Why I Refuse to Condemn Hamas
We have been programmed to think of Hamas as “terrorists”, but that is just Israeli propaganda. The reality is much more interesting — and powerful.
Many reporters, commentators and journalists have a standard question that they put to any pro-Palestinian person they interview: “do you condemn Hamas?”
I refuse to condemn Hamas for several reasons.
Firstly, I believe we have once more been “brainwashed” by decades of Israeli hasbara (propaganda) into misunderstanding the mission, purpose, nature — and even the very NAME of the organisation known as Hamas. This extensive and relentless propaganda campaign has allowed Israel to thwart the peace process and increase the brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people.
Secondly, because we have been programmed to think of Hamas as an “islamic fundamentalist” global terrorist group, we fail to see that they are actually the popular resistance force of an occupied people with a legal right to resist their occupation — an occupation which is itself illegal.
This conflation of Hamas with ISIS and Al-Qaeda has served to “bind” the US and the collective West to Israel’s illegal occupation and to justify their brutal genocide in Gaza.
Thirdly, the Hamas Charter of 2017 is a reasoned — and reasonable — document based on an accurate reading of history as well as the current state of affairs, and sets out legitimate and legal goals and demands.
Finally, the raid that Hamas conducted on October 7 was a military mission with specific mission objectives and strategies. It was not a blind act of “terrorism” as has been asserted by Israeli authorities and their minions in the media. Moreover, it was a successful mission both militarily and strategically.
Moreover, the use of such “asymmetric” warfare by resistance groups, is a morally and legally legitimate way for an occupied people to achieve a specific strategic goal against a much greater occupying power.
Newsflash: “Hamas” is not their real name
Most people do not know that the word “Hamas” is actually an acronym in Arabic that stands for the actual name of the group. In fact, the organisation we know as Hamas is actually called the “Islamic Liberation Movement”, or Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya in Arabic.
Moreover, the stated goal of Hamas is not to “kill Jews” or even to “exterminate Israel”. Article 1 of the Hamas Charter states:
1. The Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.
Hamas is not an “islamic fundamentalist” organisation
Unlike ISIS or Al-Qaeda, Hamas is an ecumenical organisation that represents ALL Palestinians. Its origin started in the late 1970s, when “activists established charities, clinics and schools in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, after Israel occupied both in 1967”.
While they do believe that Palestine is an “Arab islamic land”, they welcome the other faiths to live there in peace, and their struggle is on behalf of ALL Palestinians. Article 6 of the Charter states:
6. The Palestinian people are one people, made up of all Palestinians, inside and outside of Palestine, irrespective of their religion, culture or political affiliation.
Hamas is not ISIS
Israeli hasbarists — and especially Israeli politicians — constantly repeat that Hamas is a terrorist organisation that is “worse than ISIS”. This propaganda has also been parroted by American Zionists such as Secretary of Defense Austin and even President Biden.
This framing is a crucial part of the Zionist propaganda narrative.
That’s because when you compare Hamas to ISIS, you invite the world (and especially the US) to join with you in opposing a fanatical, bloodthirsty, radicalised and racist terrorist group bent on violent “global” conquest, exterminating non-Muslims and establishing a Caliphate to dominate the entire Middle East and either convert or kill the whole non-Muslim population.
Hamas is not Al-Qaeda
When you compare Hamas to Al-Qaeda, you imply that Hamas also has a global jihadist strategy to attack the United States (the “Great Satan”) and its Western allies anywhere and everywhere. This comparison is popular among Western think tanks and US government agencies.
This comparison is equally invalid. In fact, Hamas is opposed to Al-Qaeda and ISIS and and repudiates their “global jihadist” orientation.
Israel‘s campaign to conflate Hamas with ISIS
Israeli hasbarists have been making the comparison between Hamas and ISIS for decades, and it is important for us to understand WHY.
As an example: The figure below, published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), was from several years prior to the October 7 attack. It shows how two Israeli state-actor accounts posted visuals likening Hamas and ISIS. The first, shared by the Israeli Embassy of South Africa in 2015, addressed the use of child soldiers. The second, shared by the official account of the Israeli PM (then Netanyahu) in 2014, pointed to a common oppression of Christians, women and gay people (Source: ISD).
