Hamas?

Tom Suarez

Upon crossing the Egyptian border into Gaza, we entered a territory whose government the US has declared a terrorist organization, one so terrible that US anti-terrorism laws could lock us away merely for aiding a charity whose funds indirectly found their way to its public assistance programs. Presidents of the US and esteemed universities have spoken of Israel and Gaza in apocalyptic terms, an ancient battle between Good and Evil. One’s mere presence is complicity: when in 2008 I was among a group whom Israel refused entry to Gaza, a spokesperson publicly charged that we were “cooperating with terror organizations”.

Words often control, rather than represent, human thought. Invoke the word “terrorist,” and critical thought is rendered not just impotent, but even treasonous. “You voted for Hamas,” decreed graffiti we saw left by IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers on the walls of their victims’ homes in northern Gaza, in way of justification for their mass slaughter.

Actually, that family hadn’t; but why the West's hatred for Hamas? Hamas has much to criticize, yes, but what, in truth, does the West fear from Hamas?

In a word, representation.

The Palestinian struggle for liberation differs from all others in that their “representatives,” going back to the fall of the Ottoman empire, have served only at the pleasure of those with whom are they supposedly negotiating. In January of 2006, Palestinians were presented with two choices: Fatah, an organization that had become synonymous with corruption, that had done little to help Palestinians in their day-to-day struggles, and that had sold them to the glue factory at Oslo; or Hamas, which had a proven record of social assistance, had earned a reputation for scrupulousness, and was not in the pay of their adversaries.

Yet the West was taken by surprise when, though it had invested heavily to assure Fatah’s victory, Palestinians elected Hamas to be the representative of all Palestine — Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Immediately, US weapons and cash were redirected to squelching the democracy, and the legitimate government is now confined to Gaza which, in the West's Orwellian language warp, it “took over.”

What did we find in this “enemy entity,” as Israel declared Gaza? Despite the enormous disadvantages under which Hamas must govern, including blockade, siege, bombardments, denial of rightful funds, vast Western capital put to sabotage it from within, and the violent denial of autonomy over its borders, airspace, coastal waters, and aquifers, our experience in Gaza was of an orderly, civil society making the best of a catastrophic situation.

Hamas is not a monolithic institution, and conservative elements flourish under societal duress. Yet we saw little evidence that Hamas, however objectionable some of its religious-inspired policies, was interested in a sharia-style state. Few women wear the niqab (face covering), kite flying is a happy diversion, children sing and dance, and the new music school in Gaza City, teaching both Western and Arabic instruments, has already been restarted from its destruction by the IDF in January. Nor did Hamas’ feud with Fatah make anyone afraid to flaunt the image of Arafat, who lives on as a symbol independent of his problematic legacy.

We visited a community center in Khan Younis where the women who ran it described how newly-elected Hamas had removed some of their furniture and equipment, but how the women pestered Hamas until the items were returned — the imagery of women challenging men of Hamas, and winning, worth noting.

Western media are unable to enunciate the two syllables "Hamas" without reminding us that it refuses to recognize Israel, refuses to renounce violence, refuses to honor existing agreements with Israel, and that it fires rockets (some media substitute the inaccurate word “missiles”).

— Doesn't recognize Israel?
● How could a people under siege "recognize" their attackers, who refuse to recognize them?
● Israel refuses to state where its borders lie and daily expropriates more and more Palestinian land. Which Israel would Hamas be recognizing?
● The U.N.'s own recognition of Israel was contingent on its abiding by international law under Resolution 194 (December 11, 1948), which it not only has never done, but indeed has further and dramatically violated for six decades.
● Hamas has long offered to make peace with Israel in exchange for all parties abiding by international law — such a "permanent peace" being the same relationship the US has with Taiwan (which the US refuses to recognize).

— Refuses to renounce violence?
How can those being attacked renounce violence when their attackers will not?

— Refuses to honor existing agreements with Israel?
● Hamas, even after being democratically elected by the Palestine people to be their representative, has never been allowed to take part in the negotiations with Israel and the West that produced these "agreements". That Hamas is then expected to abide by them is preposterous on the face of it.
● Quite independent of any failure of Hamas to abide by agreements made between Israel and other parties, Israel has itself never honored its own agreements. Indeed Hamas has been far more scrupulous in honoring its own positions, such as unilateral cease-fires.

— Fires rockets?
Yes, in response to Israel's incursions, siege, and other violence. The rockets may be strategically foolish, but they are a reaction, a flea attempting to bite the claw of an attacking behemoth.

In Gaza, we heard a range of opinions about the primitive rockets (Qassams), being any variation of defensive (though they are unguided and cannot be directed to military targets), idiotic (because they play into Israel’s “defense” excuse), or symbolic flares of desperation to signal the world’s attention.

What was universal, however, was the bewilderment at the West’s seizing upon the rockets, and Hamas, to blame Gaza’s woes on Gazans. “At night we would listen to the news and hear that it's our fault,” one women living near the Green Line lamented about the brutal attacks of Dec-Jan.

The siege predated Hamas’ election; and the cease-fire of last year, never honored by Israel because it tightened, rather than eased, the siege, was broken not by any Gazan rocket, but by unprovoked Israeli infantry incursions and air strikes, timed for US election day to be doubly sure nothing would reach the Western media. Several Palestinians were killed, several injured, Palestinian homes were occupied, and land was levelled.

The ineffective mortar and rockets fired in response then gave Israel its excuse for the twenty-two days of terror whose aftermath had bought even the more stoic among us to tears.

Hamas' charter, a convoluted and deeply objectionable document, has little relevance to its day-to-day governance; it should be discarded and written anew. Although the claim that the charter calls for the extermination of Jews is a fabrication, an attempt to frame the issue in Holocaust language, the charter does ignorantly jumble together "Jews" and "Zionists." Ironically, in doing so it is merely following Zionism's own inescapably anti-Semitic logic, making an intrinsic, metaphysical link between Judaism and a modern nation-state.

Contrast the charter to the letter that Hamas prepared, while we were in Gaza, for Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin to deliver to US President Obama, stating that they “are prepared to engage all parties on the basis of mutual respect and without preconditions,” stressing the importance of international law and United Nations resolutions.

But therein lies the West’s quagmire: the rule of law and justice would expose its six decades of lies, its neo-colonial enterprise, and its staggering hypocrisy.

In the West, commentators discuss whether or not Israel's attacks of Dec-Jan were an "overreaction" to Hamas and its rockets, but this is a false, manipulative framing of the issue, because by way of pretending to criticize Israel for "excess," it safeguards the essential fiction upon which Israeli aggression depends: that Israel is defending itself. And it is this inversion of reality, not relative body counts, that is the core of these six decades of injustice.

In Gaza we found a society determined to hold on to its humanity no matter how it is pushed to imitate its tormentors. We were in the only part of Palestine that has not been taken over by a Western-backed coup.