Understanding Hamas: And Why That Matters

On October 8, a significant book was published by OR Books, featuring a group of researchers under the supervision of Helena Cobban and Rami G. Khouri, titled “Understanding Hamas: And Why That Matters.“

This book provides a necessary objective study to understand a widely misunderstood movement, whose involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a crucial factor in its orientation and trajectory.

The book responds to the smear and demonization campaigns that the Hamas movement has endured in Western political and media discourse, particularly following the Al-Aqsa Flood battle on October 7, 2023.

The book does not defend Hamas or oppose it; rather, it presents an objective and comprehensive analysis with prominent experts to deepen understanding of a movement that is a key player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For many years, especially since October 7, 2023, leaders of the Israeli entity and their supporters around the world have waged a harsh campaign aimed at demonizing the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, as part of their efforts to gain widespread international support to push for the destruction of this movement. This distortion mirrors how previous generations of Israelis tried for decades to malign the Palestine Liberation Organization (the more secular group).

The demonization of Hamas by the Israeli entity also reflects how many European and American leaders in the past sought to denounce and exclude movements across the Global South, as seen in Vietnam, Algeria, or Kenya, which struggled to rid themselves of colonial rule and achieve national independence.

Such efforts to demonize peoples hinder diplomacy, leaving those suffering from colonial rule or military occupation trapped for decades in devastating conflicts perpetrated by their most violent and armed oppressors, as is currently happening in Palestine.

These campaigns to demonize peoples are always based on flattening or erasing the essential and significant political history of the targeted liberation movements. In Vietnam, those who resisted the American army were widely dismissed as “fools.” In Kenya, the British army labeled the organizers of the Mau Mau “violent and primitive” harbingers of pure evil… In recent times, the Israeli and American governments, along with many European governments, have described most movements resisting their dictates as “terrorist,” heightening fears by labeling those resisting the Israeli or American occupation in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Afghanistan as “terrorists.”

The book discusses the military and political repercussions of the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, when Hamas and its allies from Gaza launched a bold, multi-faceted military attack to break the tight Israeli blockade that has suffocated the region and its people for decades. The Al-Aqsa Flood dealt a powerful punitive blow to the entrenched “concept” of Israeli security from which it has not yet recovered.

The Israeli entity launched a military campaign against the people of Gaza to obscure the extent of the damage inflicted by the Al-Aqsa Flood on the Israeli army, manifested in organized acts of extermination.

In the UN Security Council and around the world, the Israeli entity and its allies have conducted a continuous media and political campaign to condemn Hamas, aiming to shut down any deeper reflection on how Israel’s repression of the majority of the indigenous Arab population in Palestine over decades led to the events of October 7, or how any successful diplomacy to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must necessarily involve engaging all the main Palestinian political currents—not just Palestinian political parties.

Is this why the events of October 7 occurred? Or how any successful diplomacy to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must necessarily involve engaging all the main Palestinian political currents, rather than continuing decades-long efforts to demonize Hamas and exclude it and its significant role in national politics?

In the spring of 2024, the board of Just World Educational, a nonprofit organization that provides educational resources critically examining the role of the United States in the world, focusing on issues of war, peace, and justice, decided to organize and present an open seminar titled “Understanding Hamas: And Why That Matters,” which was presented to a global audience in May 2024.

Among the five experts who contributed to this project, which became the book, are three Palestinian academics residing outside Palestine and two European experts who have spent years in Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank during both the early and later years of Hamas’ existence.

The five conducted in-depth research on Hamas, including interviews with its activists and leaders at various levels.

