Criticising Hamas
JVL Introduction
This article by Amira Hass, unyielding in her opposition to the bombing of Gaza, is uncompromising in arguing against those who find reasons of one sort or another for not unambiguously condemning Hamas for its awful mass murder on 7th October.
I suspect she is thinking of some on the US left (whom Peter Beinart has taken to task here). It’s rather unfair in relation to the British left which (with dishonourable exceptions) has overwhelmingly been better than Hass suggests and the Jewish left very good – Naamod, IJV, JJP, JSG, ourselves – condemning but putting into context at the same time.
Hass reminds us that the left has traditionally argued that liberation movements should not be dragged into terrorist acts against civilians for reasons that are moral as well as strategic. So it is worth reading through the range of reasons offered for not doing quite the right thing on this occasion and asking if we could or should have done better.
It is a good reality check, a useful reminder that two wrongs do not make a right, no matter how egregious the ongoing wrong of the war on Gaza so obviously is.
RK
How Palestinians and their western allies justify the horrors committed by Hamas
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In 1948 85 percent of the indigenous Palestinian population were Ethnically Cleansed to make a predominantly Jewish State possible in Palestine. That was 75 years ago. The descendants of those 750,000 Palestinians still are denied basic human rights. How does Amira Hass suggest the Palestinians achieve the dignity that we in Europe take for granted ?
Does Amira Hass suggest that the Palestinians should wait another 75 years ?
On October 7 I wrote a blog ‘Full Support for the Gaza Ghetto Uprising’
https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2023/10/full-support-for-gaza-ghetto-uprising.html
I wrote ‘Of course the retribution of Israel will be bloody and savage. So was the revenge of General Stroop, the Commander of the Nazi forces that retook the Warsaw Ghetto after the Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. The savagery of the colonialist is always far greater than the violence of the oppressed.
We see that with the call from Al-Qassam leader, Mohammed Deif who called on Resistance fighters not to target old people or children. Israel is now bombing Gaza mercilessly… Israel makes no distinction between men, women and children but the only thing we shall hear from Biden and the other hypocritical western leaders is about Israeli suffering not that of the Palestinians.
Whatever criticisms one can make of Hamas, we should congratulate them on this well planned and audacious attack on the Zionist enemy.’
I stand by those comments. I deplore the deaths of Israeli children or elderly. The question of who is a civilian in Israel is a mute one given that Israeli civilians elected the Netanyahu coalition and who have cheered on every bloody attack on Palestinians, even setting up sofas and coffee machines during Operation Protective Edge to watch the bombing.
Like Norman Finkelstein I wish to put what happened in context. The slave revolts in Haiti and Virginia were bloody affairs. Every white French person in Haiti was killed. Likewise with Nat Turner. Do we therefore condemn those revolts?
Palestinians had every right to take Israeli civilians hostage in order to exchange them for Palestinian hostages in Israeli prisons. The fact that in their eagerness to murder Palestinian civilians Israel is prepared to sacrifice its own citizens, as per the Hannibal Directive, is what we should focus on.
My view FWIW: Anybody who doesn’t condemn the vile terrorism and hostage taking of Hamas relinquishes the right to condemn the vile retribution of Netanyahu, his government and his armed forces.
It is indisputable that the NATO media by standards both qualitatively and quantitatively value Palestinian lives at less than 1% of Israeli lives…(indeed, many regard Palestinian lives under a NEGATIVE sign..)This judgment is anecdotal and comrades might use a stop-watch in BBC-watch…
Never read anything that so fully covers everything including the split feelings of Pro Palestinian supporters..
It’s impossible to fight back and not hit civilians when you’re hemmed in an ever decreasing prison and surrounded by #Israelis. But what choice .. fight back or carry on dying .
This is a timely intervention and thank you for posting on the JVL website.
When I condemn Hamas, I do not wish to deny the context of humiliation, violence and oppression from which its brutal actions spring. But this does not justify its savagery. And it does not justify supporting this type of action. I would hope that the left had learned the lessons of history rather than blindly repeating its worst instances.
