Portraying Israeli civilians as weak and cowardly is part of a pattern by Hamas and Fatah Palestinian Authority figures. As Qassam rocket strikes continue in the Israeli city of Sderot, Hamas gloats over the fear among the city’s residents.

The front page of the Hamas-controlled official paper, Al-Risalah, flaunts a photo of Israeli civilians in Sderot hiding under a car during a rocket strike. A large caption over the photo reads “Fleeing from Qassam.”

The related article includes another photo of a crying Israeli woman in shock after a rocket attack, with the caption, “A settler cries in Sderot moments after a rocket strike by the resistance.” Note that all Israelis, even within the 1967 borders, are presented as "settlers" – a term Palestinians use to denote illegitimacy of Israel´s existence.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

Headline: “The resistance threatened for more: Al-Qassam rockets devastate settlements and force its residents to leave”

“…dozens of the residents of Sderot city barged into the office of the mayor, Eli Moyal, requesting to be evacuated from the city, exposed to Palestinian rocket strikes…
The Israeli ministry of war [sic] evacuated over a thousand people and transferred them from the city of Sderot to vacation resorts, which it [the ministry] rented for that purpose. This in spite of the government’s official announcement of its refusal to evacuate the [residents of] the city…”
[Al-Risalah, May 21, 2007]

The pride and the gloating expressed by Hamas, seeing Israeli civilians as weak and afraid, continue the pattern of similar sentiments expressed by previous Palestinian leaders.

Ahmad Yassin, founder and former head of Hamas, said in 2004: “Sharon said yesterday that ´Nezarim [Israeli town in Gaza Strip] is [like] Tel Aviv.´ Today he says: ´The day is near when we will leave Gaza.´ That’s it, it’s lost, Tel Aviv is gone. They are defeated, they have no words left… When this process will end, they will become a state with no ability, helpless. They established a state to protect the Jews from death and murder. If death and murder chase them in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Netanya and everywhere among them, then they will say: ´What am I doing here? I founded a state to protect me from death, and if death chases me, I want to flee and go back to Europe and America.”
[broadcast on Al-Aqsa TV, March 2007]

About 2,500 out of Sderot’s 20,000 residents have left the city – there was no official evacuation – due to persistent rocket attacks. Palestinians have fired 1,600 rockets since Israel left the Gaza Strip in August 2005. (PMW.ORG.IL 05/31/07)