ISD has condemned what it calls a “campaign of comparison” between Hamas and ISIS, particularly by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to associate Hamas and ISIS for nearly a decade; during the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas, when ISIS was in its ascendancy in Syria and Iraq, Netanyahu claimed that the two organisations were “branches of the same poisonous tree”.
ISD notes that following the October 7 attack, Netanyahu went from describing Hamas and ISIS as branches of the same tree to directly conflating the groups.
On 9 October, Netanyahu asserted “Hamas is ISIS,” a sentiment repeated by state-linked accounts, from the IDF to the Foreign Ministry and news platforms. Meanwhile, Israeli commentators and officials began referring to Hamas as ‘Hamas-ISIS’ in Arabic, Hebrew and English, to conflate the two groups.
#HamasISIS
Israel and its Zionist supporters have made a giant effort on social media to reinforce and promulgate Netanyahu’s assertion that “Hamas is ISIS”. They even posted on social media calling Hamas simply “Hamas-ISIS” — as if they were just one group:
The ISIS “Black Flag” was actually a “false flag”
Just days after October 7, the IDF claimed to have found an Islamic State (ISIS) Black Flag in a kibbutz that was attacked.
And yet, Moustafa Ayad, ISD’s Executive Director of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, told French newspaper Le Figaro: “The IS [ISIS] hates Hamas. IS supporters refer to Hamas members as ‘Jews of Jihad’”, he said, adding that IS considers the Gaza-based organisation to be deviant.
In short, there is no way that Hamas fighters would be carrying ISIS flags rather than their own.
The black banner with the “seal of the prophet” and the three words “Allah”, “messenger” and “Mohammed” is not exclusive to IS. “There are many versions of this flag,” Moustafa said. He believed that the banner may have been from a member of “Jaïch al-Oumma”, a jihadist organisation based in Gaza and more closely aligned to al-Qaeda than IS. That group, along with several others, followed Hamas out through the Gaza wall on October 7.
But the story had served its purpose. Bibi Netanyahu and his hasbarist phalanx had a field day, and the campaign to smear Hamas with ISIS went into overdrive.
Why Israel’s “Hamas-ISIS” campaign is so important
For the Israeli propagandists, equating Hamas with ISIS is a narrative that serves multiple purposes. The “Hamas-ISIS” connection is an essential part of several Israeli narratives that are seen as critical to keeping the Zionist Project alive.
Surprise! Christians practice freely under Hamas (not ISIS)
Israel relies on Western allies whose populations are mostly Christian. Israel has always portrayed itself as a defender of Christian values, Christian communities, and Christian “holy sites” in the Holy Land, so as to garner support among the world’s Christian communities.
But Israel has gone to great lengths to completely ignore the Christians in Palestine, and even greater lengths to promulgate a false narrative maintaining that “there are no churches in Gaza” and “no Christians in Gaza”.
ISIS is well-known for “the systematic mass murder” of Christians in all the areas that came under their control. The Israeli hasbarists claim that, like ISIS, Hamas has eradicated the Christian community in Gaza, murdering or expelling the people and destroying the churches and holy buildings.
This is the EXACT OPPOSITE OF THE TRUTH.
Until Israel launched its genocide, Gaza had a modest but vibrant Christian community. It is, in fact the Israelis who are killing Christians and blowing up ancient churches and monasteries in Gaza.
In fact, three of the 19 Christian churches in Palestine are located in Gaza, and some are among the oldest in Christendom. They have now all been bombed by the IDF.
Hamas actually supports Christians.
“We appreciate the position of the Christians of our honorable national Palestinian people who limit their celebrations this year … and stand united with our people in the Gaza Strip, which is subjected to brutal Zionist aggression,” Hamas said in a Christmas statement. They later criticised Israel for placing a ban on Christian Gazans visiting Jerusalem for Easter.
By conflating Hamas with ISIS, Israel can cover up its crimes against Christians in Gaza and portray Hamas as anti-Christian islamic radicals.
