To the Editor:

Re: “Rally Protests Hamas Rule, Calls For Peace,” News, Feb. 24

Yesterday’s article “Rally Protests Hamas Rule, Calls For Peace” quoted me as saying that “Hamas is not democratically elected; they have seized control.” In seeming contradiction to my assertion, the article went on to immediately cite the Washington Post saying that Hamas had, in fact, won a majority of the Palestinian parliament in democratic elections in the Gaza strip.

Allow me to clarify: Although democratic elections did give Hamas a majority of the Palestinian parliament in 2006, they did not give Hamas executive control of the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. Control over both remained with President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas seized executive control of Gaza in 2007 by illegally purging President Abbas’s Fatah party in a bloody military coup described by Sarah Leah Witson, Middle Easter Director of Human Rights Watch, as a “... brutal [assault] on the most fundamental humanitarian principles. The murder of civilians not engaged in hostilities and the willful killing of captives are war crimes, pure and simple.”

Democratic? Hardly.

Additionally, the Hamas regime controlling Gaza continually deprives Gazan Palestinians of fundamental human rights. For example, according to Charles Levinson in England’s The Telegraph, human rights groups and

Gazans accuse Hamas of forcefully suppressing dissent through criminal means, including torture, political detentions and firing on unarmed protesters who object to Hamas policies.

Yigal M. Gross law ’10