Hezbollah and Hamas. Now which is which cat?

Over at The New Republic, the blog posters are drooling over Jeffrey Goldberg's op-ed piece in the New York times...and rightly so.  It's entertaining, informative, relevant and incisive.  I highly recommend it, especially if you are like me and are not so clear on the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas.

Hezbollah and Hamas are Islamic political and paramilitary organizations.  They don't like Israel, hate Jews, commit terrorism and armed strikes against both the Israeli army and civilian population, get money and weapons from Iran, and seek to remove Jews from "occupied Palestine."  

They also both start with "H," which is why I have problems distinguishing them in my head.  Jeffry Goldberg's op-ed does a good job of clarifying the differences between the two (and an excellent job of explaining the mindset behind each group.  Seriously.  It's good.  Read it.).  

I analogize my confusion to the T.S. Eliot poem "Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer" which tells the tale of two thieving and destructive cats who act alone and sometimes in concert and you never know for sure which cat did what.

They would go through the house like a hurricane, and no sober person could take his oath
Was it Mungojerrie -- or Rumpleteazer? or could you have sworn that it mightn't be both?

And when you heard a dining-room smash
Or up from the pantry there came a loud crash
Or down from the library came a loud ping
From a vase which was commonly said to be Ming --

Then the family would say: ‘Now which was which cat?
It was Mungojerrie! and Rumpelteazer!’ -- And there's nothing at all to be done about that!

Not that Hezbollah and Hamas are anything like those two horrible (yet somehow lovable cats), they are worse, terrifyingly worse.  It's just that Hezbollah and Hamas inspire a similar confusion in my head as to which is which destructive quasi political terrorist organization.

So here is an over-simplified Hezbollah/Hamas cheat sheet for my head: 

• Hezbollah is Lebanese and shoots at Israel from its bases in Lebanon.
• Hamas is Palestinian and shoots at Israel from within Israel.
• Hezbollah is fanatically Shia.  (Shia = version of Islam, Shia do not get along with Sunnis).
• Hamas is fanatically Sunni.  (Sunni = version of Islam, Sunnis do not get along with Shia).
  
• They are both bad.

And sadly it seems, "there's nothing at all to be done about that!"