Hamas is not “anti-Semitic” (but ISIS is)
Another reason for linking Hamas to ISIS is so that Israelis can paint Hamas with the broad brush of anti-Semitism or “Jew-hatred”. As noted above, ISIS is an islamic supremacist organisation that believes in murdering all non-believers. This means that they are as much anti-Jew as they are anti-Christian.
Hamas, on the other hand, specifically states in their Charter that their fight is not with the Jews, but with the “Zionist project” (i.e., Israel):
16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.
The Hamas Charter also condemns the Israelis for conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism:
Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
This position of Hamas contradicts the Israeli Zionist mantra that “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism”. In fact, like so many anti-Zionists, Hamas is NOT anti-Semitic and calls out this distinction specifically.
Thus it behooves Israel to equate Hamas with the Jew-hating ISIS so that the invalidity and mendacity of their “anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism” argument is not revealed.
The “YOU’RE NEXT” argument
Another way that Israel inculcates support among its Western allies is to make them think that they are facing the same “terror threats” that Israel does. This was fully evident when Bibi Netanyahu responded to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center by saying it was “good for Israel”, and “swung American public opinion in our favour.”
Moreover, one of the so-called “dancing Israelis” who were arrested on 9/11 for dancing and celebrating the WTC attacks explained it even more succinctly when he told police:
“We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.”
That argument got a boost in the wake of October 7, thanks to the Hamas-ISIS hasbara narrative. The “Hamas is ISIS” Twitter/X graphics shown below are aimed at convincing international audiences that Hamas is equivalent to ISIS and thus poses a threat to Western populations.
“Hamas-ISIS” hides the true nature of the conflict in Palestine
Perhaps the most important reason for mixing up Hamas with ISIS is that Israeli propagandists can then portray the conflict in Gaza as being a religious, one, where the righteous Israelis are defending “Judeo-Christian values” and fighting the great evil of “global islamic jihad”.
By painting Hamas as anti-Christian, anti-Jew and radically Islamist, the Israeli hasbarists keep the rest of the world thinking that their conflict with the Palestinians is part of the “global war on terror” — and not a fight over land, human rights and national identity.
Israel HATES to hear anything about their illegal occupation of Palestine, or about refugees, or about the unique and horrible living conditions that they have perpetrated on the Palestinians for the past 75 years.
In fact, no pro-Israeli propagandist will even speak the word “Palestinians”. For them, all of Gaza is inhabited by “terrorists”.
In addition, the hasbarists will always pronounce the word “Hamas” with a hard “H” — so as to make it sound even more foreign and sinister.
They certainly will never refer to Hamas by their full actual name, “Islamic Resistance Movement”, because that prompts the question: “what are they resisting”?
What Hamas really is
As mentioned above, Hamas is a LOCAL, popular resistance movement, whose roots go back decades to when a group of local activists started running schools, charities and health clinics in the Occupied Territories of Palestine following the 1967 war.
The group grew out of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational islamist organisation that started in Egypt in the 1920’s. It was through the Muslim Brotherhood that the forerunners of Hamas established associations, used zakat (alms giving) for aid to poor Palestinians, promoted schools, provided students with loans, used waqf (religious endowments) to lease property and employ people, and established mosques.
In fact, between 1967 and 1987 the number of mosques in Gaza tripled from 200 to 600. Hamas as a political organisation was then founded in 1987 during the first Intifada.
Hamas leveraged its network of social service activities and community activism to gain popularity, and soon became a dominant political and cultural force in the Occupied Territories, especially in the Gaza Strip.
Al-Qassam Brigades: the “military wing” of Hamas
In 1991, Hamas formed the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (IQB), a militia group that was designed to give Hamas military capability. The IQB is named after a Muslim preacher and Mujahid, a “freedom fighter” who fought against the British Occupation Force in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. Al-Qassam also opposed the Zionist forces who were trying to form a Jewish state at that time.
An “independent” military wing
While the United States and Israel have classified Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Australia, the European Union, Egypt , New Zealand and the UK have designated only the al-Qassam brigades as a terrorist organisation.
A report (PDF) prepared for the Australian Parliament explains the distinction:
Hamas as an organisation has distinct political and military wings. The military wing is also known as the Executive Force. The Brigades are an armed element of the military wing and operate independently of the other sections of Hamas. They are divided into a number of independent and specialised cells. While the Brigades are an integral part of Hamas, they also operate independently and at times at odds with Hamas’ stated aims.
