Hamas has a genuine grievance in that from the tiny area of the Levant occupied by Jews prior to 1948, and on the demands of Zionist terrorist organisations, whose leaders went on to become the leaders of Israel, first a large area of the Levant was designated as Israel, a Jewish state and thereafter its expansion has continued. Since 1948 Israel has by military conquest persistently enlarged. There is a land-grab going on in the area of the Levant. So that's the first thing, and it is undeniable. You may choose to argue that conquests were legitimate, that conquerors acquired extra land by peace treaty after conquest - but you cannot honestly argue that the amount of exclusively or substantially exclusively Jewish occupied land has vastly increased.   

Nobody has succeeded in defending the others whose land has been occupied and taken, whose crops have been destroyed, whose communities have been divided by an illegal wall, and who see town after town illegally built on illegally seized land on which those others used to live and farm. Those people have been squeezed into an ever smaller space, denied the liberty to trade, and suffered the destruction of their infrastructure schools and hospitals. Are you surprised that they and their democratically elected government, Hamas, are mightily pissed off?


None of the above excuses the war by Hamas on ordinary Gazans who (if reportage can be believed, it comes very largely from non-Gazan sources) are oppressed by a Taliiban-like regime. But it explains their fury against the expropriation of their land and destruction of their homelands.


Hassan al-Banna died in 1949. His views as to the purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood may well no longer be very relevant. The designation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation is wholly irrelevant to whether the objectives of Hamas include either the creation of a Caliphate in Gaza or a larger one outside it.


It may however be worth mentioning that an effort may be made to term Hamas "freedom fighters" in that they are seeking to liberate themselves from Israel, but it would not be possible to regard the pre-Israel Zionist terrorists as "freedom fighters". They sought not to liberate any land or people, but to establish their own control over the lands of others.