Why You Shouldn't CONDEMN KHAMAS

It can barely escape notice how aggressively and persistently Zionists have pushed and utilized this one punchy line: "Do you condemn Khamas?"¹

Why do they say that? Why do they demand that you, a normal person with no actual bearing on the internal decision-making of Hamas or the situation on the ground, condemn this organization with which you have never personally interacted? What will your condemnation achieve?

It achieves one thing: it sets the ground for the conversation. As soon as you've left any solid ground based on a rational anti-colonial position, you wobble on quicksand while the Zionist pulls on the rope from his rational pro-colonial solid ground.² With this condemnation, you automatically cede several kilometers of ground before you even begin.

It is a very intelligent maneuver, I must grant that. It works especially on those who are ready and willing to cede ground due to a lack of anti-colonial principle in the first place.

With your Condemnation-of-Khamas in hand, the Zionist will attack you with it. Any action taken against Israeli colonialism and apartheid will be, not without reason, linked back to Hamas (or Hamas-shaped boogeymen), and you will be asked to condemn those as well lest you appear inconsistent. If you try to wiggle out of it by denying a Hamas link to these actions, the Zionist will assail you with Hamas's declared position in support of BDS, academic boycott, Elbit factory closures, harmless demonstrations, or any of a gamut of even the most shy, insipid actions against the State of Israel.

Must Israel be resisted? You tell me. I'll tell you this: there exists no consistent position where Israel could be successfully resisted while constraining one's tactics to street dancing and pithy watermelon signs (except in left-liberal daydreaming fantasies, that is). Anti-colonial liberation is inherently violent and ugly, and it will go on regardless of how smoothly you can swallow that pill.

As soon as you Condemn Khamas, you've practically and unknowingly disavowed any action whatsoever against Israel, violent or non-violent. They tell you never to sign obscure legal documents without the presence of a lawyer; this is a direct parallel.

A related tactic is "affirming Israel's right to exist", which is, as far as anyone can tell, an entirely made up "right" that no other state has, and this is not an accident: the supposed unique attributes and entitlements of the Zionist state is a core principle of Zionism. Zionists have made this strange heresy into an unquestioned common refrain by, apparently, sheer force of will. Repeat it enough times and such a bizarre turn of phrase elicits kneejerk approval rather than the wide-eyed incredulity it deserves. The Zionist pulls the rope before the whistle is blown, and when you begin to pull, you find yourself already a pace short of him, and the game already lost.

These tactics turn you from an anti-Zionist opponent into the virtual analogue of a hesitant Zionist. After you Condemn Khamas, Zionism and its colonial project are no longer in question; you will be scolded for not being a good enough Zionist.

This is strategic depth at its finest, a military tactic that Israel has perfected over the decades using its superior military technology. The prime historical example is the Lebanese Civil War: extend Israel's strategic depth by forcing the PLO to fight costly and pointless battles in Beirut against far-right Israeli proxy death squads instead of allowing the PLO to use Lebanese territory to stage cross-border attacks.

Whether by made-up atrocity propaganda, explicit anti-Arab racism, or even a faux-left appeal against Islamism (tailor your talking points to your audience!), the Zionist will seek to stop the conversation until he elicits your Condemnation-of-Khamas. Otherwise, he will refuse point-blank to talk to you (since you are, in his view, terror-supporting scum), which is entirely rational of him if he knows that he can't convince you. In fact, we Palestinians do the same: If the person in front of you is an entrenched Zionist, you shouldn't talk to him. It'll do neither of you any good. Zionists never play defense, and neither should you.

I have, in the past, freely criticized Hamas. Political debate in Palestine is, if anything, too lively. As a Palestinian Marxist, there are naturally myriad disagreements between my side and between Islamist Hamas supporters that sometimes escalate to name-calling. However, the thing we definitively do not disagree on is the necessity of anti-colonial resistance against our shared Zionist enemy, and since Hamas today bear that standard in a most gallant, principled, and skilled fashion, I throw my full support behind it with no reservations (and certainly no Condemn-Khamas-ism).

The slogan raised today by the PFLP is "unity of the battlefields". The PFLP today is fully participating in this battle, but you might not hear about it much since the organization is much smaller in size than Hamas, having been horrendously weakened by the defeat in the Battle of Beirut in 1982 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. We, as Palestinians, have successfully put our criticisms and disagreements aside and locked arms during this unique and unprecedented historical moment. You too must do so: do not allow yourself to be cajoled into siding with genocide and settler-colonialism∎