A wave of terror that washed over France this week, leaving 17 victims dead, has apparently drawn condemnation from Hamas, the same group that controls the Gaza Strip and has been designated a terrorist organization by most of the West.
There is no “justification for killing innocents,” Hamas reportedly said in a statement, according to Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Likely Islamic terrorists attacked the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, killing 10 journalists and two police officers. Authorities believe the precise and deadly massacre was in retaliation for the magazine’s repeated mocking of Islam and Muhammad.
Hamas, which pledges in its charter to wipe Israel off the planet, reportedly said in its statement that it “condemns the attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine and insists on the fact that differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder.”
Following the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, a police officer was shot and four French citizens were killed at a kosher supermarket within city limits, bringing the death total this week to 17.
“[Hamas] stresses that its position on the latest events in Paris is in line with the statement issued by the International Union of Muslim Scholars which condemned the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and that any differences in opinion are no justification for killing innocents,” the Palestinian Islamist group reportedly said.
The Hamas statement also reportedly said Israel’s leaders should be tried for war crimes and berated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “helpless attempts” to draw comparisons between “the resistance of our people from one side and the terrorism across the world in the other side.”
The Hamas statement apparently makes no mention of the Friday’s hostage crises at a Parisian kosher supermarket.
Only excerpts from Hamas’ supposed statement were widely circulated Saturday by multiple news organizations, with the majority of them attributing the excerpts to AFP.
Reuters, like AFP, published only excerpts of the Hamas statement.
The Washington Examiner contacted both AFP and Reuters and requested a copy of the complete statement. Neither news organization has responded to this request.
