00:01:18.080Are professors speaking positively about Hamas?
00:01:20.360Is this why so many billionaires are taking money that they're no longer putting in universities, publicly saying we're no longer supporting University of Pennsylvania or Harvard or Yale or many of these other places?
00:02:21.720Hamas is a spinoff, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
00:02:25.280In the late 80s, the Islamist militant group Hamas took over the Gaza Strip after defeating its rival political party, Fatah, in elections in 2006.
00:02:34.540Its rival party, Fatah, which dominates the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, and rules in the West Bank, has renounced violence.
00:02:44.300So again, just to isolate these two here, Hamas, pro-violence, Fatah, we're not violence.
00:02:49.680Okay, we have a different way of going about presenting our argument to others, okay?
00:02:53.500So Hamas' founder was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian cleric who became an activist in local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood.
00:03:00.560After dedicating his early life to Islamic scholarship in Cairo, Yassin established Hamas as the Brotherhood's political arm in Gaza in December of 1987,
00:03:07.680following the outbreak of the First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
00:03:15.820At the time, Hamas' purpose was to counter Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PIJ, another organization whose commitment to violence resisting Israel threatened to draw Palestinian support away from the Brotherhood.
00:03:27.540In 1988, Hamas established and published its charter calling for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic Palestine,
00:03:36.960and they called it, we're going to bring back Sharia law to here.
00:03:41.140We talked about this in a previous video as well.
00:03:43.160To continue, in what observers called an attempt to moderate its image, Hamas presented a new document in 2017
00:03:49.280that accepted an interim Palestinian state along the Green Line border established before the Six-Day War, but that still refused to recognize Israel.
00:03:58.140Hamas first employed suicide bombing in April of 1993, five months before PLO leader Yassir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yachak Rabin signed the Oslo court.
00:04:08.640Then, finally, the U.S. in 1997 and the European Union designated Hamas a terrorist organization because of its armed resistance against Israel,
00:04:19.540which has included suicide bombing and rocket attacks.
00:04:21.980So this category for Hamas happened in 1997.
00:04:26.600Today, Iran is one of Hamas's biggest benefactors, contributing funds, weapons, and training.
00:04:31.060Iran currently provides some $100 million annually to Hamas, PIJ, and other Palestinian groups designated as terrorist organization by the U.S.
00:04:40.280Hamas has fired rockets and mortars into Israel since the group took over the Gaza Strip in the mid-2000s.
00:04:45.360The group has also carried out incursions into Israeli territory, killing and kidnapping soldiers and civilians.
00:04:51.620Now, let's take a look at their violent history to see what they've done on the past before.
00:04:55.060Prior to its 2023 conflict, Hamas and Israel had their deadliest fighting in 2021 when Hamas fired rockets into Israel following weeks of tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem.
00:05:06.880And during the 11-day conflict, Hamas and PIJ fired more than 4,000 rockets from Gaza, killing 10 Israeli civilians, injuring more than 300 others.
00:05:17.040And Hamas reportedly coordinated with the IRGC and Lebanon's Hezbollah, again, IRGC, Iran, Hezbollah.
00:05:23.880But during the fighting and used so-called suicide drones, along with its usual arsenal of less-precise missiles, the United States and Egypt brokered a ceasefire to the conflict.
00:05:33.120So now, let's talk about Hamas' hostages.
00:05:35.160In addition to Hamas' surprise attack on October 7th, Israel's military said at least 199 people had been taken hostage by Hamas.
00:05:42.360Officials from the U.S. and other countries are determining if their citizens are among the captives.
00:05:46.500You're hearing numbers around 250 people.
00:05:49.020And even recently, Hamas came out and said, listen, if they're figuring out a way to do ceasefire, they're talking to Israel, we will negotiate to give some of the children and women hostages up if you ceasefire.
00:05:59.700They announced this, I think, on Wednesday or Thursday, they made that announcement.
00:06:17.060Hezbollah means the party of God, is what they consider themselves.
00:06:20.860Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon, where its extensive security apparatus, political organization, and social services network have fostered its reputation as a state within a state.
00:06:33.400They were founded in the chaos of 15-year Lebanese civil war, and Iran's back group is driven by its opposition to Israel and its resistance to Western influence in the Middle East,
00:06:43.660with its history carrying out global terrorist attacks.
00:06:46.400Part of Hezbollah, and in some cases the entire organization, have been designated as a terrorist group by the United States also in 1997 and by many countries.
00:06:56.100Now, when it comes down to their military strength, in the recent years, longstanding alliances with Iran and Syria have transformed Hezbollah into an increasingly effective military force,
00:07:04.980one that experts say would pose a challenge in the event of new fighting against its longtime enemy, Israel.
00:07:12.220Just to put this in perspective so you can look at it with numbers, Hamas is total roughly 40,000 soldiers is what Hamas has.
00:07:18.980Hezbollah is 150,000, nearly four times as powerful as Hamas.
00:12:38.340ISIS is a Salafi jihadist group that has conducted and inspired terrorist attacks worldwide,
00:12:43.460resulting in thousands killed or injured.
00:12:46.020In 2004, an Iraqi extremist network, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
00:12:51.040merged with Al-Qaeda to form ISIS's predecessor group called Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
00:12:55.840So, in 2013, Al-Qaeda in Iraq changed its name to ISIS and in 2014, the group separated from Al-Qaeda declared itself a caliphate and took over vast swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.
00:13:07.320So, if you're asking the question, I don't know what a caliphate is, here's the definition of caliphate.
00:13:11.660It's a political religious state comprising the Muslim community and the lands and peoples under its dominion in the centuries following the death of Prophet Muhammad.
00:13:18.840Now, in 2019, an international coalition ejected ISIS from its last stronghold in Syria,
00:13:24.860although the group continues to operate clandestinely there and in Iraq.
00:13:29.760Despite losing many of its leaders in its territory, ISIS remains capable of conducting insurgent operations in Iraq and Syria,
00:13:36.440while overseeing at least 19 branches and networks in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
00:13:40.680And, by the way, when you look at size, tier one terrorist organization, some would say it's Hezbollah, 150,000 of them, right?