Some liberation struggles were indeed savage on both sides. And they did not turn out so very well. In any case that was a long time ago. It is doubtful that a liberated Palestine will usher in a society of peace, prosperity tolerance and democracy for Muslims, Jews and Christians if it is borne out of such violence and savagery. What is the point of liberation if it is the sort of liberation you feel compelled to take up arms against? A liberation struggle that explicitly avoided the targeting of civilians was that of the ANC who resorted to armed struggle against the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa when all peaceful paths for protest were closed down.
Emotions are raw on both sides. This is now blinding people to the pain, hurting and grief the Palestinians are suffering and have been subject to as a result of Israeli hubris and oppression. But we should not bow to the savagery of either side. I feel the pain of all the non combatants, the defenceless, the old, the women and the children. If we succumb to the temptation that they are all supporters, and to be soldiers of either Israel or Hamas, so that they are all legitimate targets, as I continually hear from either the Israeli or Palestinian side, then God help humanity. We should not surrender our humanity, no matter the cause. That is what “always being with the oppressed” means to me.
Of course the binary world Haas speaks of – another term for which is zero-sum – is substantially the product of zionist colonialist policy of favouring religious over secular opponents, in order, that is, to split + enfeeble the Palestinian opposition. It’s a strategy which has succeeded in promoting Hamas + in dividing Gaza from the West Bank where the dupes of the PA too often perform Israel’s oppression for them. But contextualising the barbarous jihadi violence of Hamas (as brutalisation, among other effects of incarceratio9n + violent, inferiorizing repression) is not a justification of it. And to be sure, In order to challenge, intellectually, Netanyahu’s fascist project to reduce knowledge to an absolutist either/or crusade, complex seeing of the many contradictions + conflicting intra- interests in play is essential. Without it, justification of the ongoing genocide is effectively aided towards the settler-nationalist final solution.
So do people on here condemn the Hamas terror of 7 October?
It’s a simple question: YES or NO?
Condemnation of the disgusting Netanyahu gang goes (or should do) without saying.
An invitation to condemn is commonplace in the modern media which likes to clothe its approach in a virtuous garb in an attempt to suggest a righteousness that most people don’t accord it.
How does it work when the presenter/interviewer starts the sentence, “Surely you must condemn the barbarism..?
This seems to try to construct a supposed level of morality that unites the questioner and respondent and which is on a higher level to that of the perpetrators of a particular deed. The respondent must abandon previous sympathies and accept the dominant understanding conveyed by the interviewer or their subsequent comment is invalid.
We saw this often with regard to Ireland where any allegiance to a united Ireland and rejection of the gerrymandered boundary of “Ulster” was deemed illicit unless one first of all agreed to condemn the most recent action of the IRA.
A refusal to condemn in the aftermath of October 7th does not necessarily indicate any of the imputations suggested by Amira Haas, nor does it deny the horrible and grisly reality of what happened, but it might mean that those of us away from the holding pen of Gaza, who have been unable to make our governments apply any sort of morality to the plight of the Palestinians, have no right to “condemn” the carnage and no wish to ally ourselves with the assorted hypocrites and enforcers who parrot about “Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Like Peter Beinart, Amira Haas has displayed an hauteur and smugness that does not become her – “bacchanalia”?!
For a more grounded analysis see Jeff Halper’s piece on the ICAHD site and Norman Finkelstein talking to Chris Hedges on “The Real New Network.”
When we seek to impose our will/views on others, we are sometimes upset by the reactions. Fact !!
I think that there are several problems with the view expressed by Amira Hass. Firstly, it assumes that the attacks were carried out by “Hamas”, which is not entirely accurate. The attacks were carried out by the Al Qassam’s Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, which has a separate leadership structure from the political wing of Hamas. Hamas is a complex organisation with its own internal dynamics and disagreements. There were those within the Al Qassam’s Brigade who had wanted to so something like this for many years, and many within the political leadership structure who had spent years opposing it.