“Reminiscent of Ireland’s IRA”
The al-Qassam Brigades were set up as a separate entity from the political wing of Hamas for a very specific reason. In 1997, political scientists Ilana Kass and Bard O’Neill described Hamas’s relationship with the Brigades as “reminiscent of Sinn Féin’s relationship to the IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army)”.
The separation of the political and military wings is intended to shield Hamas’s political leaders from accusations of “responsibility for terrorism”. This “plausible deniability” would thus make Hamas an eligible representative for peace negotiations as had happened with Sinn Féin politician Gerry Adams.
This is a valid comparison, echoed by many other political observers, and is further confirmed by the plethora of panicked screeds by Zionists condemning such a comparison.
As is usually the case with Israeli hasbarists and their media minions, however, “they doth protest too much.”
Indeed, the similarity of the situations is evinced in the fact that Ireland is truly “one of the most pro-Palestinian nations in the world”.
Why Hamas became militarised
This focus on “armed struggle”, i.e., of active resistance to the Israeli occupation, has been a key differentiator for Hamas, and sets their organisation apart from the Palestine Liberation Organisation of Mahmoud Abbas, and its own political party, Fatah, which opposes armed struggle and prefers “negotiations” with the Israelis.
[Author’s note: how’d those Oslo negotiations work out?]
This crucial difference between Hamas and Fatah was why Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 by a huge majority. Moreover, the party’s dedication to armed resistance continues to fuel Hamas’s popularity — including in the West Bank — even as the current conflict with Israel grinds on.
In fact, many Palestinians — including Hamas leadership — view the PLO and Fatah as “collaborators” with Israel.
Dissociation from the Muslim Brotherhood
When Hamas issued its new Charter in 2017, it also issued a dramatic policy document that specifically dissolved its association with the Muslim Brotherhood. This dissociation occurred for several reasons.
First, Hamas wanted to distance themselves because the Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational islamist organisation, whereas Hamas is a nationalist organisation only concerned with Palestine and Palestinians.
Second, the Muslim Brotherhood is designated as a terrorist organisation by most Western powers, such as the US and the European Union, the United Nations, and even many Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and above all, Egypt (Gaza’s neighbour).
As a political party hoping to govern an independent Palestinians State one day, Hamas wanted to be free of “terrorist ties” (as it did with the al-Qassam Brigades).
Another reason was the Muslim Brotherhood’s call for the destruction of Israel. In 2017, Hamas rejected this call for eradicating the state of Israel and instead adopted a more moderate stance towards what they still called the “Zionist project”.
Acceptance of the 1967 borders
Another big announcement in 2017 was Hamas’s explicit recognition of the 1967 borders outlined by the United Nations, and its acceptance — at least transitionally — of an Israeli state within those 1967 borders.
Khaled Meshaal, who was head of Hamas at the time, told reporters:
”We don’t want to dilute our principles but we want to be open. We hope this (document) will mark a change in the stance of European states towards us“.
“Hamas advocates the liberation of all of Palestine but is ready to support the state on 1967 borders without recognising Israel or ceding any rights.”
This was reflected in the Charter as follows:
20…Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
A popular “resistance movement”
From the above one can easily see why Israel needs to hide the true nature of Hamas. They NEED to portray Hamas as a “global jihadist terrorist movement” who is pushing for an “islamic theocracy” that excludes — and even kills — Christians and Jews. They need to equate Hamas with ISIS in order to disguise the TRUE FACT that Hamas IN REALITY is more akin to the French Résistance and the Italian Partigiani in World War II.
Hamas has the LEGAL right to take up arms
The above mentioned references to resistance groups in WWII is important to understanding Hamas. In the wake of WWII the Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 were ratified by every country in the United Nations. This Convention provides specific legal directives regarding an the situation on Palestine and Israel’s Occupation.
Firstly, it is important to realise that the Palestinians are an Occupied People, as defined in the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
Secondly, the United Nations, as well as every major human rights group on the planet, have ruled that Israel is an occupier — even of Gaza.
