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…
I’m taking a wild guess that Shadi Hamid is not a fundamentalist Christian who actually believes in consigning people to eternal damnation, which is the original meaning of “condemn.” For him and all those others in Western society who constantly urge everyone to “condemn Hamas!” uttering this imprecation generally seems to have more of a ritualistic quality than any real, real-world meaning. This is the hoop they feel they to jump through, the price they need to pay…
But let us be clear, these repeated, ritualized calls to “Condemn Hamas!” do have real-world impact. In every single one of the UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza that the U.S. government has vetoed over the past two years, the U.S. ambassador has cited the failure of the resolution’s text to include an explicit “condemnation” of Hamas as one of the main reasons for the veto.
That was the case once again for the ceasefire resolution considered by the Security Council thirteen days ago, which was supported by every single other member of the 15-member council, including key U.S. allies like Britain and France.
Clearly, the constant and shrill instance with which the Israelis and their co-conspirators in Washington have repeated their calls for universal “condemnation” of Hamas has significantly delayed the Security Council’s ability to enact the speedy and complete ceasefire that the people of Gaza need, and it has thus prolonged the U.S.-Israeli genocide there.
Enough.
On my part, I have have always resisted jumping onto the “Condemn Hamas!” bandwagon, which is a either a rhetorical straitjacket, or the beginning of a treacherously slippery slope, or both.
What I have condemned, repeatedly and publicly, are any acts by any party that have violated international humanitarian law.
And I am certainly open to seeing and considering credible evidence that Hamas fighters violated international humanitarian law on October 7, 2023. Thus far, I have not seen any. But as I say, if it exists, bring it on.
I note that in a key document that it issued in January 2024, the Hamas leadership admitted that, “Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.”
That doc also called explicitly for a “transparent international investigation” of what had happened and urged “the ICC Prosecutor and his team to immediately and urgently come to occupied Palestine to look into the crimes and violations committed there, rather than merely observing the situation remotely or being subject to the Israeli restrictions.”(We included long excerpts from that document as an appendix to our book, pp.186-195.)
So whatever credible evidence there is of international-law violations committed by Hamas or its allies on October 7, 2023, as I say: Let us see it.
What we are likely to see instead in most of the Western corporate media, over the “second anniversary” days ahead, are endless replays of some of the vilest allegations that Israeli propagandists and their close allies worldwide launched against Hamas regarding what they claim the movement’s fighters did on that day. References to the “40 burned [or beheaded] babies,” photos of which Joe Biden claimed for many months that he had actually seen… though no such horrific collection of murdered and desecrated babies ever existed. Allegations about the “mass rapes” at the music festival. (Again, no evidence.) And on and on and on.
In the Bibliography in our book, we list some important pieces of reporting that completely debunk those allegations. Look for the items there by Ali Abunimah (March 2024), Kyle Anzalone, Max Blumenthal, Yaniv Kubovitch, Wyatt Reed, Richard Sanders, David Sheen, and Asa Winstanley… Just for starters…
By the way, some people have said that some of the wilder and more outrageous of those accusations served somehow as “confessions” from the Israeli extremists, regarding their own actions. I think it’s more plausible to describe them as “statements of intention.” As in: “Those animals burned our babies: Just wait till you see how many of their babies we can burn! And the fact they did that to our babies gives us broad permission– indeed, clear instructions– to go ahead and do it to them…”
Same with the allegations of rape, though in that case the absolutely hell-ish “retribution” the Israeli extremists enacted was mainly against male Palestinian prisoners being held in murderous prisons like the one at Sde Teiman.
My main point stands. I am absolutely opposed to all violations of international law that are committed in the course of a conflict, by either side. And yes, that includes targeting civilians, taking them hostage, and otherwise harming them. I want all such violations and atrocities to end. And where there is credible evidence that such violations/atrocities have been committed, let us see it and examine it carefully and dispassionately.
Yes, that includes taking Israeli or guest-worker civilians as hostages to Gaza. Was it Hamas fighters who did that, or was it just random members of the Gaza public, while the Hamas fighters were busy capturing significant Israeli military positions and taking some of the officers and soldiers from there back to Gaza as POWs? Let us try to find out.
And yes, we absolutely need to see as much evidence as possible about two years’ worth of Israeli violations and atrocities across the achingly broad and tragic killing fields of the Gaza Strip. The fields of the genocide that the Israeli-U.S. partnership is still conducting, without any halt, right there almost before our eyes.
Each one of the lives of the noncombatant who have been thus violated needs to be equally honored, and his/her suffering or demise to be accounted for. In an ideal world…
But first, we need to end the genocide. Blanket calls to “Condemn Hamas!” have only served to delay and delay that from happening. Don’t give in to the pressure to join that ritualized chorus.
