cbs and abc did not have me on at all, not even at 3:00 a.m. even though it was a number one best year times best seller. nbc only had me on after the book slipped out of first place, this was like 20 weeks after it hit the charts, 20 weeks and five months, and only if i came on with michael moore. ..

transferred to the west bank. some have gone into egypt but what we do know is that there are a great numbers who have been tortured. there were 181 fatah members listed by both, you know, human rights organizations and the fatah factions itself that were killed or injured. and we continue to see that people are being pulled off the streets. they will have their mustaches shaved, their heads shaves, broken legs and indications of torture and fatah members along with christians and other minorities in gaza express their

concern of their safety. >> and in response to the rocket missile attacks. what about the other way around? a hamas member in the west bank is he in as much danger? >> absolutely. that's one of the things that has been unreported. right now we see the united states putting all of its legs in one basket saying that fatah is the peaceful alternative to hamas which is, of course, you know, cast here in the united states as an islamist suicide bombing that continues to violate human rights up and down but what we see right now is fatah is also engaging in a lot of the same acts of violence that hamas is, acts of retribution. even today i was reading in one of the palestinian sites that i like to mind regularly. four people were kidnapped from opposite factions just today so, you know, this continues to happen and on top of that it's not easy to be a member in the

west bank because the help that the fatah faction is getting from israel in terms of counterterrorism operations and, you know, trying to clean up the streets, you know, the bottom line here is that israel and the united states and the international community and the if a at that faction are interested in a stable, peaceful west bank and that would not include the presence of hamas. >> we have not it seems to me as somebody who reads the press assiduously seems very much about this war, about these killings and about these torture and the human rights violations in the media. we haven't seen as much certainly it seems to me, and you tell me if i'm wrong from human rights watch and other ngos it seems they haven't been focused on it or that the media has certainly not to the extent we focus on the west on israel and whatever it does in gaza in the west bank. >> you raised two points. the human rights organizations have been fairly goods. human rights watch has done a good job. there's a palestinian center for

human rights which has also done some good work. the red cross has done a little bit but there's been regular reports of, you know, chastising israel for the force and the inter-palestinian warfare. and there have been good reports on that but i was struck by the first week of coverage the operation which i just discussed the headlines they were huge and they were splashed everywhere talking about israelis, you know, going into the gaza strip or bombing the gaza strip and if you compare the casualties, you compare the kind of violation, you know -- i mean, it just the palestinian war that broke out in june of '07 just paled in comparison to this arab-israeli conflict and i think it underscores a point that i talk about in my book and that is that i think it's very easy for those in our mainstream media to cover the arab-israeli conflict.

it's an easy story. we know that it sells and we know that it can make headlines and grab people's attention. to go and try to cover the palestinian conflict is something that is a lot moreh.y challenging. it requires journalists going into dangerous places. it requires them to know the landscape. it actually means knowing the right people to bring you into these places who actually show you that hamas and fatah are in conflict. i mean, one of the things that i try to underscore throughout the book is that the palestinians are ashamed of this conflict. i mean, this really destroys the notion of a palestinian national identity. something that countless professors and media analysts continue to talk about. the palestinians are one. the palestinians try to cover this up. they do not want the world to know about this so it is much harder as a journalist to cover this conflict and as a result i think it's really -- it's a factor of laziness if you rely on fixers you're not getting get to the story. >> speaking as a former foreign

correspondent, very difficult and dangerous to go into a place like gaza without a fixer, without a minder, without somebody who will afford you some protection, maybe translates for you. but also if you report on this and your stories displease people it's not challenging you're in physical danger? >> that's something reporters without borders have talked about. they released a report talking about the multiple violations that have taken place inside the gaza strip right now. hamas continues to ban journalists that they don't approve of, who have been critical of hamas in the past. they have banned stories that have run concert to the palestinian national interest. they have harassed people. they have kidnapped people. german journalists, other europeans have been yanked out of their offices and beaten for coverage that they have provided to, you know, their populations at home. so this also continues to be a big challenge and just trying to figure out what exactly is happening in the gaza strip, hamas continues to make it more

difficult to cover but i don't think that that necessarily excuses how our mainstream media has covered it thus far. if i was able to write a book of some 250 pages and there has been a lot since this came out in november, you know, i just think there could probably be more in the mainstream covering this. >> let's go back a little bit. you mentioned that hamas is a splinter of the muslim brotherhood. talk a little bit about the muslim brotherhood and the creation of hamas and how it came about. >> muslim brotherhood was founded in the late 1920s and it was created as sort of an muslim revival organization. islam needed to reign supreme again and its days of being subrogated by the west needed to end and islam needed to rise to its former glory.