Moreover — and this part is key — according to that same Geneva Convention, Palestinians, as the occupied people, have the legal right to resist their occupation.
I will repeat: Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation by any means available.
Additionally, according to UN Resolution 3314:
“In relevant part, the resolution not only went on to affirm the right “to self-determination, freedom and independence […] of peoples forcibly deprived of that right,[…] particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination” but noted the right of the occupied to “struggle … and to seek and receive support” in that effort.”
Now, we might argue whether the Israeli occupation qualifies as “colonial and racist” (I believe it is both), but you cannot argue the fact that the Palestinians are under occupation, and living in what are universally described as “the Occupied Territories”.
Hamas respects international law
In reviewing the Hamas Charter of 2017 it is obvious that the organisation went to great lengths to formulate its positions and demands in accordance with international law, including the above mentioned Geneva Conventions.
This is in sharp contrast to the Israeli hasbara narrative that seeks to portray Hamas only as illegal, lawless, terrorists.
Why I do not condemn Hamas for October 7
Many people reading this article may say, “but armed struggle cannot include atrocities such as were committed on October 7, certainly you must condemn Hamas for what they did on that day?”
No. I do not. Let me explain why.
Hamas was not alone
Firstly, it is completely disingenuous to blame Hamas for whatever atrocities or crimes may have been committed on October 7. That ios because HAMAS WAS NOT ALONE.
In fact, some estimates say that of the 3000 people who breached the Gaza fence on October 7, up to 67% WERE NOT HAMAS.
In addition, Gaza is home to several resistance factions, not just the Hamas al-Qassam Brigades. These other factions also participated.
In fact, the BBC reports that there were 10 armed groups training alongside Hamas during the “Operation Strong Pillar” drills preparing for the October 7 attack.
The BBC confirms:
Following the 7 October attack, five of the groups went on to post videos claiming to show them taking part in the assault. Three others issued written statements on Telegram claiming to have participated.
Moreover: “three groups — Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Mujahideen Brigades and Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades — claim to have seized Israeli hostages, alongside Hamas, on that day”.
Why does this matter?
Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades are a military force, and they are used to attacking military targets. They had very specific operational objectives for their mission on October 7.
What Hamas accomplished
Hamas — and the al-Qassam Brigades — had very specific military and political objectives for October 7. The operation was code named “Al-Aqsa Flood” and its mission was to (1) attack and destroy Israeli military facilities around Gaza and (2) take Israeli military POWs and civilian hostages that they could then use to trade for Palestinian detainees.
Why prisoners matter so much
Israel can round up and detain Palestinians in the Occupied Territories whenever they want, and for no reason at all. The Palestinian prisoners — including children — who do face trial are tried in military courts.
According to B’Tselem — The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Israel is currently holding almost 10,000 Palestinians in their prison system. Of these, 3,300 are being held in “Administrative detention” — meaning without charge. About 200 of these are children as young as 12. Israel does not have a habeas corpus law, so Palestinians can be held without charge indefinitely.
Prisoner exchanges has always been a high priority for Hamas. They negotiate an exchange of civilian prisoners for the Administrative detainees, and they exchange military prisoners for Palestinians who have been tried and sentenced in Israel’s military courts.
Naturally, the number of Palestinians being held without charge has exploded since October 7.
Military timing and staying on mission
The al-Qassam fighters were operating on strict timetables, executing a mission for which they had been training since 2020. It is highly doubtful that they would have “taken time out” from this detailed, scripted mission playbook to do the horrible things that the Israeli authorities claimed they did.
In fact, now it has become increasingly clear that NO ONE did those horrible things.
What is there to condemn?
Remember: the Israelis are constantly seeking to delegitimise Hamas, to paint them as global jihadi terrorists and NOT as the resistance fighters they are.
This narrative was boosted on October 7, when a phalanx of Israeli hasbarists — police and IDF officers, first responders, etc. flooded the media with gruesome horror stories of gang rape, beheaded babies, babies hung on clotheslines, babies baked in ovens, and “sexual violence used as a weapon of war”.
But what if NONE of those things ever happened?
