I was at an in-person event here in Washington yesterday, and I raised the matter of Hamas, noting that the title of Rami Khouri’s and my recent book Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters is still very relevant. One of the speakers was the Egyptian-American Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid. He responded by making a few fairly smart observations– but then he loudly repeated the injunction that has been his watchword throughout the past two years: “We must condemn Hamas!”
I guess that is the price Hamid feels he must pay to have access to the pages of Jeff Bezos’s failing, but still influential, rag here in the U.S. capital. Maybe he even believes it. But why? What does it actually mean to “condemn” an entire movement– and one, moreover, with which our national government has been negotiating, with varying degrees of intensity, for more than 18 months now?
A movement, therefore, whose inner workings and worldview it would presumably be very useful for both government officials and informed citizens to understand as well as possible…
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