The Israeli government says it's in a death struggle with Hamas, cast as a terrorist movement affiliated with al-Qaida and threatening the entire Western world. But current Israeli propaganda to the contrary, Hamas is not al-Qaida. Hamas has never carried out violent attacks outside of historical Palestine.
The West is out to rid the world of al-Qaida. While we can easily imagine a world without al-Qaida, we cannot imagine a Middle East without the kind of massively supported politicized Islam that Hamas represents in Palestine. A more difficult question is whether we can imagine the Middle East without Israel. Among Middle Easterners, the answer to that question is, increasingly, yes.
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