A few Palestinians said that the Hamas kidnapping of three Israeli yeshiva students was " no worse" than what Israel has been doing to Palestinians.

I beg to differ.

Others claimed that the kidnappings were "unconfirmed" and still others said it was a "Zionist plot" to make the Palestinians look bad.

These same Palestinians offering excuses were, only last week, calling Israel a "terrorist apartheid state of war criminals." I guess that means Hamas are terrorist apartheid state war criminals, too, because if they are no worse, then they are no better.

The point is that even victims of brutality can stand up and speak out against atrocities committed in anger in their own name. If they can't, then you must question their own legitimacy for justice.

You can't claim to want peace but then turn around and embrace, or enable, violence, especially the despicable kind of violence that has characterized the actions of the Islamic religious fanatics over the past 21 years since the Oslo Peace Accords. Suicide bombings. The intentional murder of civilians and children. Random killings out of rage and hatred.

Hamas has done everything to destroy the peace process, including committing its own atrocities that do nothing to free Palestine but do a lot to fuel Israel's right-wing fanaticism and extremists. This undermines the credibility of the peace movement — the goal of Hamas.

What Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas must now do is expel Hamas from his government, destroy the Hamas terrorist network, and imprison all the Hamas leaders.

Hamas can't claim to be a part of a unity government but act unilaterally to commit acts of violence and war crimes. Hamas and the secular and religious extremists are making a mockery of the PNA and of Palestinian rights.

Hamas is not interested in peace or the two-state solution, the only plan that can salvage Palestinian Nationalism and the noble dream of a Palestinian state. It is interested in biding time until it can strike and not only destroy Israel, but also destroy the secular Arab movement which is the true heir to nearly two millennium of Arab cultural heritage.

It's true that Israel has committed war crimes, killing innocent civilians in its war with the Palestinian extremists. Israel can prevent the murder of innocent civilians, but they don't. They are driven by their own extremist government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The fact that Netanyahu has been elected by the Israeli population proves that Israeli society embraces his racist, anti-Palestinian hatred.

How do you make peace with a monster like Netanyahu?

Well one way is to not copy these same war crimes. The hypocrisy in the Palestinian community is no less a war crime than the murder by Israeli soldiers of innocent civilians. And when an organization that claims to be a part of the Palestinian government commits a war crime of its own by kidnapping children, then that organization must be destroyed.

Hamas leaders said they wanted to become a part of the Palestinian government, creating the unity government. But the truth is that Hamas never becomes a part of anything. It is all or nothing for Hamas. Entering the government of the Palestine National Authority was just a strategy to infect the PNA with the Islamic extremist cancer that is spreading throughout the Middle East.

It must be stopped.

There is no uncertainty in the history of Hamas or its true intentions. The organization is driven by violence. It imposes oppressive restrictions on its own people and on others.

Its anti-Christian policies are notorious, but most Palestinians and Arabs pretend that they don't exist, hoping that they might go away if no one speaks of them.

But no matter how deeply you bury your head in the sand, the threat of Islamic extremism will not disappear on its own. The Arab world needs to be aggressive and to destroy the extremist sickness that is slowly taking over Islamic activism.

And the fight against Islamic extremism must start in the Gaza Strip with Hamas. As long as Hamas has power, the Palestinians have no future. There will never be a Palestinian state. The goal of Hamas it not to establish a Palestinian state, instead they want to establish another caliphate, an ummah of religious terrorism that will prohibit people from freedom.

Israel's refusal to embrace Palestinian statehood is a reality that has to be confronted. But Israel's extremism cannot be defeated until the Arabs defeat their own extremist hatred first.

If Palestinians can eliminate Hamas and the religious extremism that it represents, then they might be able to eliminate the extremism that has Israel in a headlock.

The idea that the Arabs can battle and defeat Israel, and then establish a democratic state where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live together in equality and peace is a ridiculous notion that exists nowhere on this planet.

The only hope for Palestine is to defeat the rising Islamic religious extremism and then overcome Israel's right-wing fanaticism. One doesn't happen without the other. There is no victory in Palestine without the defeat of Hamas and the religious extremist cancer that it represents.

And shame on those Palestinians who claim to want justice and peace, but who sit back silently in the face of this latest atrocity against civilians and children. If Israelis are doing the same, then speak out against it. But don't enable extremists to commit heinous atrocities in the name of Palestine.

Ray Hanania is an award-winning Palestinian-American columnist managing editor of The Arab Daily News atwww.TheArabDailyNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @RayHanania. To find out more about Ray Hanania and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visitwww.creators.com.