Is Hamas as Terrorist as Zionists and Their Supporters Claim?

By David Starr

Hardline Israel supporters have used a few epithets repeatedly in their attempts to condemn Hamas and its Oct. 2023 attack which left about 1,200 Israelis dead. It’s gotten to the point of absurdity considering Israel has gone way beyond self-defense in its attempted genocide of Palestinians. 

 

Included in the hardliners accusations are the words “terrorists,” “Nazis,” “human animals,” and “wild beasts.” And this is meant not just for Hamas but the whole Palestinian population. It’s Israel’s version of the Final Solution. 

 

The western media (in particular the U.S. media) and Israel’s media have largely not been reliable sources to report on the Israel-Palestine conflict and what Hamas is and what it has done. 

 

In the background of about 70 years of occupation and settlements, Hamas’s Oct. 2023 attack was not the start of the conflict, although Zionists and their supporters have repeatedly used this as an excuse to respond in “self-defense.” The occupation and settlements have blatantly violated international law. But the USA and its “spoiled child” Israel have arrogantly ignored this.

 

One hot topic is the Israeli hostages Hamas has taken. There have been stories from Zionists that these hostages have been treated terribly; along with other “atrocity” accusations that Hamas put Israeli babies in ovens, beheaded them, and have committed mass rape. These have been disproven, but what about the hostage situation? Israeli propaganda has emphasized fervently the treatment of the hostages.

 

CJ Werleman hosts a show that had a segment on the Israeli hostages. It may sound  overly-glorified, but it brings out inconvenient truths.

 

One source, however, while sounding objective, contains an overall tone in its reporting putting Hamas in the role of villain. FactCheck published a piece titled, “Post Misrepresents Condition of Israeli Hostages Released by Hamas.” This came out in Dec. 2023 almost two months after the Hamas attack. There was a post on Twitter (X) that Factcheck asserted was exaggerated. 

 

The post stated, “Videos of Israeli hostages being released look like people finishing a vacation and saying goodbye to the resort staff. They’re smiling, laughing, hugging, blowing kisses, and waving goodbye to their captors.” While this does sound too-good-to-be-true, there is video footage of the released hostages showing they were in good spirits and examples of them waving goodbye to their abductors.

 

Family members of the hostages were interviewed who said that many of them returned “malnourished, infested with lice, ill, injured and deeply traumatized.” In interviews with the New York Times, there were relatives who said that some hostages were given “a single piece of bread per day and were held in deep, sweltering tunnels.” And in comparing these hostages to Palestinians in Israeli prisons, FactCheck quotes Ian Lustick, a political science professor who is professed to be well-acquainted with the Israel-Palestine conflict, saying, that he did not see any “reports or evidence that a batch of prisoners was released with signs of mistreatment. I have not seen that.”

 

On the other hand, Lustick admits that prisoners are not treated well in Israeli prisons. “They’re kept alive, but they’re mistreated systematically right now,” adding that Israel’s fascist security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, “has been trying to reduce their living standards, taking away privileges, and making life much more miserable for Palestinian prisoners of all types.”

 

So, were Palestinians not mistreated, or were they?

 

FactCheck used a source like the New York Times, and it being a part of the establishment media, probably omits a lot of inconvenient truths related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s, thus, hard to say that it’s actually reliable. But that also goes for the Israeli hostages’ relatives, if they are lockstep with Israel’s Final Solution. Much of the information coming out of Israel and the USA has been false.

 

Israel continues with its Nazi-like aggression in Gaza. Rather than behaving in a civilized manner, at the least allowing humanitarian aid to go to Palestinians, Israel, with its fascist government and its supporters, is behaving like what it accuses Hamas of doing. 

 

An example of recent barbarity during Ramadan was revealed by Seraj Assi, writing in Jacobin magazine: “In a span of hours, entire Palestinian families were wiped out and buried in the rubble of their homes. Children and women were burned alive and murdered in their sleep. Survivors include a month-old girl, who was pulled from the rubble after the air strike killed her parents and brother.”

