Stop misunderstanding Hamas, you ignorant fools! The level of apologia, endorsement, support, embrace, acceptance, and adoption of Hamas, its terrorism, rhetoric, ideology, and “armed resistance” narrative among large swaths of the “pro-Palestine” community in the Western world has reached a new and alarming level. A law firm is currently representing the terror group in the United Kingdom, allegedly free of charge, to get the group’s terror registration removed from the list of “proscribed organizations” with the Home Secretary. A whole host of legal and mental gymnastics were provided by the head of the law firm to explain why their actions are legitimate and how this is somehow a valid pathway to ending the bloodshed in Gaza and responding to the daily scenes of murdered Palestinian children. What’s exceptionally revealing and quite terrifying is the level of support and encouragement that this action step has received from large segments of “pro-Palestine” folks in the diaspora, some of whom are Arab and Muslim, some are not. None of these individuals, including those at the law firm, bothered to understand that Hamas is the very root of the destruction of Gaza and the collapse of the Palestinian national project, having served the interests of the far right and the anti-Palestinian forces within Israeli politics and society. They didn’t bother to consider how the terror group undermined the fragile, yet viable, Oslo peace process; militarized the Second Intifada; killed thousands of Israelis in suicide bombings, rockets attacks, and on October 7; ruined the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli settlements as an opportunity to build an effective model for Palestinian self-governance and sustainable development; sabotaged the electoral process in 2006 to create a democratic society; violently & thuggishly took over the Gaza Strip in 2007; dragged Gaza into multiple useless wars; wasted billions of dollars that could have built 10 Palestinian states; and ultimately served the people of Gaza on a silver platter to the most extreme, far-right government in Israeli history through the crime of October 7. Part of why I put myself out there after 10/7 is that I almost immediately registered and realized the seismic shift that was upon us: large swaths of the so-called “pro-Palestine” solidarity movement were at best doing the Palestinians a disservice by removing Palestinian agency and absolving Palestinians of any responsibility for the repeated failures and disasters which led our people no where for almost 8 decades; at worst, were active participants in the horror that Hamas unleashed by celebrating terrorism, ignoring the dangers of violent Islamism, and endorsing the very organization (Hamas) that was allowed to grow and fester by Netanyahu for the explicit purpose of getting Gaza destroyed and preventing Palestinian moderates from emerging and extracting concessions. This is why when tens of thousands of Gazans recently protested against Hamas, they were ignored and actively opposed by the majority of the “pro-Palestine” movement, which is only interested in a narrow narrative that’s exclusively anti-Israel without addressing the profound and undeniable issues that are getting the Palestinians annihilated. Pity the Western world for allowing terror supporters and backers to set up shop and advocate for what is essentially a miniaturized version of ISIS.
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