Criticism of the resistance

Aljazeera.com reports that since the fighting began on October 7 between Israel and Hamas, 15,242 Palestinians have died (with over 6,000 of those deaths being children) and around 1,200 Israeli deaths have occurred. (Photo Credit: Flickr creator Alisdare_Hickson)

Does self-defense really apply?

One argument people make in to defend Israel is that it has a right to defend itself. It is an argument echoed by many of Israel’s backers, such as the US through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as the UK in a speech to the UN. The reasoning is that Israel is responding to an attack that killed civilians.

One problem with this reasoning is that it decontextualizes why Hamas attacked in the first place, that being an attempt to liberate all of Palestine against 75 years of Israeli oppression, as outlined by the chairman of its political bureau. Although Israeli civilians have been killed, it’s ignored that the root of the conflict is Israel, a state that not only is built on ethnic cleansing but is currently placing settlers in the West Bank, an occupied territory, as well as blockading Gaza ever since it nominally pulled out in 2005.

Even with the conflict being decontextualized, Israel's conduct goes far beyond self-defense. Besides an indiscriminate bombing campaign, 1.1 million people were forcibly removed from northern Gaza to the south. Despite promising them safety many evacuees were still targeted. A leaked document even detailed the possibility of removing all Gazans to Sinai. With all its actions considered, Israel has no right to defend itself, since it is a fundamentally invalid state. Invoking self-defense for Israel is like invoking self-defense for Germany during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Islamism

Another argument people make is that Hamas’ politics are not any better. The resistance group is often dismissed as an Islamist, terrorist, and antisemitic organization, but this view is reductive and unfair. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood may have accepted it as a member from its formation in 1987, but in 2017 the resistance group broke away from it. Although this doesn’t disprove that Islamic Fundamentalists aren’t in Hamas, it does show its attempt to deradicalize.

But even if Islamic Fundamentalists are in Hamas, this doesn’t invalidate the organization. Its priority is fighting the 75-year-long ethnic oppression Israel has imposed on Palestine, giving it legitimacy to many Palestinians. Sympathy should be given because they grew up in an undeveloped, abhorrent environment that hinders any organization of social movements. Social conservatism outside of the West is more common simply because there are fewer opportunities for education. Where religion may be their only way to cope, it is understandable that some Palestinians become radical.
Is it terrorism?

This leads to terrorism, which many people tend to reduce Hamas' actions to. It does attack civilians, but there is more nuance here than it seems. Israel is a settler colony still in its early stages. The indigenous people still make up a large enough population to resist, and settlers continue to steal land. This makes attacks on people in Israel more analogous to the attacks on settlements that Indigenous people did in the Americas in colonial times.

The root of the problem is the decades of murder, displacement, and dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel. If terrorism includes Hamas killing civilians, then it is hypocritical not to include the much more heinous actions of Israel. According to a poll (15) conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute from October 18-19, 83.4% of Jewish Israelis think that harm done to Palestinians should not be considered. In a more recent poll, from November 27-30 the results were nearly the same. 87.2% of Jewish Israelis thought that the IDF's conduct should be similar to how it was before the ceasefire.

Due to the consensus in these polls, it's safe to say that Israelis are overwhelmingly callous and believe in their settler project. It may not be excusable, but it is not at all surprising that attacks are done against them. Terrorism is being used as a politically charged word since Israel's manner of conducting war kills much more civilians than Hamas could ever kill.
Supposed antisemitism

As for antisemitism, this criticism is also oversimplified, and fails to look at Israeli violence in Palestine. Even though the group rejected antisemitism in their 2017 charter, people still point to phrases in the 1988 Covenant, pointing to sentences such as “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews),”. This is misleading because the charter also makes many references to fighting Zionism, giving more context to these statements. Furthermore, even if there are some antisemites in Hamas, it’s understandable since Israel constantly tries to equate Judaism with Zionism.

It’s also hypocritical because Western governments accept that Nazi battalions fight with Ukraine, such as the Azov battalion. Ukraine is a part of a larger antisemitic acceptance of the Double Genocide Theory. It equates the crimes of the Soviet Union with those of Nazi Germany in order to minimize the latter’s much worse atrocities. Much of Post-Communist Eastern Europe, now composed of NATO and EU members, has seen the deployment of this ahistorical argument. With all this taken into account, critics of supposed antisemitism in Hamas are showing a racist bias when they do not show the same concern for the worse antisemitism many of the West's allies hold.

The Declaration

The Declaration

The Declaration

The Declaration