Written by Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Perhaps you remember the demonstrations during the Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, when protesters proudly carried placards announcing "We are all Hizbullah". Over at Z Word, you can admire the updated version: "We are Hamas" - a slogan that, as Ben Cohen rightly observes, was "entirely predictable". What Hamas - and therefore the people who identify so enthusiastically with the Islamist group - really stand for has been gruesomely illustrated in the past few days.

Last week, an Israeli air strike targeted and killed Nizar Rayyan (sometimes also spelled Ghayan). He was a Hamas military commander who was regarded as one of the most popular and influential Hamas leaders in Gaza; in addition, he served as a "spiritual" leader for Hamas's armed wing and taught at the Islamic University in Gaza City, where his students reportedly revered him as a prominent Muslim scholar.

What Rayyan taught his students, and what he preached, is described in a post on Jeffrey Goldberg's blog at the Atlantic:

In particular, Rayyan was interested in the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, with a special interest in hadith that painted Jews in a negative light. ... This is what he said when I asked him if he could envision a 50-year hudna (or cease-fire) with Israel: 'The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don't need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel.' There is no chance, he said, that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East. 'Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God.'"

And make no mistake: Rayyan was a man who didn't just preach hatred against Israel, he practiced it, and nothing was dearer to him than a dead Israeli: In 2001, he sent one of his sons to carry out a suicide attack in Gush Katif's Elei Sinai settlement.

That's what the people who march under a banner proclaiming "We are Hamas" identify with. And this is also what they identify with: as Khaled Abu Toameh reports, "Hamas militiamen had been assaulting many Fatah activists since the beginning of the operation last Saturday ... at least 75 activists were shot in the legs while others had their hands broken ... sources close to Hamas revealed over the weekend that the movement had 'executed' more than 35 Palestinians who were suspected of collaborating with Israel and were being held in various Hamas security installations."

And this, too, is what it means to identify with Hamas: reportedly, before striking Rayyan's house, "the IDF tried to warn his family about the imminent attack and urged them to evacuate the place, but they refused to do so." As a result, apparently at least two of his four wives and several of his 12 children were killed in the airstrike.

We can only speculate if Rayyan and his wives sought to attain the "martyrdom" he had always glorified, or if Rayyan hoped that his wives and children would serve as "human shields" and deter the Israeli military from striking his house, which, according to the IDF, "was used as massive weapons storage facility, as well as a military communications center. Located underneath the house was an escape tunnel for terror operatives of Hamas's military branch."

Bradley Burston has an interesting take on this: he explains that Rayyan firmly believed that whatever Israel did to Hamas, Hamas would win: "If you kill us, we will become martyrs, the most beloved of God and the Palestinian people, and we will win. If you refrain from killing us, whether from fear or political expedience or moral considerations, we have only cemented our victory."

Rayyan devoted his life to teaching hatred and preaching hatred and glorifying the violent death that is courted in the pursuit of this hatred. This is what Hamas, this is what Islamism stands for. Those who accuse Israel of using "disproportionate force" against Hamas would do well to acknowledge this instead of lending indirect support to people like Rayyan by pretending that somehow - if Israel only tried hard enough and was willing to make enough concessions - such people could be cajoled into "moderation" and peaceful coexistence.