These experts include:

• Dr. Paula Caridi, a lecturer at the University of Palermo and a former journalist who reported from Cairo (2001-2003) and Jerusalem (2003-2012). Dr. Caridi’s second book out of three is “Hamas: From Resistance to Government,” published in Italian in 2009 and in English in 2012. A revised edition was released on October 10.
• Dr. Khaled Harb, a research professor at the Centre for Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge and a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University in Qatar, has published two books on the subject: “Hamas: Thought and Political Practice” and “Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide.”
• Dr. Jerroin Jonining, a professor of politics and conflict in the Middle East at King’s College London, and a visiting professor at both Aarhus University and the London School of Economics. He is a founding member of the critical terrorism studies field and has taught and advised policymakers and many civil society organizations.
• Ma’in Rabani: Co-editor of Jadaliyya, editor of the Peacebuilding and Development Journal, and contributing editor at the Middle East Report, Rabani has served as the senior Middle East analyst and special advisor on Israel and Palestine at International Crisis Group.
• Azam Tamimi, a British-Palestinian-Jordanian academic and political thinker, headed the Institute of Islamic Political Thought until 2008. Tamimi has written several books on politics in the Middle East and Islam, including “Islam and Secularism in the Middle East” and “Hamas: A History from Within.”

The book explores several important aspects of Hamas’s history and its practices in the political and military struggle against the Israeli occupation:

• The origins of Hamas within the Palestinian Islamic movement, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region, which previously focused on social and religious issues rather than political participation.
• The factors that drove the founders of Hamas in 1987 to begin engaging in serious national political activism and to formally establish this movement, while remaining deeply involved in numerous charitable and community service projects throughout Palestine.
• The widespread geographical reach of Hamas networks, which extend to Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where large communities of Palestinian refugees live and operate.
• The balance between the political wing and armed resistance wing within Hamas, how decisions were made at different times, and how they were implemented to launch or cease certain forms of struggle.
• The evolution of Hamas’s political thought, from perspectives that in 1987 and 1988 emphasized piety to those expressed and supported in 2017 that were clearer in identifying as a political national movement, striving to distance the movement from anti-Semitism and drawing a clear distinction between Judaism as a religion and Zionism as an imperialist colonial political project.
• The continuities and disruptions between Hamas’s program and path of action over the years and those taken by the Palestine Liberation Organization leaders previously; the complex, at times perilous, but non-binary relationships between these strands of the Palestinian national movement.
• Hamas’s practice of maintaining alliances with other factions in the Palestinian movement that do not share its strong Islamic orientations but share its liberation and resistance priorities within the national political arena.
• The strong presence of Hamas within the Palestinian political body and efforts to liberate thousands of Palestinians, including dozens of Palestinian political leaders who have been held in Israeli jails.
• The relationships Hamas sought to establish with other state and non-state actors in West Asia, including members of the “Resistance Axis,” which includes Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah (the Houthis) in Yemen, and others in Syria and Iraq.
• Hamas’s support for women’s rights and their empowerment; its views on the status of women in society; and its perspectives and practices on other social issues.
• The legacy of Hamas in participating in elections in Palestine—at the level of the occupied Palestinian territories in 2006, and in many other local/sectoral electoral events; and the broad degree of political support that the movement and its leaders have continued to enjoy in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
• The policies adopted by Hamas and its leaders to integrate their movement into the broader structure of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
• Hamas’s endeavors and degree of flexibility in negotiations, and its level of participation in the political paths called for by the international community since 1967, which would lead to a two-state solution.

According to the authors of the book, understanding this significant movement in Palestinian public life must rely on objective historical foundations and a multidimensional understanding of this important part of Palestinian public life, rather than the anti-Hamas discourse widely promoted by institutional media in Western countries.

The authors emphasize the necessity of stopping the demonization of Hamas, halting the genocidal crimes, war crimes, and other atrocities committed by the Israeli entity in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.

This requires governments and people around the world to cease their demonization of Hamas and its allies and provide genuine support to end not only the genocide and other atrocities but also, beyond that, to end the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which has lasted for 57 years.

It then becomes a matter of objectivity and fairness in the positions regarding what is happening now in Gaza and Lebanon; instead of focusing on the anti-Hamas political and media discourse, it is essential to direct attention toward respecting the Palestinian people’s right to liberation from the Israeli military occupation, their right to determine their future, and their ability to build their national governing institutions in peace and security, in the manner they choose. If this is to happen anytime soon, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, will undoubtedly be a key part of this project.