 

Israelis are now saying that the genocide is appropriate, because it is justified in the Bible. A book of unproven stories.

 

Assi writes, “By vowing to annihilate Gaza, Israeli leaders are clearly emboldened by the Trump [regime]. Trump’s numerous remarks in support of ethnic cleansing in Gaza have ensured that Israel continues to act with impunity there, with total contempt for international law and norms.

 

“Israel’s renewed onslaught has been carried out with US weapons and blessings [whether supported by Joe Biden or Trump], and launched with one hundred simultaneous air strikes and US-made bombs. Israeli top politicians confirmed that the attacks were ‘coordinated’ with the United States. Trump [regime] officials have cheered on the Israeli onslaught, while vowing that ‘We support Israel in its next steps,’ as acting US ambassador to the United Nations Dorothy Shea pledged before a UN Security Council.”

 

Assi concludes that “Israel’s Ramadan massacre was one of the worst acts of butchery in a war that has been filled with them. More appear likely to come.”

 

So, is Hamas a terrorist organization? Admittedly, it may have conducted terrorist acts, but this is a microcosm of the bigger situation with about 70 years of occupation and forced settlements by Israel. In that sense, Israel has done, and is doing, a worse set of actions. But that doesn’t excuse all parties involved. 

 

However, Eric Elliot and Grant Inskeep, writing in CounterPunch, condemn Hamas, not consisting of “revolutionary freedom fighters.” The overall tone of their article has Hamas being a purely violent, incompetent organization with no redeeming value. Elliot and Inskeep, while acknowledging Israel’s faults, don’t seem to understand what has happened with its role of being mainly the aggressor when it comes to decades of oppressing and humiliating Palestinians. Thus, the existence of an organization like Hamas. 

 

Elliot and Inskeep write that “from a purely tactical standpoint, Hamas must have known that Israel would react with massive destruction in Gaza after the October 7^th attacks.” Yes, it’s not surprising that Israel would behave in such a barbaric fashion, given the occupation and settlements. But then they strongly imply that it’s all Hamas’s fault. 

 

The suggestions from Elliot and Inskeep for Hamas are to give up its arms and negotiate. This does sound naïve, since negotiations have been going on for decades in a one-sided relationship, with the United States supporting Israel and virtually ignoring Palestinian pleas to end the occupation and settlements.

 

Elliot and Inskeep then write that “we have the strategic aspects of the October 7^th attack. The minute Hamas and their friends in Iran decided to launch operation Al-Aqsa Flood, what they did was show their geopolitical incompetence and played right in the hands of the Americans and Israelis who own a monopoly on violence in the ‘conflict.’” It’s not necessary to put the word conflict in quotes. It is a conflict that just didn’t happen on October 7^th, 2023. And what Elliot and Inskeep don’t seem to understand is that it’s a horrendous conflict that’s been going on for decades. Putting it mildly, Palestinians have been and are quite angry about their treatment by Israel.

 

While it’s true that Israel has had an advantage, thanks mainly to the morally bankrupt support from the USA, Palestinians are of course human; and not “human animals,” as an Israeli official put it. Israel has now shown its true colors, hellbent on establishing a “Greater Israel” regardless of the consequences, based on ultranationalism and myths of religious supremacy. Given the actions of Israel through the decades, especially now with Nazi-like aggression against Palestinians, a Greater Israel is not a justified objective.

 

While it can be said that Hamas is not exactly made up of angels, it has gotten more and more recruits as Israel’s attempted genocide goes on. If Hamas supports religious fanaticism, that’s no better than Israel’s fanaticism. But the issue right now is to stop Israel’s aggression, which supersedes anything else…for now.

 

The repeated excuses from hardline supporters of Israel have gotten old. Using meaningless accusations like one is pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic or a terrorist have lost their meaning when it comes to seeing the root causes of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That should be focused on.