Secondly, Hass seems to equate condemnation of Hamas with empathy for the victims of the aggression of the Al Qassam’s Brigade and and non-condemnation with a lack of empathy. I don’t think that that can be assumed.
Thirdly, Hass seems to equate non-condemnation with tacit approval. Again, I disagree.
Fourthly, Hass misses the point that condemnation of Hamas has been used to give Israel a carte blanche not just engage in collective punishment but also to destroy Hamas. I don’t agree with the policy of trying to destroy Hamas. Both sides have engaged in acts of terrorism and the role of any responsible third party should be to try to broker peace, not cast judgement on one side.
Fifthly, many of those refusing to condemn Hamas are simply refusing to accept the framing of the issue that starts the timeline on October 7th and casts Hamas as the sole guilty party.
For all of these reasons I do not feel inclined to condemn Hamas, though I certainly acknowledge that all attacks on civilians are wrong.
@Graeme Atkinson – yes.
Has anyone read some of the other survivor accounts that don’t really appear in our media ?
I was reading one earlier today and the festival goer mentions being fired at by idf, as well as a testimony from a pilot who said they couldn’t tell terrorist from civilian. Could that be a factor in the death toll ?
Celebration of the slaughter carried out by Hamas is, in my experience, very rare. What is however noticeable is a certain hesitation in condemning it or expressing sympathy for the victims; a feeling that one must pause and weigh things up first. Surprisingly, this was treated quite well by Howard Jacobson in a Guardian article on 15th October, though I do not think that he drew the right conclusions.
I was reminded of reactions to the extreme suffering inflicted on German civilians before and immediately after the end of the Second World War. Undoubtedly most of the victims had no direct responsibility for the crimes of the regime and some had actively opposed it. Nonetheless, there was a strong feeling that Germans as a group ‘had it coming’ and concern about what happened to them would have seemed almost perverse. For some time afterwards sympathy for any Germans in any circumstances would never be automatic. I am old enough to remember this lingering on into the1950s.
Attitudes to Israel and the Israelis can be similar though, so far, to a much lesser extent. The association of the regime with racial supremacy and mass murder is a real though usually quite slight impediment to the sympathy which would be the normal response to atrocities committed against its citizens.
If the situation in Gaza develops as we all fear and expect this effect may become much more intense. I suspect that in future, outside Europe and the USA, sympathy for Israelis may become very rare indeed, whatever happens to them.
It is not only western countries all Muslim countries too – are wholly complicit. Tu date no Muslim has lifted a finger against Israel except perhaps Yemen which is impotent.
It seems Jonathan Cook wants to exceptionalise atrocities committed by Hamas as somehow worthy of immunity from public condemnation because those against whom they commit such atrocities are equally guilty of atrocities against the Palestinian people. Therefore, so his logic goes, demonising and condemning Hamas merely provides cover for Israeli atrocities on Palestinians.
This is a dangerous relativisation and instrumentalisation of morality in the name of Palestinian liberation that culminates in the justification of silence about the methods and ideology used to achieve its end, Palestinian liberation. But two wrongs can never make a right, and the ends cannot justify the means if the means are immoral. Ultimately the end will be as rotten as the means.
It is just as easy to argue that those in solidarity with Palestinian justice and liberation, by failing to condemn Hamas, provide all manner of excuse for Israel to withdraw further into the laager visiting its vengeance on the Palestinian people. If ever this conflict is to be resolved it is essential that the oppressor is not offered cheap points to justify its paranoia and intransigence driving its oppressive violence, by failing to call out the wrongdoing of Palestinian organisations such as Hamas.
A ‘Workers’ Liberty’ leaflet best sums up the issue.
“These are actions carried out by partisans of a violent reactionary ideology, hostile not only to the Israeli military or state but to Israelis as such, and specifically to Jews. Socialists who cannot see this worldview has nothing in common with our own – egalitarian, democratic, humanist – perspective have utterly lost their bearings.”
I say “Don’t condemn if you wish, but Palestinians, – is it only Palestinians? – will pay a heavy price.”