Story highlights Hamas hopes changes will make it more palatable for Western anti-Israel groups in Europe and America to support them

But group still calls for the "liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea," which is poetic code for "the destruction of Israel"

Jonathan Cristol is a fellow at World Policy Institute and a senior fellow at the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College. You can follow him @jonathancristol. The views expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas issued "A Document of General Principles & Policies," on Monday night. This new political document purports to show that the group has"moderated." It reframes the purpose of Hamas as being engaged in an armed political struggle against occupiers, rather than a religious war against the Jews.

However, in reality, this new document represents only a minor change in tactics, not in its ultimate aims.

The original 1988 charter blends religious readings with conspiracy theories and classic anti-Semitic tropes to frame its"very great and very serious" struggle against "the Jews." It refers to "the fight with the warmongering Jews," and also educates the reader that the Zionists "gave rise to... Freemasons, the Rotary, and Lions" clubs, which they use to control the drug trade and to "annihilate Islam." The document also makes not-so-subtle allusions to killing all Jews, everywhere.

One thing Hamas has not done is track down and kill Jews at random outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories. It may be that Hamas had broader ambitions when it was founded, but in practice, it is a regional organization and prefers not to launch attacks in the many countries in which it raises funds. They are giving up a tactic that they never embraced in practice, even if they may have approved of it in theory.

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