The closure on Monday, 5 November, of Hamas's offices in Damascus should be viewed as a badge of honor for the Palestinian Islamic liberation movement. It shows that Hamas is siding with the Syrian people who have been struggling to rid themselves and their thoroughly tormented country of one of the most murderous and thuggish regimes under the sun. It also shows that Hamas has finally decided to discount certain parochial political considerations in favor of a morally credible stance that is free from cheap opportunism, moral ambiguity and unconscionable double-standards. Some short-sighted Palestinians might argue that Hamas should have sought a certain modus vivendi with the sectarian regime in Damascus, which is based on the small esoteric Alawite sect. However, such a measure, though it may be temporarily expedient from the Machiavellian view point, would be immensely costly from the moral and Islamic perspectives. Moreover, it would imprint on Hamas an indelible mark of shame, having, God forbid, sided with the murderous regime against millions of Syrians struggling for freedom and dignity. True Muslims would never side with oppressors against the oppressed or with criminals against their victims. Hamas is a liberation movement, par excellence. As such, it must always take the right decisions and make the right choices, irrespective of small and secondary political calculations here and there. On the Day of Judgment, every one of us will be asked why we allowed the Syrian genocide to happen. We will be asked why we did virtually nothing to stop it. And those amongst us who may have helped the thuggish regime of Bashar al-Assad in his war of extermination against the Syrian people will have the following phrase imprinted on his forehead: "having no hope in receiving Allah's mercy." The secularists and atheists may ridicule us for speaking this way. Well, most of these people don't believe in God, a hereafter, or a Day of Judgment. But we are Muslim and must not indulge in actions or behaviors that would make us think or behave in ways incompatible with our Islamic beliefs and values. In the meantime, the murderous regime of Bashar el Assad continues to murder Palestinian refugees all over Syria, either because they are suspected of sympathizing with the revolution or because they refuse to carry out orders to massacre their Syrian brothers and neighbors. In the final analysis, we are speaking about a satanic regime that combines German Nazism and Communist Stalinism, a regime that would stop at nothing in order to keep its sect and family in power. The uninterrupted cycle of atrocities against Palestinian refugees in Syria at the hands of Assad's Shabbiha or thugs and other cutthroats should not surprise us at all. At the end of the day, a regime that doesn't hesitate to bomb and destroy its towns and villages and slaughter its own citizens, even en mass, will not flinch from doing the same thing and more to Palestinian refugees living in Syria. The criminal regime never stops ranting and babbling about its alleged resistance to Israeli and American conspiracies. Fortunately, these obscene lies will no longer deceive the bulk of Arabs and Muslims who have finally discovered the regime's true nature. The evil regime may continue to rave and rant about its mythical resistance for ever. But the outstanding truth which no honest person under the sun can deny is that the regime has been using and is using the huge stockpile of weapons purchased for the purpose of fighting Israel and liberating the occupied Golan heights, to destroy Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Diraa and other Syrian cities. Indeed, instead of resisting Israel, the regime is massacring its own people in order to remain in power and keep the jackboots of its sectarian thugs and murderers pressed for ever against the throats and necks of Syrian, men, woman and children. And I'm not speaking metaphorically. Furthermore, the last thing the just Palestinian cause needs is support and backing from a manifestly murderous and nefarious regime, which would form a harmonious camaraderie with the likes of Ariel Sharon, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. We Palestinians don't need and don't ask for support from a regime that is swimming in a sea of blood of its own people. Our fate and kismet always lie with the people, not with regimes, especially tyrannical regimes that live on murder and thrive on bloodshed. Therefore, Hamas should be lauded for taking the morally correct decision of severing ties with the Hitlerian regime of Bashar el-Assad. There are likely some opportunistic people here and there who would try to take advantage of the severance of relations between Hamas and the despicable Alawite regime in order to serve their own dubious agendas. Well, the barking of dogs, whether abroad or at our home turf, shouldn't distract us from taking the right decision and choosing the right choice. Hamas is not demanded or required to take an active part in the Syrian revolution. Hamas is fighting its own struggle against the mother of all terrorist regimes, Israel. Now, the Syrian regime is joining Israel as an additional foe of the Palestinian people. Needless to say, the daily executions and murder of Palestinian refugees at al-Yarmouk camp and elsewhere in Syria should give the Alawite junta an authentic certificate of good conduct, especially in the eyes of Zionist circles both in Tel Aviv and Washington. This is while the virulent regime keeps up the pornographic lie, that it is killing the Palestinians for the sake of Palestine. by Khalid Amayreh