A US organisation dedicated to fighting extremism and bigotry has launched a high-profile campaign calling the world to "see Hamas for what it is" and highlighting the terrorist group's antisemitic ideology.
The Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) advertisements, featured today in the New York Times and on Friday in both The Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune, charged described Hamas as "an extremist organisation that uses classic antisemitism to justify the elimination of Israel."
Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL , said the campaign was "in response to the newly forged alliance between Fatah and Hamas".
"It calls on Palestinian leadership and the international community to demand that Hamas renounce antisemitism."
The ADL said it wanted this to be added to the conditions for negotiating with Hamas set by the Quartet on the Middle East.
Hamas should "renounce the antisemitism inherent in Hamas' founding ideology, and expunge from its charter all elements of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and rhetoric" said the ADL.
"Hamas' ideology is based on age-old, classic antisemitic myths. The founding covenant of Hamas is committed not only to the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in its place, but is replete with raw, unadulterated Jew-hatred."
President Barack Obama is set to make a speech on the Middle East later today, before meeting Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Washington tomorrow.
