and we are returning to the traditional murderous feuding between Shi'ites and Sunis.
What is the probable outcome of a revolt in Syria? The Islamists will gain control of the government, the Alewites will become the persecuted minority, and will begin trying to emigrate from Syria, and the Christians will will find it impossible to remain in Syria.
What possible interest of the United States is served by supporting the rebels, and making guns available to their forces?
If the United States has any interest in the area, it is in having a relatively stable government not run by the Islamic clergy. These governments are almost inevitably dictatorships, or at best monarchies. Any Middle Eastern ruler will be aware of the nature of Islam, and will suppress any Islamic political organization out of self-interest.
The more the United States presses for political and democratic reform in the Middle East, the stable governments become weaker and the Islamic clergy grows in influence and organization. The dictatorships grow more inefficient and brutal as the dictator ages, but are still far better than the Islamist alternative, both for the people and for the interests of civilized countries.
It seems that the interventions by the United States in the area has resulted uniformly in disaster, from the CIA-organized overthrow of a secular, democratic government in Iran, to the ouster of the Egyptian president Mubarak. The best strategy for the US to follow is to keep hands off, except when its vital interests are threatened. The US should certainly cut off the flow of Muslim immigration, whether from Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, or the African countries. As long as the Muslim are kept in their own borders, they are chronically backwards and unable to face a modern army.
Israel, of course, is far more affected by the regional politics, and may undertake actions not directly beneficial to the US. The US should downplay real military ties between itself and Israel, while maintaining commercial ties and political support. Israel, as a non-Muslim free country, can and should support its own defense establishment. Israel will have to undertake actions which may appear horrific to protect itself, and there is no need for the US to be directly allied with the Israeli military.
Right now, the US government is steering the US directly into a train wreck by its support of Middle Eastern political factions. There is as little true creativity in the Republican thinking on foreign affairs as in Democratic. I still hold to the view that George Bush II was more destructive of US interests than Barack Obama, but Obama seems determined to catch up.
Evil is destroying itself from within. Let them kill each other.
Let the Iranians have their bomb. It will be fun watching them destroying the Kaaba.
Yep, Islam is evil, and evil is self-destroying.
Iran willnot destory the Kaaba. The Kaaba will be destory near the end time just before the day of Judgement.It will be destory by than general from Yemon who is than unbelieve way after Jesus kill the anti-christ.
The mythical khalifa of Islamic dreams would never work in reality. Allah's denizens seem to love nothing more than to slit one another's throats over all manner of "sins" real or imagined.
Once again I would note the four givens in life: death, taxes, Muslims killing non-Muslims and Muslims killing other Muslims.
OT ...
Whoa! more news on Syria:
"EU to freeze Syrian Central Bank assets Feb 27"
Excerpt:
The European Union plans to freeze the assets of the Syrian Central Bank starting next Monday, declared French Foreign Minister Alan Juppe, as quoted by Reuters.
The new sanction will hit Syria the day after the referendum on the new constitution set for February 26.
"Starting from Monday, we will take new strong measures, notably a freezing of the assets of the Syrian Central Bank," Juppe announced.
http://rt.com/news/syria-eu-freeze-bank-151/
Report: Hamas dumps Assad, backs Syrian rebels
This move could create an awkward situation with Iran, to say the least, and it is not the first we have heard of tension between the jihad terror group and their Iranian backers, including an earlier reduction in funds to Hamas.
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Well, yes. Muslims betraying and murdering each other is nothing new.
My guess is, though, that at the end of the day Iran hates Israel and the Jews more than they support Assad. After some stern words from their genocidal benefactor, Hamas will likely be back to cashing those big "Zakat" checks. Ugh...
Assad is truly a monster. Getting snipers on rooftops to pick off your own fellow countrymen who are young children and women is beyond evil... that is what izlum does to the brain and psyche...it turns a human being into a horrifically crazed demon....
Given that Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is @ the head of the opposition, like as in Egypt, I'm surprised that it didn't happen any sooner.
Anyway, this is great news. Hope Hamas sends all its fighters to Syria to join their Ikhwan comrades, while in the meantime, hope Hizbullah sends all their fighters from Lebanon to Syria to support the Assad regime. Let all the Sunnis swarm into Syria to support the Muslim Brotherhood, while Hizbullah, Iran and Iraq (Badr Brigades) can send their fighters in to back Assad.
Hope that the Saudis and other Gulf states spend the bulk of their cash on arming their side, while Iran & Iraq does the same for the Alawites. It would be a great solution to the Muslim problem.
"Hope that the Saudis and other Gulf states spend the bulk of their cash on arming their side, while Iran & Iraq does the same for the Alawites. It would be a great solution to the Muslim problem."
I'm sorry. I don't agree with you.
I don't want to see Muslims killing other Muslims, any more than I want to see Muslims killing non-Muslims. The West does not gain by having wars among Muslim countries. However, the natural inclination of Muslims to kill anyone with a different point of view, including other mainstream Muslim sects, provides a strategic advantage to the West.
For instance, Sunni-led Iraq under Saddam Hussein kept Shi'ite Iran occupied. Iran would never have dared to mobilize the financial institutions of Europe and the US against itself if it were facing Saddam Hussein. George Bush II, in his wisdom, eliminated Hussein as an opponent to Iran, and opened the door to Iran's focusing on developing a nuclear weapon.
The Iraq-Iran war, killing millions of Muslims, was not necessary for the rivalry between the two countries to benefit the West. The West should not have intervened, and generally didn't. The poverty, deaths, and backwardness of Muslim countries is entirely their own affair.
The real threat to the West from Muslims does not come so much from Muslim countries, which are either uniformly backwards, or run by dictatorships interested mainly in keeping power. The threat comes from allowing Muslim immigration and from allowing Muslims to stay in the countries illegally. Some states, such as India, border Muslim countries and naturally have problems with their neighbors. India's armed forces generally can wipe up Pakistan anytime it chooses, except for Pakistan's nuclear capability, which was supported and financed by the US. So much for using Muslim countries as allies.
Guess someone has told hamas that the west is going to arm the rebels
Hamas backs rebels.
The U.S. is leaning forward in a effort to support the rebels.
Now wait a minute, these guys support terror, right?
Russia is calling for calm.
Perhaps we should take a breath.
Infidel Pride wrote:
Given that Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is @ the head of the opposition, like as in Egypt, I'm surprised that it didn't happen any sooner.
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IP, I imagine the only reason it didn't happen sooner is because Sunni Hamas gets so much of its funding from Shi'ite Iran, which supports Assad and his Alawite regime as a hedge against Sunni power in the region.
Iran funds Hizb'allah for the same reason it does Hamas—both to strike at Israel directly, and to maintain a force of Shi'ite-backed power and influence.