what is your view on Hamas?
They're a right-wing, repressive, fundamentalist organisation who have committed multiple war crimes. They are also one of the few organised groups with enough power to offer any significant military or political resistance to Israeli occupation and apartheid.
We can all agree that the Palestinian people deserve a progressive, pragmatic political movement that truly represents their interests. But unfortunately, that is not what you get when you legally and politically disenfranchise an entire people and subject them to the constant fear of violence and displacement for decades, without any means of legal recourse. What you get are desperate, violent extremists who despise the state of Israel and act accordingly.
The history of the western colonialism in the Middle East (of which Israel is a part) is just back-to-back examples of how western imperialism empowers the worst and most extreme political elements wherever it rears its ugly head. Desolate, dark and bloody situations seldom give rise to englightened, socially progressive freedom fighters that will tick all the boxes for the kind of politically acceptable resistance that western liberals can support.
Besides, I don't think it would make much material difference if Hamas were the diplomatic, peaceful organisation that Netanyahu and western political leaders claim they want to 'negotiate with'. Settlers backed by the IDF would continue to force the Palestinian people out of their homes under whatever pretence they like, then the state would illegally annex their land while the west turns a blind eye and continues to fund and arm them, as we always have.
We shouldn't forget that this is really not Hamas vs Israel, as we're all being trained to think, as if it’s just a case of weighing up the behaviour of two equal sides in a straight forward military conflict. This is not a war, it’s an occupation. This is Israel and their powerful, modern, western-backed military holding the fates of 4.8 million civilians; oppressed, second class citizens living under a military regime, trapped and half starved.
It is easy to condemn Hamas and their violence, as I do without reservation, but it's far more difficult to answer the question of what the Palestinian people are actually supposed to do in order to resist their own destruction, if not take up arms against their oppressors.
