Hamas chief Khaled Mashal. Photo: Wikipedia.

The leader of Hamas said last week that, unlike ISIS, whose “extremists kill on the basis of faith,” his organization is a “legitimate resistance movement.”

Khaled Mashal made this assertion during an exclusive interview on July 18 with Indian commercial network NDTV from his hiding place in Qatar.

Mashal also asserted that Hamas – the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip – has the right to decide on the location of its missile launches against Israel.

The approximately two-minute interview, conducted by reporters Radhika Bordia and Sreenivasan Jain, began with narration and then slipped into Q+A.

Bordia opened the segment with the following description:

In a safe house in Doha, face-to-face with one of the most wanted men in the world. Khaled Mashal’s Hamas has been compared to ISIS. Its charter suggests a violent Islamic takeover of Israel, and says that jihad is the path to that goal and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of wishes.

Mashal’s statement about why Hamas is different from the Islamic State came in response to a question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s having made a parallel between the two terrorist organizations.

A scene from Operation Protective Edge, Israeli’s war against Hamas in Gaza in the summer of 2014, was broadcast, while Bordia narrated: “But Hamas’ fighters use what some say are terrorist-like methods: exploding suicide bombs or firing rockets from civilian locations.”

He then turned to Mashal, saying, “When I was in Gaza, I actually saw from the hotel where I was staying — right next to it — two rockets were fired on two separate days by the resistance towards Israel. Now, luckily, there was no response – we filmed all of this, by the way, we showed it all on TV. But if Israel had responded, lots of innocent people who were living in those areas — ordinary Gazans — would have been killed.”

Mashal replied: “Gaza is small, condensed with occupants. [It’s] our right to choose where to fire from. We don’t use people as protective shields.”