Accusations are used to support a genocide
It now seems clear that the Israelis and their minions in the media were spreading LIES about what happened on October 7. They needed to portray the Palestinians and the people of Gaza in particular as “human animals” and “inhuman” and “savages” in order to justify the genocidal slaughter they were about to unleash on Gaza.
Neve Gordon, an Israeli Israeli professor and academic who is a member of the Faculty of Law at Queen Mary University in London, described how Israel is “working hard to legitimise the war crimes it commits” by portraying Palestinians as morally inferior:
“Palestinians are presented as barbarian and as primitive and as people who do not understand the laws of war, people that do not make distinctions between civilians and combatants, and so forth, and therefore they are immoral, while Israel claims that it tries to protect civilians.”
Comparisons of Palestinians to “rats or snakes” on Israeli social media accounts are an effort to “dehumanise” them and “legitimise civilian deaths,” according to Gordon.
The “atrocities” never happened
The reality is as follows:
There were no “beheaded babies”.
There were no “burned babies”
There were no “babies on clotheslines”.
There were no “babies in ovens”.
There were no “foetuses taken from pregnant women”.
In fact, according to the public records from October 7, only one baby died that day. It died in its mother’s arms when a Hamas fighter fired blindly through a “safe room” door.
No one was raped
Another Zionist hasbara (propaganda) narrative promulgated by the Israelis and their media minions is the accusation that Hamas “weaponised sexual violence” on October 7. Such allegations are not new, and they are part of a tapestry of dehumanisation, an Israeli effort to again portray Palestinians as “animals”.
As an American, I am familiar with such racist tropes, as they formed a large part of the systemic racism that existed (and still persists) in the United States: the fear that “black men are raping our women” is used to justify racist violence of the worst kind.
And the Israelis are nothing if not racist. For them, tropes linking Muslim men to monstrous violence, including sexual crimes, is just part of being a good Zionist:
“The idea of the Arab male as an explicit sexual threat to Jewish women developed in tandem with the movement of Israeli politics to the right.”
The fact is that not one woman was raped on October 7. These salacious claims have all been debunked.
As Haaretz has reported, Israeli police even sent a court order to not just general hospitals but also psychiatric clinics, directing them to “provide information on the victims of sexual offences committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7.”
This directive was “a tacit admission that police lack survivor testimony”. The court order also refuted claims that alleged survivors were not being identified to protect them.
In January, another Haaretz article (available only in the Hebrew version of the newspaper’s website) casts even more doubt on the stories:
“The police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault or witnesses to acts from the Hamas attack, and are unable to connect the existing evidence with the victims described in it. Now, three months after the massacre, the organisation decided to turn to the public to encourage those who have information on the matter to come and testify.”
The Times of London recently published a complete debunking of the “mass rape” story.
On May 10, I published an article here challenging all the Zionist hasbarists and Israel apologists to provide me with the name of one woman who was raped on October 7.
So far, no one has come forward.
So how did all those people die?
The figure of deaths from October 7 is currently placed at 1,139 killed, including 695 civilians. But exactly how many of those deaths were caused by the Hamas fighters — or any of the other factions — is unclear at best.
As mentioned above, several other armed Palestinian factions were operating that day. There were also armed “civilian” Gazans who had followed the militia groups through the fence, and they may have been bent on murder and mayhem without any sort of military objective.
The “Hannibal Directive”
What has not been determined — and what the IDF refuses to discuss — is how many of the incinerated and blown up bodies discovered that day were the victims of Israeli Apache gunships and Merkava tanks.
This was due to the fact that around 12:00 noon on October 7, the Israeli commands issued a mass “Hannibal Directive” to all its ground and air forces.
The Hannibal Directive was instituted following a 1986 hostage incident. The order decreed that no Israeli soldier was to be taken alive; that all possible measures would be taken to kill the enemy captors, even if it meant killing the captured soldier.
There is an increasing body of evidence that on October 7 the IDF implemented the Hannibal Directive against not just their own soldiers, but against Israeli civilians as well.
This evidence is further substantiated by eyewitness accounts confirming that IDF forces killed Israeli civilians.
IDF pilot: October 7 was “a mass Hannibal”
Israeli Air Force (reserve) Col. Nof Erez, in an interview with Haaretz, described Israel’s actions on 7 October as a “mass Hannibal” event.
