i've said this before but i suppose it bears repeating and clarification. it is arabs and palestinians who have suffered the most under islamist rule. we (middle easterners, revolutionaries, religious minorities, gender and sexual minorities) as people, understand what hamas represents better than israelis do, better than anyone does. we understand what the entire spectrum from political islam to outright jihadist extremism does. we understand dictatorship. we understand theocracy. we understand fascism.
the repression israel has created is so absolute, has destroyed civil, diplomatic, intellectual and peaceful avenues so absolutely, that it leaves no avenues for anyone to condemn hamas anymore. even the representative of hamas's ideological and political opponents, the PLO (which oversees the West Bank), is openly frustrated at the request to condemn hamas. and it's not because he sympathizes with them. he has absolutely no political, personal, ideological or economic reason to.
israel has bombed gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021, each and every time with the declared intention of targeting hamas and instead murdering civilians en masse. everyone familiar with israel understands that 'hamas' is meaningless, that israel has no real interest in defeating them (and that defeating militant resistance to an occupation with military force is not possible), that they went so far as to fund them as their choice of preferred enemy. when palestinians hear 'hamas' they correctly understand that israel intends to kill everyone. it is, to use the lingua franca of this period, a dogwhistle. on october 7th, israelis were horrified to see this dogwhistle suddenly become an actual whistle, but nothing else changed except for the intensity and savagery of their attacks on gaza. instead, the more they say hamas, the more they murder civilians en masse, just as they always have. everyone in gaza has said "this is not new, just worse." they have always understood that they are the target. no amount of condemning hamas, being a good palestinian, a good civilian, or even a newborn will change that.
this includes all of hamas's ideological opponents and so-called victims as well. peace activists, intellectuals, palestinian christians, and queer palestinians alike are not condemning hamas right now. they can't because they are busy fighting for their lives and homes against the israeli occupation. if you understood the personal toll this takes on them, if you understood how deeply their trauma runs, you would understand just how evil the israeli narrative on hamas is for all palestinians.
if you want a plurality of palestinian opinion, get rid of the israeli apartheid state. if you want tolerance, get rid of the israeli apartheid state. if you want israelis to be safe in their homes from the threat of hamas militants, get rid of the israeli apartheid state.
the truth is, there is a base and deeply evil racism at the core of asking to condemn hamas, especially by those who would never condemn israel or the violence it requires to maintain itself. it presumes that they have the right to ask for a condemnation of child murder, without ever giving an apology for child murder or the promise to stop murdering children. ghassan kanafani once called this "a conversation between the sword and the neck."
it is absurdity in full display, a macabre delight in impunity disguised as moral superiority. more than treating every palestinian as a terrorist in interrogation, more than its dehumanization and islamophobia, it is at its core asking "do you agree our children are more important than yours?"
and lest you forget, Israel's current minister of national security has already said it directly. as he famously once told arab-israeli reporter mohammad magadli, “Sorry Mohammad, my right to life precedes yours, that is the reality.”
in many ways, that's far more honest than asking "do you condemn hamas?"
