I want to roll my eyes every time I see somebody take this stance, not simply because it is tiresome and it takes no courage to say, but mostly because it ignores the context. Every time. It not only overlooks how and why neocolonialism lead to Hamas, it overlooks why Hamas would resort to crude tactics like taking hostages (as if the Zionist régime was always open to dialogue), it overlooks why a substantial percentage of Palestinian adults support Hamas, it overlooks the decades of atrocities that Zionist authorities have been committing against the Palestinians since day one, and most of all, it overlooks the overwhelming amount of power that the Zionist ruling class has in this situation.
My response: fine, you don’t have to like Hamas, but to focus on condemning it repeatedly is to lose sight of the very conditions and the ruling class that gave rise to Hamas in the first place; it’s a bland inaction that gets us nowhere. If you say ‘Hamas is the real problem’ or ‘Hamas is just as bad as the IDF’ then I’m afraid that you have missed the point completely.
I have an imagined response, I don’t know if it is intelligible though…
Blaming Palestinians for October 7 is like blaming Afghans for the 9/11 attack. 9/11 was a response by one unaffiliated with Afghanistan to decades of violent military interference to multiple sovereign nations’ agency and, compared to the actions of the US Government, the response was hardly measurable on the same scale of “terror”.
9/11 was orchestrated by Wahhabist Saudis with the knowledge of the CIA so that the US could invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Investigative Journalist Kit Klarenberg proved that the perpetratorshad relationship to CIA.
Hamas is a people’s movement, not Wahhabist, and literally decolonized their territory by expelling occupiers.
It’s a harmful comparison that reflects the larger community of leftist ignorance about the history of imperialism in West Asia and the Islamic Resistance.
Ooof
so if I’m understanding the correctly the point you’re making, the article you linked, and the smidgen I read of the nature of nature of Wahhabism, I’m comparing two events that are similar only in that they involved humans.
One was a strategic response by those involved in a conflict, the other was astroturfed theater.
To be honest, Hamas won the 2006 election.
Not sure what you meant to imply but this doesn’t contradict anything in the OP.
I’d say it’s in addition to the OP.
Hamas is of the people. They aren’t from a different class or country or region or anything, they’ll all just Gaza residents that lost everything and chose to join up. A true guerilla movement and the legitimate elected government at the same time.
If you say “I support Palestinians, but I’m against Hamas” you need to reconcile with the fact that Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas.
Also, since October 7th, the entire world has been watching Palestine. This is what had to be done in order to bring any overwhelming attention to the conditions that Palestinians have been living under since 1948 and prior to that honestly. I’ve been saying “What’s sad is that it has had to come to this” instead of focusing on Hamas bad with people.
Same energy as “hate the government not the people”
Why though? In its current state, whether they (the people) support their government or not, they don’t have a say in political decisions made by said government, so the differentiation is really important. Otherwise, if we treat them as one in the same, we would make a mistake of believing in “collective punishment”, which is the exact tactic Isn’treal uses.
peoples who say “hate the government not the people” usually do hate the people too. It’s like when incels say they are “nice”.
Oh, okay, got it. I just don’t remember people using this rhetoric before, or might have missed it.
What about class division? Can you oppose your government while supporting your people?
As far as I’m concerned, if you oppose Hamas but support the IOF then you’re either a scumbag or absolutely ignorant. The IOF have been terrorizing the people of Palestine for decades, Gaza included. Long before October 7, the IOF had been shooting children in Gaza.