this was exceedingly popular in egypt in the late 1920s and '30s and the ideology spread throughout the muslim world. it actually reached palestinian territories by the early to mid-1940s. and is now probably the largest islamist organization in the world. it is a dangerous organization in that it purports to be nonviolent but we also know that a lot of its splinter organizations and charities will continue to fund terrorist causes around the world. and there are a number of organizations here in the united states that call attention to the dangers of the muslim brotherhood. hudson had a event on this recently in washington. now, as far as hamas is concerned, it was founded by a man who was a paraplegic who worked with the muslim brotherhood in the 1960s in egypt. he came back to the territories in the '70s and created an

organization. what's interesting about this it was a largely an organization of charity and nursery schools and all kinds of things for the palestinian people and the israelis for their part in the '70s and '80s decided to throw their weight behind this organization as a counter to the popularity of fatah. fatah, of course, at that time under the control of yasser arafat was responsible for scores of acts of terrorism around the world and the israelis desperately sought to find an alternative, a nonviolent alternative that could capture the imagination of the palestinian people. so the israelis sort of threw their support behind them and this is a classic case of blow-back that we saw of the mujahedeen and their ranks became members of the taliban and al-qaeda. this happened with hamas as well. so by the time hamas was formed in the late 1980s they had

gotten a full head of steam and they enjoyed a immunity from the israeli and this is one of the reasons why there is a significant social infrastructure that hamas enjoys today. hamas is not only popular in the territories because of its suicide bombing operations which by the way are very popular among the palestinians but the fact that they have this infrastructure, this social infrastructure has lent legitimacy for those who wish to ignore the fact that they are responsible for endless acts of bloodshed. >> here's what puzzles me. i think of the israelis as being sophisticated about their neighbors. after all about 20% of israeli citizens are arabs and muslims. how could they not understand that an organization that derived from the muslim brotherhood could not in the end be an ally of an organization like hamas, an organization from the muslim brotherhood would have to at the end say, look, every inch of land that muslims

have ever conquered must remain. infidels should not have such territory as the basis. >> it was a gross miscalculation on the part of the israelis. it was part of one of their biggest mistakes. that and actually allowing elections to go through in january of '06. both of those -- and i identify those both in the book as being gross miscalculations on the part of the israelis. they should have been known better. and the leader was paraplegic and appeared not to be dangerous and his organization did not appear to be dangerus because it was involved in charitable services. if you look at the ideology it should have been clear and this is something the israeli wish they could take back. >> to what extent was it something the israelis thought was a good idea and to what extent were they pressured by the u.s. and then i think of the u.s. government often not

understanding groups like hamas as well as it should but i think of the israelis as normally being more sophisticated. >> you have to remember this was the heyday of the bush doctrine which was encouraging the muslim world to democratize and elections were thought of as a good thing no matter what. and, you know, we saw already that in lebanon, that things were sort of beginning to change and the idea was and in iraq and in afghanistan the idea was that perhaps that same change could be brought to the palestinians, but underlying all of this was the fact that a pollster who's probably the only real pollster within the palestinians was churning out poll after poll indicating that fatah was going to win so there didn't seem to be a lot of risk for the israelis. the israelis thought we'll support the elections. it will make us look like good guys and the u.s. look like good guys and in the end the palestinians will choose the less violent of the two factions

that are up for election. so, you know, what we continue to see, hey, this is going to happen. fatah is going to win by a large margin. as a matter of fact, after the elections, the night that the elections took place members were driving around in trucks shooting in the air celebrating their victory. and then the following morning it was hamas that was going around shooting in the air. now, there are two explanations for the way these polls shook out. one was you that -- and you can read this in a book on hamas that hamas deliberately sought to derail the process. in other words, hamas wanted to tell all the pollsters that its members were actually voting for fatah and they were trying to just obfuskate what the actual -- or the election polls would be. and that they were seeking to undermine the polls.

