As usual, Counterpunch has a number of informative items: one might start here, and then scroll the left bar for other articles. The linked article makes the following apt observation:
"HAMAS”… the word that, in this case, renders any action taken by the other side, no matter how barbaric or sadistic, legitimate. Couple any noun with the preceding adjective “Hamas” and it will be immediately quarantined as if tainted by some infectious bacteria. This is how to dehumanize a million and a half people overnight; how to render them different from us and dangerous to us.
The comical facade of American support for "democracy in the Middle East" has not, of course, included support for the democratically elected Hamas government.
But why this savagery now? One imagines it has something to do with the specter of a change of Administration in the United States--from a far right to a perhaps centrist government--though Obama's choice of Senator Clinton, unapologetic supporter of the criminal war of aggression against Iraq, hardly suggests that 'radical' notions (like the Golden Rule applies to Palestinians) are about to come into ascendancy.
What a sad and ugly business.
UPDATE: More useful resources courtesy of Patrick O'Donnell. Professor O'Donnell writes:
Two books are indispensable for understanding the overarching philosophy, strategic political reasoning, and political policies of Hamas: Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela's The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) and Azzam Tamimi's Hamas: A History from Within (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2007). So much nonsense uttered about what Hamas is all about could be avoided (i.e., something other than the ad nauseum references to statements from its Charter) were the information and arguments found in these two works well known. Everytime the Israelis resort to an escalation of violence, they serve, for better and worse, as a finely tuned recruitment instrument for Hamas, in other words, a perfect propaganda vehicle for "radicalization" of the Palestinians. And that is over and above the manner in which the socio-economic and political conditions they've imposed on Gaza has been colosally counterproductive, at least in terms of any putative peace process.
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