Who would not condemn the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 when hundreds of Israeli civilians, as well as hundreds of military and security personnel were killed? Why then is Hamas so popular amongst Palestinians and in the wider Muslim world?

March 2024 polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) shows that 70% of Gazans continue to believe the October 7 attacks were justified. Support for Hamas remaining in control of Gaza has increased by 14 points. In a two-way competition between Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh and Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas leader would garner 70% of the vote.

Ramallah-based political analyst Esmat Mansour told US news agency The Media Line that a lack of political horizons fed Palestinian sentiment. “After three decades of no progress on the political front, like it or not, Hamas’ actions brought attention back to the Palestinian cause,” he said.

International lawyer John V Whitbeck has worked on Middle Eastern issues for decades, including previously advising Palestinian negotiating teams. He said in a recent newsletter:

“Demonising Hamas has, ever since the resistance group’s inception, been essential to delegitimising Palestinian resistance to perpetual occupation and oppression and, now, is essential to legitimising genocide in Western eyes.”

Prior to October 7th, Hamas had, since emerging in the 1980s, only killed a few hundred Israelis. I am not disrespecting those lives, I am simply indicating the scale. For those actions, Hamas people have been described as monsters, ISIS, not human, savages, Nazis … and a lurid parade of terms designed to dehumanise rather than contextualise. US and Israeli propaganda added fiction to the unquestioned facts when they promoted the false and now discredited narratives that Hamas beheaded dozens of babies and committed systematic rape during the October 7 attacks. Al Jazeera’s excellent October 7 documentary administers a valuable truth serum.

Few in the West know that prior to October 7th, 95% of the victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were Palestinian. Ponder that lop-sided statistic: 95% of the victims are the indigenous people.

Why didn’t Hamas try........

© Pearls and Irritations