Hamas terror listing is yet another UK betrayal of the Palestinians
JVL Introduction
Hamas – the Islamic resistance movement that rules the Gaza Strip – has just been proscribed by the British government as a terrorist organisation.
Its military wing has already been banned for over twenty years; now its political wing is as well on the grounds that there is no distinction between them.
The approach taken by Priti Patel is a Manichaean one in which Israel represents the forces of light and Palestinian Hamas the forces of darkness.
In this analysis, reposted with permission of Middle East Eye, eminent Middle East historian Avi Shlaim presents a nuanced history of Hamas’s evolution and of Israel’s attempts to destroy it.
Labelling Hamas a whole “terrorist” may please Israel and its Labour and Tory friends, but it will neither contribute one iota to any let up in the conflict in the region, nor make Jews in Britain any safer.
As Shlaim says, “If the British government genuinely wanted to make Jews in this country feel safer, it should stop blaming the Palestinian victims for their own misfortune. It should urge its Israeli ally to respect international humanitarian law, to observe ceasefire agreements, to exercise restraint in the use of military force and to talk to the political leadership of Hamas.”
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Tue 30 Nov 2021. Read the original here.
Hamas terror listing is yet another UK betrayal of the Palestinians
As long as its political opponents are labelled ‘terrorists’, Israel is absolved from the need to negotiate and gets a free pass from its allies to continue using naked military force.
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Excellent article told with sincerity, truth and compassion.
What if? What if Nazi Germany had invaded Great Britain during WW2 & we became a German colony. Would armed resistance be immoral? If laws were passed making British people second class citizens to be socially cleansed & deported, would resistance be described as terrorism? The British ruling classes have a lot to answer for & still they are supported by billionaire owned MSM as well as gov’t owned PSB.
Avi Shlaim rightly says “By labelling its political opponents as terrorists, Israel absolves itself from the need to talk to them.” It’s the same trick as labelling opponents “antisemites” – that way you don’t need to discuss with them.
And in both cases, it potentially allows a variety of institutions to exclude all those who refuse these definitions, claiming that this refusal demonstrates support.