Do you condemn Hamas?

Bassem Youssef said in this video:

Lets for a minute imagine a world without Hamas. What will this world look like? Let's give this world a name and let's name this world the West Bank. Hamas has absolutely no control in the West Bank and since the beginning of this year only through August, 37 Palestinian kids were killed. No music festival, no paragliding, no Hamas. Since the occupation of the West Bank, 7000 Palestinians have been killed. No music festival, no paragliding, no Hamas. I can go on and on and on and on.

George Galloway answered this in this video, saying:

I was underground as an undercover agent of the ANC. I was working for Nelson Mandela's ANC. I gave my blood on the floor of the Gugulethu police station in Cape Town. Was the ANC a terrorist organization? the answer is no, even though they had people who carried out terrorist attacks. You have to understand the whole picture and not just a tiny corner of a single snapshot. The Palestinians are fighting against an apartheid state for the millions of Palestinians scattered around the world with no one speaking up for them. If you are fighting against occupation forces undoubtedly it is resistance. It was David Cameron I remind you who called it the largest open-air prison camp in the world. If you break through that and you start taking a toll on the guards, the people who've kept you in this absolute misery with regular death being dealt to you, then that's a legitimate act of resistance.

Kareem Dennis or Lowkey said in this video: I condemn the genocidal conditions that created this violence. Every human heartbeat is sacred to me, We don't have a clear picture of what happened on October 7th because unfortunately too much of the media has relied on the Israeli military talking points which are given directly to them. Until you show observers that are able to establish the facts of October 7th, I will not allow the talking points of the Israeli military to become dominant of what happened on that day. The Palestinians are subject to genocidal war, a collective punishment in Gaza is real.

Mohammed Hijab said in this video: As a Muslim, I don't believe in the killing of any man or woman or children. That's not despite the religious teachings. That's because of the religious teachings. I condemn not only Hamas but any other entity wherein it's proven that the killing of combatants has been made and therein I condemn any party that kills people or strikes at people where it's more probable than not that it will hit a civilian target I condemn them and that's why I condemn the IDF because when they strike they know that it's more probably than not it's going to hit civilian targets. They know that the majority of civilians or the majority of people who are going to be affected are civilians. We know that from the various operations that have been conducted. We know that because now in Gaza you find that there is a blockage as you know for 17 years but also they are stopping the electricity and water which is a war crime under the Geneva Convention protocol.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti said in this video:

Do you condemn that Israel has been occupying us since 1967? Do you condemn that Israel has been practising ethnic cleansing against Palestinian people for 75 years? Do you condemn that Israel has evicted 70% of the Palestinian people from their land, erasing to the ground 520 Palestinian towns and Villages? Condemn that and then I'll answer. Until you condemn the atrocities that are happening in Gaza; three war crimes, the war crime of ethnic cleansing. I am a person of nonviolence. I never accept the killing of any child whether Palestinian or Israeli. I don't accept the killing of the 30 children they say were killed on the 7th of October, but you should also agree with me that you do not agree with killing 12,000 Palestinian children! 12,000! Do you know what that means? children were killed by Israeli bombardment and they have been occupying us since 1967.

Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

I'm very reluctant to condemn people who are in a position or in a condition such that were I in that position or condition I'm not sure what I would do now the 1500 young men who burst the gates of Gaza they were born into a concentration camp they lived for two decades in a concentration camp they had no past they had no present they had no future they had no jobs half of them according to humanitarian organizations suffered from what's called severe food insecurity and then on top of that Israel goes into Gaza and it mows the lawn and what mows the lawn means is a massacre in Gaza in 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead, in 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, in 2014 Operation Protective Edge and on each of these high tech massacres visited on the people of Gaza in some cases hundreds in some cases thousands of Palestinians are killed.

Short: This question, as well as saying "but Hamas", whether intended to or not, ends up being used to justify treating all Palestinians as terrorists. It is an extremely unfair and unhelpful question to ask. It also overlooks the long-standing struggles of Palestinians and the fact Hamas emerged to fight for the human rights of Palestinians as a result of a 75-year-long ethnic cleansing. Blaming all Palestinians for Hamas also ignores their fight for freedom and forces them as oppressed people, currently experiencing mass death, into a cycle of endless fault-finding that overlooks the root cause of the problem. It is also detrimental to your learning process, and in moving towards a solution.

The questions you should be asking are: why aren't Israelis asked to condemn the actions of Israel before being given a voice? Why are Jews allowed to be scared but not Muslims? Why are white people entitled to feel fear but not Arabs? Being asked to condemn Hamas distracts you from the urgent reality of ongoing Palestinian suffering and the need for meaningful action to help both the Palestinian people and Israeli hostages.

Long: This question, as well as saying "but Hamas", whether intended to or not, end up being used to justify treating all Palestinians as terrorists. It is an extremely unfair and unhelpful question to ask. People want Palestinians to condemn Hamas before even discussing the horrors they've been facing for 75 years. It's important to remember that Hamas came about only in the past 17 years and as a result of the violence Palestinians have been subjected to by the occupation. Hamas and potentially new resistance groups will continue to exist and grow unless there is global support in first liberating the Palestinian people.

Secondly, blaming all Palestinians for what Hamas does makes it easy to dismiss their struggle for freedom. Unlike Israeli officials who don't have to condemn their documented, proudly admitted to, genocidal actions before being allowed to speak - Palestinians are forced to condemn Hamas first. This puts Palestinians in a wildly unfair position. No matter what they or anyone else says, it's never enough. It is also detrimental to your learning process, and in moving towards a solution. The questions you should be asking are: why aren't Israelis asked to condemn the actions of Israel before being given a voice? Why are Jews allowed to be scared but not Muslims? Why are white people entitled to feel fear but not Arabs?

This focus on condemning Hamas distracts you from the real issue – the occupation and suffering of Palestine and its people. And by addressing questions such as these, instead of talking about any other part of what is currently happening right now, we are just repeating empty phrases that can neither bring the 1,200 Israelis or 20,000 Palestinians back to life.

Sources:

@MEE/Nicki Kattoura, Geo Maher

@theslowfactory

@key48return

Yanis Varoufakis wrote in this article:

On 8th October, during an interview in Berlin (click adjacent icon and read the full text below), I refused to condemn either Hamas or the Israeli settlers committing atrocities across Israel-Palestine. Instead, I condemned us, Europeans and Americans, as the true villains who, for decades, we stood idly by while the underlying cause of these atrocities, Apartheid, became a fait accompli.

Why did I not take the easier route of, on the one hand, condemning Hamas and, on the other, championing the rights of Palestinians? Because I wanted to make the point that it is we, Europeans and Americans, who must be condemned. Because it is we, Europeans and Americans, who, with our patronisingly ritual moralistic condemnations (whether one-sided or equidistant), have been making Peace impossible in Israel-Palestine.

We allow this by keeping dead quiet when Palestinians are suffering killings, evictions, war crimes. By dismissing Israeli war crimes (like those committed now that Gaza is being turned into a parking lot) as "inevitable", as Acts of God – like a Volcano erupting as is its wont, as its nature dictates. And by issuing stern condemnations of Palestinians, calling them 'animals' and 'savages', when some of them lash out violently, brutally, in response to the slow genocide the Apartheid state is calculatingly foisting upon their families and communities.