Global General

Hamas releases cartoon about captured Israeli

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-04-26 09:15
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The father screams, then wakes up, finding himself sitting at a bus stop. A screen text reads: "There is still hope."

Noam Schalit called the film "psychological warfare" and urged Hamas to reach a deal with Israel in order to ease an Israeli-Egyptian blockade that has made life hard for the 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

"Hamas leaders would do better if instead of producing films and performances, they would worry about the real interests of the Palestinian prisoners and the ordinary citizens of Gaza who have been held hostage by their leaders for a long time," he said in a statement.

Hamas has placed considerable emphasis on expanding its media machine since seizing control of Gaza in 2007, ousting forces loyal to its Western-backed rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Last year, the group released its first feature film, an action-packed homage to a top militant.

Hamas also has produced cartoons before, including a jihad-loving mouse for a children's show. Last year, a short cartoon showed Schalit strapped to a chair, pleading with a Palestinian boy to set him free. The boy refused, saying he had relatives in Israeli prisons.

Nashat al-Aqtash, media professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank, said Hamas has invested in media production as an easy way to spread its ideology -- a tactic also used by other militant groups.

Cheaper technology has made it easier to produce animated films, which can be widely distributed on the Internet while keeping their creators' identities secret, al-Aqtash said.

Hamas declined to say who made Sunday's film.

Israelis criticized the film for exploiting the Schalit family's pain. The family's plight has struck a chord with Jewish Israelis, most of whom perform mandatory military service and feel the same could have happened to anyone's son.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the film demonstrated Hamas' "terrorist and cruel character."

Others noted that the video was released just two days after Israel permitted the daughter of Hamas' top security official in Gaza to pass though Israel on her way to seek urgent medical treatment in Jordan.

The daughter of Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hamad left Gaza on Friday for an Israeli hospital, where she was airlifted to Jordan, Israeli and Jordanian officials said Sunday.

Jordanian officials declined to discuss Elham Fathi Hamad's treatment but said Jordan's King Abdullah II personally appealed to Israel so the woman, who is in her 20s, could make the rare medical trip through Israel.

Hamad once headed the armed wing of Hamas that released the Schalit video. He now oversees all of Hamas' security forces.

Nir Hefez, media adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the video's timing "attests, more than anything, to the character of this terrorist organization."

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