Mondoweiss’s Managing Editor, Faris Giacaman, speaks to Abdaljawad Omar about his article, “The Question of Hamas and the Left.” In it, Omar argues that leftist critics of Hamas in the West fail to understand the complexity of Palestinian politics and resistance.
He argues:
“The main dividing line between Palestinian political factions isn’t over the schism between secularism and Islamism, the struggle over divergent socio-economic agendas, or the merits of a particular tactic in service of liberation. All those are important issues in their own right, but what is actually causing a rift in the Palestinian political arena is the chasm between a politics of raw defiance, and a politics of accommodation, cooperation, and collaboration.
Ultimately, the Western left’s quixotic search for a secular progressive alternative to Hamas overlooks a simple fact: at this particular historical juncture, the political forces that are still holding onto and leading a resistance agenda are not of the secular left.”
He concludes that “one cannot ground solidarity with Palestine on a politics that dismisses, overlooks, or excludes Hamas.”
Abdaljawad Omar is a PhD student and part-time lecturer in the Philosophy and Cultural Studies Department at Birzeit University.
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Well, some of us aren’t looking for a secular progressive alternative to Hamas. Who Palestinians or some Palestinians pick to lead them is their business and the Israeli and American determination to eliminate them is in practice an excuse for making Gaza uninhabitable. The leaders of the US, Israel, and Hamas should all be on trial for crimes against humanity, but it would not make sense to slaughter massive numbers of people to put Biden, Netanyahu, and Sinwar under arrest.
But presumably “ the merits of a particular tactic in service of liberation” is referring to the deliberate murder of civilians and the kidnapping of others and this use of academic abstraction is not helpful. It’s like that favorite hasbara slogan “ Israel has a right to defend itself” which in practice doesn’t simply mean shooting people who are about to kidnap someone’s grandmother, but also means slaughtering civilians, torturing civilians, and starving children to death. Slogans sound nicer. Here is an American one — Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad. That means we will give them all the bombs they need to destroy Gaza and whitewash their atrocities.
Slogans are a way of concealing ugly realities.