Free Republic

In his commentary for Wednesday’s Opinion page, UC San Diego communications professor Gary Fields rebukes those who talk or write about what is happening in Gaza while offering “a very simple picture of Hamas as an implacable aggressor, and the state of Israel as an innocent victim of terror.” But nowhere in his essay does Fields detail why Israel has acted as it has in Gaza since it bulldozed Jewish settlements and withdrew soldiers from the 140-square-mile territory in 2005. The narrative he ridicules — of Israel feeling compelled to defend itself against a terrorist neighbor bent on Israel’s destruction...

Hamas traces its roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood. Sheikh Hasan Ahmed Abdel Rahman Muhammed al-Banna launched the Muslim Brothers in March 1928. The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood, which al-Banna supplied, is: "Islam is the solution, the Koran is our Constitution, Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our Leader, Jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Said Ramadan was born in 1926 in Shibin al-Kawm, a village in the Nile delta. He encountered al-Banna and joined the Muslim Brotherhood when he was 14. After graduating from Cairo University, he became al-Banna's...