Is Hamas left-wing or right-wing? 

I ask this question because Hamas is openly anti-Semitic in its call for the destruction of Israel and its attitude toward Jews.  This is an extract from the Hamas charter which quotes the openly anti-Semitic passage from the Hadith:

### Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say TO Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).  ###

There has been much talk of left-wing and right-wing anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions.  I dispute the argument that Hamas is outside of conventional left-wing and right-wing politics in the American and European political spectrum.   In common with right-wing European and American political parties, Hamas is opposed to the separation of religion from the state, it is against gay and lesbian rights, it is anti-socialist, it gets its support from fundamentalist religious groups, it believes in book censorship,  it is intolerant towards other religions and cultures (a mirror of the “Christian America” that so many right-wingers here espouse), and it restricts the role of women in society.   Hamas’s anti-democratic stance and severe limits on freedom of speech are more extreme forms of some right-wing forms of government censorship, voter suppression, and judicial takeover practiced in some Western democracies.

Hamas continues in the right-wing path of such religiously based entities as the Catholic church and modern Sudi Arabia. For example, the Catholic church placed Karl Marx’s works on its index of prohibited books but never placed Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” on that list.   Poland and India are great examples of religiously inclined autocratic societies, as is Hamas.

I conclude that Hamas is a right-wing organization and its anti-Semitism is therefore an expression of right-wing anti-Semitism.