Kibbutz Be’eri
Kibbutz Be’eri is a veteran-established kibbutz located in the Gaza periphery since 1946. Its members are generally on the secular left, and it includes many peace activists, according to Wikipedia.
Nonetheless, the kibbutz was attacked by Hamas on October 7. What happened then remains unclear, but evidence has emerged that houses in the kibbutz were shelled by Israeli tanks operating under the Hannibal Directive. In all, 130 people died in the battle.
Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
In one instance, a group of a dozen al-Qassam members gathered 15 Israeli civilians as hostages inside the home of the kibbutz resident.
When the Hamas fighters launched an RPG from the house, Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram told the tank commander: “The negotiations are over. Break in, even at the cost of civilian casualties.”
An Israeli Merkava tank then fired two shells into the house. The result was that 13 of the Israeli hostages perished from the shelling. The families of those 13 victims of the Hannibal Directive are now demanding answers and an official probe into the IDF’s actions that day.
Holit Kibbutz
On October 7, Hamas (Al-Qassam Brigades) also attacked Holit, another kibbutz close to the border fence with the Gaza Strip. The IDF dispatched a tank squadron to the kibbutz comprised of a relatively poorly trained and ill-prepared crews.
As reported by The GrayZone:
A glowing profile of an all-female tank company by Israel’s N12 News network contains admissions by the 20-year-old captain — identified only as ‘Karni’ — that she was ordered by a “panicked” soldier to open fire on homes in the Holit kibbutz whether they contained civilians or not.
Why we should not “condemn Hamas”
What I have laid out in the article above makes a potent case for refusing to condemn Hamas. There are several reasons for refusing to do so, which I will recap here:
Hamas is not ISIS
Hamas is a local resistance movement that exists solely to oppose the illegal Israeli occupation and subjugation of Palestine and the Palestinian people. Hamas is not a global islamic terror organisation. It has dissociated itself from the Muslim Brotherhood and has no interest in global jihad.
Israelis try to paint Hamas with the terrorism brush in order to distract from the actual nature of the conflict, namely that the Palestinians are an Occupied People and Israel is the Occupying Power that controls their lives.
Hamas is a political organisation
Do not confuse Hamas, which hopes to govern a future Palestinian state, with its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, a militia group that operates independently of the Hamas political leadership.
Israel wants you to conflate the two, so that Hamas will not be accepted as a valid partner for peace negotiations and an eventual government. Do not fall for this false framing. Remember the Irish Sinn Fein — IRA precedent.
Hamas has a legal right to exist — and to resist
According to the Geneva Conventions and UN resolutions, the Palestinian people have a legal right to resist their occupation by any means available. Hamas’s “armed struggle” against Israel is a legal one.
The “atrocities” of October 7 never happened
There is so far no conclusive proof that Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades committed any acts outside their stated military objectives on October 7, namely to attack and destroy Israeli military targets and take as many prisoners as possible to be used to exchange for Palestinians illegally detained by Israel.
Do not allow people to get away with repeating false stories of “beheaded babies” and the like, because virtually EVERY SINGLE ONE of those horror stories — and especially the ones about rape — have been debunked, and mostly bu the Israelis themselves.
The Palestinians support and celebrate Hamas
Perhaps the best reason not to condemn Hams is the fact that the Palestinians themselves support — and even celebrate — Hamas.
October 7 was a day of celebration in Palestinian enclaves throughout Palestine as well as in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Even once the brutal Israeli retaliation started, the popularity of Hamas continued to skyrocket.
Even in Gaza, the October 7 attack was seen as a necessary act:
“The situation is very devastating, and we couldn’t take it anymore,” says local journalist Hind Khoudary, describing deteriorating living conditions in Gaza. “It may not be aligned with international law, but, for the first time, Palestinians here in Gaza do not feel helpless.”
#End
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A big thank you for this exhaustive and timely clarification that restores essential truths to an objective understanding of reality.
This is a great help for those who are lost and blinded by the Zionist narrative. We are not fooled, as for us and have long been vaccinated against the mythology and falsifications of this harmful entity…
This is really informative. Thank you, and I agree. I will not condemn justified resistance.