Watching some of the harrowing scenes from Hamas’s 7 October offensive was heart wrenching – it rightly brought even the most staunch advocates for armed resistance to tears. While we wept over the loss of innocent life, many of those tears also fell in full acknowledgement of how the brutality of oppression brutalises the soul of an oppressed people – and how the indiscriminate violence of an occupying power blurs the lines between revenge and justice.
Since the latest escalation of Israel’s genocidal mission in occupied Palestine, Western media outlets and their talking heads have been set on framing all discussions surrounding Israel’s brutality on the condemnation of Hamas. From major outlets like the BBC and Sky News through to fringe platforms – every time a Palestinian activist, academic, political figure or solidarity actor is interviewed, they are first made to qualify whether or not they condemn Hamas.
The insistence that Palestinians and their allies should condemn Hamas is a manipulative tactic that serves only to delegitimise the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination. It’s a loaded question, a trap that aims to undermine Palestinian agency and reinforce the occupation.
The real question is why the media, especially Western outlets, fixate on this demand for condemnation – rather than addressing the context of occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and settler colonialism in which Hamas has arisen.
Born in response to colonial violence, Hamas’s role in the armed resistance is driven by material necessity
Hamas, like any organisation born in the crucible of oppression, must be understood contextually. The organisation’s emergence as a political and militant entity is a direct response to the brutal conditions of occupation and dispossession faced by Palestinians. When Western media demands condemnation of Hamas, they ignore the historical and ongoing grievances that have given rise to Palestinian resistance in all its forms.
Hamas emerged in 1987 as an organisation responding to Israeli colonialism and the conditions it imposed on the Palestinian people. Its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was a Palestinian refugee and quadriplegic who headed a social-religious charity that was dedicated to providing medical care and educational opportunities to people living in refugee camps.
Hamas was formed as a political organisation in the wake of the First Intifada, a series of sustained protests and uprisings against Israeli occupation and colonialism. The materialisation of its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, took shape after Israeli police opened fire and killed seventeen Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in 1990.
Hamas’ eminent role in the Palestinian armed struggle has been driven by material necessity more than any sort of ideological fervor. Like the armed resistance movements against apartheid in South Africa, embodied by the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), Mkhonto We Sizwe (MK) and that of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) – Hamas’ inception is rooted in a legitimate quest for liberation by any means necessary.
The orthodoxy of peace suffocates the quest for liberation
Both MK and APLA were also crudely labelled as terrorist organisations by those who, in some way or another, sought to uphold the status quo. And even while APLA, and MK to a much lesser extent, are responsible for the deaths of many innocent people through their adoption of terror tactics, history judges them differently; it recognises the justness of their cause and the necessity of their struggle.
The actions of these groups were scarcely condemned by those who stood on the side of the oppressed. Even while many within the broader anti-apartheid movement were appalled by, and opposed, the decision to indiscriminately target civilians, blanket condemnation was contextually inappropriate. Similarly, to condemn Hamas outright is to deny the legitimacy of the Palestinian people’s right to resist occupation and fight for their liberation.
Likewise, the West’s orthodox pro-peace narrative, with its calls for calm and negotiation, too often serves to do exactly that. Even those who are broadly supportive of the Palestinian cause fall into the trap of condemning Hamas as a terrorist organisation and in turn, strongly suggest that all forms of armed resistance on the part of the Palestinians is committed in the name of terror and antisemitism. In this, they confirm the bias of their analytical point of departure and prove their perspective to be marred by the falsehoods and racism of Zionist dogma.
Many of us within the growing Palestinian solidarity movement serve to be reminded by the likes of Assata Shakur that:
Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.
In this, we must recognise that peace without justice and equality is no peace at all; it’s a silence that allows oppression to continue unchallenged. Palestinians are told to wait for peace, to pursue nonviolent means, yet they see little change in their conditions. Their lands continue to be settled, their rights ignored, their lives disrupted by a suffocating blockade and frequent military incursions.
Peace, if it is to be meaningful and real – underpinned by the actualisation of justice and equality – is necessarily achieved through a struggle for liberation. Hamas, for many Palestinians, embodies the front of that struggle and the site of resistance to Israel’s relentless aggressions.