i don't buy the second but i think the basic fact here is that polls in the territories are probably not very reliable. i don't know what the margin of error is. but i wouldn't trust them further than i could throw them. you know, the idea that you're going to get the straight answer from palestinians who are, you know, just probably concerned with trying to live day-to-day or are supporting violent organizations that aren't sure which one they're going to choose, this makes, i think, trying to figure out what the end result of elections are going to be very difficult. >> here's something else we have difficulty understanding is that in america in the west we tend to see ideology and religion on the history when you talk about a group like hamas and you tell me if i'm wrong that religion and ideology are fused and it cannot be broken apart. and you see that very clearly, i think, in the hamas charter which is one might say admirably candid and explicit about its aims. it makes it very clear -- and a hamas smokes men they see no

possibility as a political position but as a religious position they cannot see the possibility of peace with israel, of allowing israelis to be their neighbor or in many cases allowing israelis and jews even to remain in any way in the middle east. >> you're right. they're very candid and their case is very compelling. they fuse islam, islamism and palestinian nationalism all together in a tight package when they say jihad is an imperative in order to liberate palestine and then once that happens, palestine will become part of a larger caliphate which is something the muslim brotherhood advocates for. and, you know, one of the other things that i think that they've done is because they have adhered to this charter, they've been very honest about it all the way through, the palestinian people trust them. they seem more honest. you know, particularly compared to fatah which by the way the fatah charter openly calls for the destruction of the state of israel but is more secular and nobody can really tell exactly

where fatah stands, you know, on the one hand they're negotiating with israel and talking about peace and living side-by-side with the israelis and then the next minute they're launching into fatah in october of 2000. you have the fatah mainstream which is more secular and more moderate but then you've got the martyrs brigade which is a spinoff of the fatah organization so nobody -- >> and it's a clearly religious -- they refer to the mosque and it's on the national basis not on the aspirations -- >> and i had brigade is crafted in hamas. this is fatah's way of trying to compete with hamas in the late 1990s as hamas popularity -- >> religious product line. >> that's right. you know, you need to rebrand yourself or at least create a mini brand within the organization so that islamists are not drawn into the hamas camp. >> so on what basis would the

brigade oppose somebody from hamas since ideologically religious leader are almost identical. >> they know who pay their salary and their family and clan has been long affiliated with hamas. if you're in the more radical strain of fatah, you're going to, you know, perhaps support this organization or its activities. >> that brings us to this, the muslim brotherhood is sunni. hamas is sunni. fatah is sunni. yet the biggest support of hamas appears to be the islamic regime in tehran. that is shia. how many years have we heard experts tell us that shia and sunni could not possibly cooperate on any realistic level because the religious identical line between them is so deep and here you have it seems as i understand it, the mullahs of tehran as the principal backers of hamas. >> well, i wrote an article about this for commentary magazine back in february.

and it stems from this. that when hamas was created, this immediately appealed to iran. iran was steadfastly opposed to the oslo process. did not want to see the palestinians make peace with israel. and found a faction that steadfastly opposed it as well so began to throw money in their direction. now, this shiite/sunni divide played a factor in the early goings because there was this sort of inherent distrust between these different sects within islam but over the years, we saw hamas, palestinians islamic jihad other rejectionist groups rely upon iran for operational support for weapons, for financing in order to attack israel and this was their common goal and this is where really they found ways of working together. i would also add that iran actively drove a sort of a stake between the palestinian factions between hamas and fatah. iran openly called for arafat's

assassination which appealed to certain members within hamas. and we sort of saw this animosity grow over time due to the fact that hamas was really getting the support from iran and fatah was not. that fatah was sort of -- was being made fun of as sellouts so to speak by iran. but the real pivotal point -- actually there are probably two pivotal points was the issue in 2000. as arafat declared war and the war in israel we saw iran throw more support toward hamas even though fatah was actively engaged in war you began to see hamas sort of outflank the fatah position of going into war. initially the two worked together. but then hamas realized, hey, we can do this on our own with iranian assistance but really the real key event was when saudi arabia determined that it no longer wanted to support hamas.

this was in 2004 as we all recall there were a series of attacks that took place inside the saudi kingdom. al-qaeda of the arabian peninsula and an affiliate group of al-qaeda began to launch attacks throughout the kingdom. and it was at this point that the saudis realized their support for islamist organizations for violent organizations was a liability. so they began to cut back and as they began to cut back, specifically, with hamas, iran rushed to fill the void. and began to provide hamas with more funds and more assistance and then by the time the elections took place in january of '06 and sanctions were put in place by the west, it was iran that completely filled whatever, you know, hamas was not getting from outside actors. >> i'll ask you one more question and then i'm going to begin to go to the audience for questions as well even though i have about 30 more questions here and about 40 more in my head and that is you also have at this point and the interesting predicament that saudi arabia and