FAQ 7
Isn’t Hamas simply a terrorist, antisemitic organisation?
The allegation
Hamas is an evil, antisemitic, terrorist organisation. It should be condemned utterly, both in general and especially for what it did on October 7th, 2023.
Brief rebuttal
The terrible events of October 7th did not come from nowhere. Brutal as they were they need to be understood in the context of a long history of occupation and repression. They constituted a desperate response not only to the situation in Gaza itself but also to the imminent threat of Saudi Arabia’s adherence to the Abraham Accords. This would have helped normalise the Israeli occupation and further isolate the Palestinians.
More detail
Hamas grew as a political and military organisation of resistance to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and especially to the blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007. Israel waged wars on Gaza with significant civilian casualties in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and 2018.
Founded in 1987 it is an Islamist organisation with roots in the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its Founding Charter called for the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel. Hamas’ military wing has a long history of attacks against Israeli civilian targets.
Hamas won a majority of seats across Gaza and the West Bank in the Legislative Assembly elections in 2006. It offered Israel a cessation of hostilities in exchange for a Palestinian state on the West Bank, in East Jerusalem and in Gaza. Israel and the Bush administration turned it down. Its Islamist ideology was by no means the only factor in this victory; its record of charitable work among the Palestinian population was also significant. But the main factor was that it was seen as an alternative to the corrupt Palestine Authority run by Fatah. Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007 when it preempted an intended coup by Fatah, backed by Israel. Fatah had refused to concede Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006 across both the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas’ Founding Charter contained many highly antisemitic statements, but there is little evidence that in practice its actions have been inspired by antisemitism rather than by resistance to occupation. Its May 2017 Document of General Principles and Policies is in effect a revised charter. The antisemitic rhetoric has been eliminated, and it states explicitly that its fight was not with Jews as such, but with the Zionist project.
The 2017 Document affirms its right under international law to armed resistance to occupation. It further declares its aim as “the establishment of a fully sovereign independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital and with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled” as a “formula of national consensus.”
Israel facilitated the growth of Hamas in the 1980s and continued to cultivate Hamas as a political counterweight to the secular nationalism of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). This support continued after Hamas’ 2007 consolidation of power in Gaza. Believing it could tame Hamas and leave it ruling over a fragmented “Bantustan” separated from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel facilitated the continuous transfer of funds to Hamas from Qatar. This was one of the main sources of funding enabling the arming of Hamas and the construction of its elaborate tunnel system. In its wars on Gaza, Israel differentially targeted the Islamic Jihad, a more fundamentalist competitor of Hamas.
On October 7th Hamas and its associates assaulted and murdered many Israeli civilians and foreign nationals, including women and children, with 1,200 people reportedly killed and 253 taken hostage. An unknown number of those deaths were caused by Israeli fire.
The Hamas operation had important political goals. The first was to bring the fate of the Palestinian people and the Israeli occupation back to the centre of international attention. In this, the October 7th attack and the following resulting genocidal revenge war Israel launched on Gaza, the operation has been fully successful but at a terrible and continuing price.
A second aim was to trigger Middle Eastern Islamists and others to join it in a concerted attack on Israel which could eventually end the Zionist project as a whole. In this it failed, at the time receiving only calibrated support from Hezbollah and other Iran-related groups. (All this has been thrown up in the air since September 2024).
In conclusion: Hamas is designated by the US, UK and their allied states as a terrorist organisation. Opposition to colonial oppression has commonly involved significant violence against settler populations (think Haiti in the 1790s and Algeria or Kenya in the 1950s,) as well as retributive repression. But the violence, no matter how deplorable the loss of civilian lives, does not detract from the justice of the causes that were being defended.
It is the occupying power which creates the conditions which lead to rebellion. It is the occupying power that, under international law, has responsibility for the welfare of those under occupation. It is thus the occupying power which has overall responsibility for both the conflict and for the solution.
Further resources
1. Helena Cobban and Rami G Khouri, Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters, OR Books 2024
With Contributions by Paola Caridi, Jeroen Gunning, Khaled Hroub, Mouin Rabbani and Azzam Tamimi
Reviewed in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs here.
2. Hamas, Britannica online – for an overall summary of Hamas’ history
3. Ahmed Yousef, Understanding Hamas, the Guardian, 14 Nov 2014
4. Sam Farber, What does Hamas want? – 1/2, review of Tareq Baconi, JVL, 10 May 2024
5. Tareq Baconi interview, What does Hamas want? – 2/2
6. David Hearst, War on Gaza: How Hamas lured Israel into a lethal trap, Middle East Eye, 4 July 2024
“Hamas’ strategy has been more effective than was deemed possible nine months ago. Israel now has a real war on its hands, and on all fronts. It cannot easily be stopped”
7. Peter Beinart, Israel’s delusional thinking about Hamas and Iran, The Beinart Notebook, 12 August 2024
8. Tal Schneider, For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces, Times of Israel, 8 Oct 2023
9. Hamza Ali Shah, The ‘beheaded babies’ allegation, JVL, 5 Jan 2024