Non-condemnation: nuance, not deference
The world must acknowledge that Palestinians, like all oppressed peoples, have the right to defend themselves and to choose their methods of resistance. It is not for the international community, which has completely failed, and has been largely unwilling to end the occupation or alleviate Palestinian suffering, to dictate the terms of this resistance.
This does not mean endorsing all actions or tactics. Violence targeting civilians is deplorable within any and all contexts – it is certainly appalling in this context as well. Hamas’s tactics can and should be critiqued, just as any group’s actions should be held to account.
Indeed, watching some of the harrowing scenes from the October 7th offensive was heart wrenching – it rightly brought even the most staunch advocates for armed resistance to tears. While we wept over the loss of innocent life, many of those tears, at least those belonging to genuine supporters of the Palestinian liberation struggle, also fell in full acknowledgement of how the brutality of oppression brutalises the soul of an oppressed people and how the indiscriminate violence of an occupying power blurs the lines between revenge and justice.
Here too, our critique must come from a place of understanding the context of occupation and the desperation it breeds.
Hamas’s social and political policies, particularly those that limit the rights and freedoms of Palestinians, also deserve criticism. Hamas by no means reflects the will and aspirations of all Palestinian people. Its prominence in Palestinian society was artificially elevated during and after Israel’s decimation of the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Its support largely emanates from the recognition of their refusal to concede on Palestinian refugees’ rights to return and to take up armed struggle against an unjust occupying power. It is therefore important that critiques of Hamas are not levelled in a manner that does not inadvertently support the continuation of occupation, brutal acts of Israeli state terror, or the denial of Palestinian rights.
Asymmetry and orientalism in international media
It is also crucial to interrogate why the international community holds Palestinian resistance to a higher standard than the military actions of the Israeli state. The disproportionate focus on “Palestinian violence” without an equivalent scrutiny of Israeli policies and practices reflects a deep imbalance in moral accounting. The casualties of occupation are overwhelmingly Palestinian, and the machinery of control and suppression is wholly Israeli. This disparity must be central to any discussion about resistance and violence.
Against this backdrop, blanket condemnation of Hamas must be viewed as an entirely unfair and biased prerequisite for dialogue. In fact, it hinders the possibility of understanding and addressing the complexities of legitimate armed resistance. If peace is genuinely sought, then there must be a move away from demanding Palestinians prove their humanity by pandering to the West’s sense of moral superiority or by aligning themselves with a Western-centric view of legitimacy.
Instead, there must be an acknowledgment of the very real and heartfelt grievances that fuel the resistance, a commitment to addressing the systemic inequalities and injustices that underpin the resistance, and a recognition of the right of an occupied and oppressed people to seek liberation.
Total liberation is the prerequisite for any meaningful form of peace
The Palestinian struggle for liberation, in which Hamas plays a role, is a legitimate struggle against occupation, apartheid, and systemic injustice.
While tactics that harm civilians should be denounced, the international community must understand the resistance within the broader context of the Palestinian fight for freedom. The right to self-defence and resistance is not only a European right to be celebrated in Ukraine, it is a universal one.
Demanding that Palestinians, or those in solidarity with them, condemn Hamas is to misunderstand the nature of the struggle and to participate in the silencing of a people fighting for their rights. It is time to shift the conversation from condemnation to understanding, from a demand for Palestinian acquiescence to a demand for an end to occupation and a genuine commitment to justice and equality – without which, there will be no peace.
The path to peace then, requires the international community to give its unequivocal support to the quest for liberation.
In the immediate term, this entails a humanitarian ceasefire and an end to Israel’s destruction of the Gaza strip. This is the first stepping stone on the path towards the restoration of Palestinian dignity.
To achieve true and holistic justice, a comprehensive political programme underpinned by respect for the rights and aspirations of all Palestinians, whether they be in Israeli territory, Gaza, the West Bank, or exiled as refugees, must be set in place.
Elements of this programme can be found in the call from Palestinian civil society for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against the state of Israel in order to enact international law in a way that would provide restorative justice – healing the wounds of the past and fostering hope for generations to come.
Featured image via Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/AFP
