{"id":12276,"date":"2024-01-12T02:10:21","date_gmt":"2024-01-12T07:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=12276"},"modified":"2024-01-17T00:25:30","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T05:25:30","slug":"once-more-on-hamas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2024\/01\/once-more-on-hamas\/","title":{"rendered":"Once More on Hamas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">S<\/span>ean Larson has written <a href=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/12\/against-colonial-narcissism\/\">a long response<\/a> to our short <a href=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/11\/a-response-to-jonah-ben-avrahams-support-palestinians-when-they-fight\/\">article<\/a> in which we criticized author Jonah ben Avraham for <a href=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/11\/support-palestinians-when-they-fight\/\">his denunciation<\/a> of those who, while organizing against Israel\u2019s slaughter of Palestinians, also condemned Hamas\u2019s attacks on civilians on October 7. Larson\u2019s response is unfortunately as problematic as the piece we criticized.<\/p>\n<p>Larson charges that we \u201cforefront\u201d criticism of Hamas. On the contrary, in almost everything we have done in the past three months we have in fact \u201cforefronted\u201d the horror being faced by the people of Gaza. Larson\u2019s objection is actually not to our \u201cforefronting\u201d criticism of Hamas, but to our mentioning it at all. We only wrote our initial article on ben Avraham because he suggested that to criticize Hamas atrocities in any way was to be \u201cpro-settler.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Larson suggests that we are moral monsters who, had we lived in earlier times, would have supported slavery and colonialism. He puts us in the current conflict on the side of Israel and the United States and against the liberation of the Palestinians. We are excoriated for having had the temerity to raise criticisms of Hamas while writing \u201cfrom the imperial core.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">In almost everything we have done in the past three months we have in fact \u201cforefronted\u201d the horror being faced by the people of Gaza. Larson\u2019s objection is actually not to our \u201cforefronting\u201d criticism of Hamas, but to our mentioning it at all.<\/aside>\n<p>Perhaps we ought to introduce into this discussion an element of realism. What do we and Larson actually do here in the imperial core? As activists on the Left we write, speak, and demonstrate demanding a ceasefire, opposing U.S. military aid to Israel, and expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. The one difference is that we\u2014but not Larson\u2014also criticize Hamas for its reactionary politics and its murder of civilians, though this in no way inhibits our participation in the current movement. Perhaps Larson and ben Avraham should tone down their accusations of people being \u201cpro-settler\u201d or pro-colonial.<\/p>\n<p>We know that Tempest agrees with us that one can support the victims of U.S. imperialism without blindly endorsing their politics. Tempest shares our criticisms of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and Russia and China today and disagrees with those whose justified defense of the oppressed led to vicariously identifying with and adopting the politics of Third World revolutionaries to the extent of sometimes setting aside the Left\u2019s historic demands for democracy and for humane values even in the course of revolution. Tempest also agrees with us that the enemies of our enemy are not automatically our friends, an unfortunate tendency that led to a reluctance to criticize the crimes of Stalin during the Cold War or Russia, China, or Iran today. We and Tempest both support movements from below, without blindly endorsing all who challenge Washington or its allies. We support progressive forces from below, not reactionary or fundamentalist ones. But ben Avraham and Larson, in their denunciation of any who criticize Hamas, seem to have lost their way, abandoning this tradition and replacing it with uncritical support for reactionary leaders and groups.<\/p>\n<p>Larson writes that perhaps our \u201cmost egregious assumption \u2026 is that socialists in the United States are the proper referees of anticolonial movements the world over.\u201d What we actually believe is that socialists everywhere, while showing solidarity, also retain the right to critical thinking. As Marx put it: \u201cDoubt all.\u201d We claim no special role, but believe like other socialists of the last two centuries that we should not remain silent in the face of atrocities that violate socialist values. At one point, Larson describes the horrible crimes carried out against Indigenous people in North America and tells us that some of the responses involved atrocities.<\/p>\n<p>He writes: \u201cIn the view of La Botz and Shalom, should socialists condemn the Dakota and other brave Indigenous warriors and insist on the use of the \u201clegitimate means\u201d of peaceful protest and moral appeal during the ethnic cleansing of Turtle Island?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Larson here implies that we equate \u201clegitimate means\u201d with \u201cpeaceful protest and moral appeal.\u201d But these terms are not at all equivalent. We are not pacifists, and we believe violence can be justified in the struggle for freedom from oppression. (As we said in our article: \u201cPalestinians, like all oppressed people, have the right to resist, including by armed force, by all legitimate means.\u201d) But that\u2019s not the same as claiming that all violence is justified. Violence in and of itself is not illegitimate. Killing noncombatants is.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">We are not pacifists, and we believe violence can be justified in the struggle for freedom from oppression\u2026But that\u2019s not the same as claiming that all violence is justified. Violence in and of itself is not illegitimate. Killing noncombatants is.