Hamas

I've already told many people I'm not inclined to denounce Hamas.

For one thing, Hamas and indeed all Palestinians have the right of violent self defense against Israel, which has:

1) Stolen their entire country.

2) Stolen their homes, their communities, and their livelihoods.

3) Murdered and terrorized them since before the violent creation of Israel--itself through a terror based ethnic cleansing of 750,000 people, and through many episodes later, including the 1967 war (and refusal with withdraw to internationally agreed borders afterwards).

4) Threatened an important religious landmark, important to 1.8 billion people.

Given that the Palestinians are a nation of people under apartheid, occupation, and siege, they have a right to self defense by violent means.

The perpetrators of that apartheid, occupation, and siege have no such primary right.  They have the responsibility to end their apartheid, occupation, and siege first.  Once that has been done, they will have the right of self defense.

So, firstly, I denounce Israel and Zionists.  I cannot denounce Palestinians, including Hamas.  I do not denounce Jews and Judaism, perhaps all of my most favorite anti-Zionists are Jewish, many of the same are also among my favorite anti-Imperialists, and Jews are among my favorite experts in other fields.  

That a majority of Jews may or may not be known as Zionist today means little to me, the majority of any group of people are fools, and Zionism has always been built on the slickest lies that were particularly salable to Jews after the Holocaust and may take some outside knowledge to debunk.  So I don't see Zionism as a peculiar weakness of the Jews as such, but it was something that happened to many Jews which could happen to many other nations, and historically has, as it once did to the forward and objective thinking Germans once who fell for Naziism.  The siren call to ethnic supremacism should be understood as fundamentally evil, but the creators of Zionism disguised it for the gullible as left and liberal and Zionism was there at just the right time(s) and the world is filled with such gullible people of all kinds, not just Jews and Zionists (and Zionism has become part of much of Christianity and White Man's Rule as well).

I further understand that what the west calls Hamas for simplification purposes, may include other militant sectors, some perhaps even left or communist.  I'm not sure about the dynamics, but I do believe multiple political identities exist(ed) in Gaza, and some or all may have had collaborating militant groups.

Were Hamas successful in bringing the destruction of the Zionist Entity, I'd prefer to see a Communist identity, or even a liberal one, than an Islamic one.  But it is not my choice.  Those who win decide.  And though I'd prefer the fully political dismantlement of the Zionist State with a Communist State, or a Liberal State, I'm not doing it either way.  It's for the people doing these things, or not, not mine, someone who lives elsewhere in comfort and (comparative) safety and "freedom" (except bodily choices, recreational drugs, etc, and subject to various penalties for criticizing the powers that be--so I hate to call this "freedom" except in quotes though I well understand it could be worse, and sometimes is worse though in different ways in other countries).

And if I'm asked what Hamas had in mind, presuming they'll be stuck with another defeat for the Palestinian people just like before, I'd say perhaps they thought with the US tied down in Ukraine, and other things, this was their best opportunity for success (and maybe it will be so, ultimately most likely if somehow the US decides to give up the effort at some point).

All else being equal*, I'd certainly prefer that Hamas win than the 10-40 times more murderous AND apartheiding, occupying and besieging power.  Even though I may, myself, find still find this hard to imagine, as I did many other things, South African Apartheid among them, it is not impossible, exactly, and worth wishing for rather than against.

So I'd simply prefer not to say anything against Hamas, even though I'd say it's fair to say that I prefer political and non-violent methods performed by Communist organizations.  I know Palestinians have already tried these methods too.  And since I am not doing those things myself, it depends on those there, what they have been doing, what their plans are, etc., about which I have little information (though I do have a recently released video by a Hamas leader, that's in public now fwiw).

And that includes not predicting or even presuming that Hamas will fail.

(*An astute observer will notice the qualification has quite a lot of importance here.  It's easy to imagine a swift Israeli Mowing-The-Lawn "victory."  It's harder to imagine a Hamas victory without something like world war.  And that's why I dislike being forced to simplify this statement, or even being held to rationalize the trade-offs.  I don't like world war, nor the prospect of nuclear winter, but at some point a world war may be "needed" by nations-as-they-exist to re-balance power relationships which have been quite warped for awhile.  I'd point out that the US is due for internal dissolution within 40 years anyway, so why not just wait.  And I'd say that to Palestinians in Gaza too.  But I'm the guy with a suburban home and a luxury car, not the one living in a prison which I could barely concieve.)

A related talk by Finkelstein a few days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/live/x6dJMvZi5Zw?si=64eNt5McgZ9JiIxB

Finkelstein points out the insanity of insisting Hamas must be destroyed rather than negotiated with.  Israel has inflicted far more than 10 times as much death and other crimes.  By that principle then Israel must therefore be destroyed rather than negotiated with.

In days, Israel killed more far children than had been killed in all the wars in the world in several previous years, including Russia in Ukraine.

He explains proportionality, the value of the target vs the value of nearby civilians.  And he describes this as insanity, and that if a leading expert finds it complicated to determine the 'proportionality' of dropping two 2000 pound bombs on a refugee camp in which hundreds of children are killed, it's insane.