Thread by @vijayprashad

[Thread on the question of Hamas] Two things that require some consideration. 1. The demand by the warmongers that people who call for the ceasefire must condemn Hamas. 2. The strange framework adopted by the media that this is an Israel-Hamas war.

[Pictures in this thread are by Majd Arandas (1994-2023), a brave Palestinian photographer who captured everyday life in Gaza, where he was born in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Such gentleness destroyed by this ugly Israeli war]

Hamas was formed in 1987. The Naqba (Catastrophe) of the Palestinians took place in 1948. For 39 years, the Palestinians struggled for an end to the Permanent Naqba, for their land & for justice. Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) is only one flank of the Palestinian resistance.

For 75 years, Palestinians – through a range of means – have struggled to get their voice for justice heard. When they have used armed struggle, they've been criticised; when they've used non-violent struggle, they've been criticised.

Form of struggle is not the issue for their critics: the real issue is that they struggle. Condemnation of Hamas is not what is demanded. What is demanded is a condemnation of the Palestinian struggle, which is not by itself coterminous with Hamas but in which Hamas is a part.

There's simply no condemnation of Hamas that is not at the same time a condemnation of the Palestinian resistance.

It's been convenient for those who are against Palestinian emancipation to reduce the entire tradition of struggle to Hamas, to demonise Hamas, & then to effectively demonise the Palestinian resistance movement.

The @IDF and the Israeli settlers have been killing and evicting Palestinians in the West Bank, where Hamas has minimal organization: but that violence in the West Bank, the permanent Naqba, is conducted now in the name of fighting ‘Hamas’.

@IDF This is not an Israeli war on Hamas, but it is an Israeli war on the Palestinian resistance and on Palestinians in total. The dead are not Hamas, but they are killed in the name of an Israeli campaign to obliterate ‘Hamas’, which is the obliteration of the Palestinian people.

@IDF The bulldozers in northern Gaza are not to dig for the tunnels but to destroy Palestinian homes and make way for their expulsion.

@IDF 8 years ago, I wrote, ‘Israeli occupation is a failure’ (). I meant that it cannot succeed in the completion of the Permanent Naqba. It will always produce Palestinian resistance. newarab.com/opinion/occupa…

@IDF You can yell ‘Hamas, Hamas’ as much as you want, but that scare tactic will no longer work. After the 2014 bombing of Gaza, I wrote this poem, called ‘What You Bomb’ (). counterpunch.org/2014/07/22/wha…

@IDF The poem ends ends with this line:
‘What you bomb is not Hamas. It is Palestine. Not a dream, but a people. Not a refugee camp, but a country alive in its peoples’ hearts’.