<\/aside>\n<p>Our difference is that he and ben Avraham think the way to build support for a ceasefire is to\u00a0 insist we don\u2019t care about the means used by Hamas and that those who condemn the killing of civilians are \u201cpro-settler.\u201d We, on the other hand, believe that appealing to people\u2019s humanity is one of the best ways to convince them to oppose Israel\u2019s ongoing massacre. We also believe it is important to demonstrate that Hamas\u2019 action have not been in the best long-term interests of Palestinians. Larson says we are wrong to suggest that Israel is winning the war (though we said no such thing), but in any case, the war has been catastrophic for Palestine, and should it become a regional war, it would be disastrous for the entire World. <\/p>\n<p>Does condemning Hamas\u2019s crimes mean that we are enabling Israel\u2019s ongoing mass murder in Gaza? Not at all. We believe that just as it is wrong to kill Israeli civilians because of the crimes of their government, so too it is wrong to massacre tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians because of Hamas\u2019s crimes. By urging silence on Hamas\u2019s immoral behavior, Larson and others are sending the implicit message that they worry that Israel\u2019s murderous response would be justified if Hamas had engaged in war crimes. No. Nothing justifies Israel\u2019s onslaught. Some of our comrades have told us that they think we were too dismissive of the slogan \u201cby any means necessary,\u201d because, they say, since it is never necessary to kill children and other noncombatants, adherence to the slogan would preclude what happened on October 7. Point taken. But for Larson and some others, what is really meant by the slogan \u201cby any means necessary\u201d is \u201cby any means at all.\u201d Killing hundreds of people at a rave meets neither the \u201clegitimate means\u201d standard of international humanitarian law nor the standard of necessity, let alone the standard of morality.<\/p>\n<p>Larson argues that one must take into account the context of the Hamas attacks. We fully agree. History didn\u2019t begin on October 7. One needs to understand the long history of ethnic cleansing, dispossession, apartheid, and dehumanization to appreciate what brought Palestinians to this point. But understanding context is not the same as refusing to criticize. Consider the behavior of Zionists in 1947-48. The context for the atrocities they carried out during the Nakba was the fact that Jews had just come through the Holocaust. We understand that, and are even sympathetic, but we nevertheless believe that it is appropriate\u2014indeed necessary\u2014to condemn their horrific treatment of Palestinians. Understanding and justification are not the same. We in the Palestine support movement have been warning for years that Israel\u2019s policy would lead to an explosion. But we can\u2019t ignore the agency of Hamas\u2019s leaders in choosing the policies they did.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12277\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12277\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12277 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_Monument1.jpeg\" alt=\"photo of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_Monument1.jpeg 640w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_Monument1-600x450.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_Monument1-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_Monument1-400x300.jpeg 400w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_Monument1-200x150.jpeg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12277\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument; photo by Yuval Madar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Larson analogizes Hamas\u2019s attack to the resistance of the Warsaw ghetto, because it seems members of the latter once threw grenades into a lounge and a coffee shop (his source doesn\u2019t report any casualties). If we don\u2019t condemn the Warsaw fighters, says Larson, how can we condemn Hamas? But what an awful analogy. The scale of the killings and the balance of victims matter. The Warsaw resistance overwhelmingly aimed its weapons at soldiers, while most of Hamas\u2019s targets were civilians. The scale of slaughter, on a larger scale, is also what makes Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza so horrific: it isn\u2019t a civilian here or there who is being killed, but a pace of civilian deaths with \u201cfew precedents in this century\u201d (<em>New York Times<\/em>). We will not win popular support for a ceasefire, let alone for our more long-term aspirations for justice in the Middle East, by betraying the humane values that have always inspired the Left.<\/p>\n<p><small><em>Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/about\/\">About Tempest Collective<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n<p><small>Featured image credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:25th_anniversary_of_Hamas_(12).jpg\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a>; modified by Tempest.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> As part of a continuing exchange on October 7, the Palestinian resistance, and the posture of the Left towards Hamas, <strong>Dan La Botz<\/strong> and <strong>Stephen R. Shalom<\/strong> reply here to Sean Larson. La Botz and Shalom had previously submitted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/2023\/11\/a-response-to-jonah-ben-avrahams-support-palestinians-when-they-fight\/\">a response<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/2023\/11\/support-palestinians-when-they-fight\/\">an article<\/a> by Jonah ben Avraham to which Larson, in turn, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/2023\/12\/against-colonial-narcissism\/\">responded<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":276,"featured_media":12284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[181,541,226],"class_list":["post-12276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-debate","tag-palestine","tag-palestinian-liberation","tag-socialist-strategy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2024-01-11-21.33.39.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}