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Hamas: "America Was Punished for its Sins"

MEMRI Special Dispatch (No. 268) of September 17, 2001 introduced the readers to a shocking "Open Letter to America" which was published by the Hamas mouthpiece, Al Subh:

"I am certain that you [America] will face the mirror of your history for a long time to come. Thus you will be able to see exactly how much you have oppressed, how corrupt you are, how you have sinned - how many entities you have destroyed, how many kingdoms you have demolished! Do you remember how you turned Hiroshima and Nagasaki into piles of radioactive coals that hold death present and future for the two destroyed cities? Not a person in these cities remains who was not distorted by your fire; not an infant or youth remains who was not torn to shreds; not a bird remains who was not drowned in a sea of flame!!"

"America, Oh sword of oppression, arrogance and sin, do you remember how you crushed the humanity of man? Do you remember how the blacks lived under your wing? Can you describe to us how much humiliation, loathing, and contempt you caused those poor creatures? Their only sin was to be born to two black parents. Your white son bound their necks with the fetters of slavery, after hunting them in the jungles and on the coasts of Africa. They were born free, but were transported to the slave markets that inundated your virgin soil. And later, how terrible were the deeds you did to them?"

"Have you asked yourself about your actions against your 'original' inhabitants, the Indian, the Apaches? Your white feet crushed them and then used their name, Apache, for a helicopter bearing death, demolition, and destruction for anyone with rights, who dared to whisper in his own ear that he has those rights. This is loathsome and malignant behavior, because it made us hate the Apache Indians, without realizing that they actually were victims like us."

"America, have you ever asked yourself why you killed Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X? What crime could possibly be worse than these crimes, and why?"

"America, have you ever asked yourself how the children in the Al-Amariya sinned? Why do you pour this continuing oppression on the head of Baghdad as you do on the head of Jerusalem, on the head of Jenin, and on every head with two eyes that do not see what you see and do not walk the path of justice and your sinning hands paved for every idiotic eunuch [a reference to the leaders of Arab states] that you crown His Eminence or His Royal Highness?"

"America, have you ever asked yourself why you manufacture cluster bombs, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, biological weapons of mass destruction and the F-16? Even if we accept the claim of 'be prepared,' why do you give these weapons to any murderer, war criminal, and enemy of humanity, like Karadzic, Shamir, and Sharon? Why?"

"America, have you ever tasted the taste of horror, sorrow, and pain? This is the taste that has been our lot for so long. This is the taste that has filled our stomachs, torn our guts, and burned our skin. This is routine for us, and is carried out by those you love, with a high degree of 'professionalism.' They destroy our shacks. What happened tonight in Jenin is not very different than what happened to you."

"Every time Dick Cheney and his girlfriend Condoleeza Rice admonish us, [and] gloat at our misfortune, they incite to more [violence against us]!! We stand in line and beg Allah to give you to drink from the cup of humiliation - and behold, heaven has answered. You must think America, whether you are capable of silencing your extremism, your impudence, and your arrogance!"

"America, what have we sinned? What have we done to you?"

"Do you remember that we made it possible for you to lead us in the ways of peace!! We agreed that you would host this peace! You wasted time, and neglected the matter - which seems to us an absolute bias in favor of the Jews, when our only crime was to agree to accept you as judge and as host! Hosts do not behave this way, Oh America, unless they are cowboys [a pun in Arabic]! If only it stopped at this bias; but it has reached the point where you tightened the rope around our entity and opened the gates of the Pentagon so that every Jew could equip himself with a knife in order to slaughter us! Why?"

"America, you planted in the hearts of all men and animals the seedling of hatred of you! You never considered that the day would come when the saplings would grow and put out your eyes, even if those eyes were placed at the top of the World Trade Center, among the clouds. Those saplings grew and spread and struck at the liver of the Pentagon, the biggest and most secure site on the planet. Don't you see that the thorns have reached the eyes of your strong Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who thought that he was too strong to be hurt by the thorns of vengeance for what he did with his own hands? Perhaps you realize, after Rumsfeld fled, that he is only an ordinary man, who cannot seize the land and is not as tall as the mountains!!"

"America, why did you evacuate the biggest building in the world, and I refer to the Sears Tower, as we, the weak, do every night in order to protect ourselves from your laser-eyed missiles? Are you as frightened as we are, Oh America? Do the giants fear and flee, as the oppressed do, Oh America?"

"America, it transpires that you are weaker than the weak, and that you are as wretched as any refugee and that you forced to flee with his children, his wife, and the clothes on his back, from a village that was once on the coast of Palestine. America, where are your eyes that see ants on rocks - I refer to the CIA? Did you not see what the soul of the one who struck at you whispered - although you always claimed to be able to see what others could not? It becomes apparent that a blind eye sees only through the eyes of traitors and spies; yet men of honor have caps of invisibility and when they don them, they dress you in garments of horror and humiliation."

"America, where is your second eye, the Mossad? You always gave us the illusion that it was alert enough to see what a man sees before he falls asleep. How did the 'perpetrator' take this eye?"

"Have you asked yourself who the real perpetrator is? Allow me to answer you: Yes, it is you, America!... You closed on yourself the door of injustice, so that none could pass through it but your destroyers. Afterwards, you decided to light the fire of destiny behind the door, until the fire consumed you, Oh America! I told you once that the mosquito sucks the blood of the lion. Have you realized I was right? If not, look at your eye and see what happened to you in three spheres: the economic sphere (the World Trade Center building); the power sphere (the Pentagon); and the political sphere (the White House). Could you have imagined that what happened could have happened?"