Let’s not use Hamas as a means to justify genocide

In June 2024, I attended the annual Canadian Political Science Association in Montreal. At that time, many students at McGill University – as well as community members –  had set up an encampment on campus to advocate against the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

At first glance, the encampment consisted of an array of beige tents within a fenced area. Upon looking deeper, though, I noticed that it was also filled with art, important messages denouncing genocide and supporting the Palestinian people, and community members engaged in meaningful conversations.

As a fellow student visiting from New Brunswick, I went over to talk with them and offered to help make posters. They were really welcoming. As I was making posters, a man approached me and asked: “What about Hamas?” I quickly recognized an aggressive undertone to his words that was quite off-putting.

I tried to answer him as best as I could, but he became increasingly hostile. Without even listening to me or engaging with my explanations, he simply continued to repeat his question. Fortunately, one of the community members inside the encampment noticed this interaction and simply told the man to “have a nice day.” However, he continued to insist on this point, claiming that Israel deserved to retaliate because of what Hamas did on October 7. He was told to “have a nice day” again and, after some hesitation, he finally left. The people in the encampment then told me that they are not trying to argue with the public, but instead want to have meaningful and educational conversations.

This instance made me realize that I have heard that same question asked by many different people. And like my interlocutor in Montreal, those posing the question often seem to be invoking Hamas to nullify any opposition to the genocide of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli government and military. Indeed, some even bring up Hamas as a way to justify the atrocities we are all witnessing.

Before one can start evaluating Hamas’s actions, one has to go back to the history of the Palestinians. In his book A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, historian Ilan Pappe says that the history between these two nations can be traced all the way back to 1882, when Zionists first came to settle in Ottoman Palestine.

The Zionism movement had originated in opposition to European anti-Semitism and proposed the formation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. At this time, the indigenous Arab community in Palestine did not know about the Zionist agenda.

The first so-called “war” between the Arabs and the Israelis began in 1948 following the formation of Israel on May 14, 1948. The reason I have placed war in quotation marks is because this event actually refers to Zionist militias forcibly displacing Palestinians from their homes in order to allow for Israeli settlements. In the year this attack lasted, 750,000 Palestinians were displaced.

In the war in 1967, another half a million Palestinians were forced out of their territories. Hamas was not formed until 1987. The attacks on Palestine were occurring long before Hamas launched an attack on Israel. This means that Hamas is not the root of the genocide that Israel is committing against Palestine.

For years, Israel has been isolating Gaza from the rest of the world. In 2007, Israel enforced an air, land, and sea blockade on the Gaza strip. Egypt closed its only border crossing with Gaza in the same year. Thus, it is rare for Palestinians in Gaza to be allowed to travel to other nations and even between the Palestinian territories. This means that students who would like to pursue a higher education in other countries, and patients who need to receive medical treatment elsewhere, likely would not be able to do so.

In 2018, Palestinian journalist and poet Ahmed Abu Artema urged Palestinian refugees to protest peacefully with the aim of reclaiming their ancestors’ 1948 lands. This protest movement was named “The Great March of Return.” Despite the peacefulness of these protests, Israeli forces attacked the protestors and, in just a year, killed 250 Palestinians and injured 30,000 others. According to an independent UN human rights panel, the Israeli gunmen intentionally targeted journalists and health workers. Al Jazeera explains The Great March of Return in more depth here.

The Israeli forces claimed Hamas was behind these peaceful protests. “Palestinians have been so dehumanized that they paint everybody with this brush of Hamas. And then secondly… they paint us as though somehow we are just puppets who don’t really want to live, whose sole purpose in life is to simply try to undermine Israel. We are human,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights lawyer.

While I am not an expert on Israeli-Palestinian relations that have dated back decades, I don’t think it takes an expert to know that the attacks on innocent Palestinians, the destruction of the country’s infrastructure, including schools and colleges like the ones I have studied in—what scholars have termed ‘scholasticide,’ the targeting of humanitarian aid for Palestinians in need—are evidently unjust.

The United Nations defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said “there are clear indications that Israel has violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.” On July 19, the International Court of Justice reinforced this by denouncing Israel’s actions – including their occupation of Palestine and seizing of natural resources –  as unlawful. To deny that the Israeli military and leadership are committing a genocide against the Palestinian people is to deny the truth.

And since just October 7 of last year, 41,821 Palestinians have been killed while 1,139 Israelis have been killed. Moshe Feiglin, the founder of Israel’s right-wing Zehut Party, advocated for the total destruction of Gaza. “There is one and only one solution. And that is to completely destroy Gaza before invading it.”

So to return to the question of “What about Hamas?”, I will now respond to this question with a few questions of my own. While I am not trying to justify their actions, I wonder why we are condemning Hamas for their October 7th attack on Israeli civilians but not condemning the Israeli government and militia for their attacks on Palestinian civilians before and since? Why are we valuing Israeli lives over Palestinian lives? And should an assault on human life be met with the systematic genocide of more human life?

I think we all must do the best we can to inform ourselves of this long conflict, and the injustices that have historically occurred and are occurring at an unprecedented scale right now, before thoughtlessly standing with one side. And we must not fall into the trap of advocating for the loss of human lives, or generalizing and dehumanizing an entire nation of people. We must ask ourselves: Is genocide ever justified?

While the encampment has since been physically taken down by McGill, the message will surely linger. I know how inspiring it was for me to witness the tenacity of those students. And I know I was by no means the only person—why else would thousands of students in campuses across the world take part in similar encampments? I hope that one day, soon, those in power will finally hear the voices of those suffering and listen to those fighting for justice. I hope that we can all be on the right side of this fight before it becomes yet another genocide taught in history class that everyone is against once it is over. Let’s all fight for justice now.

Erin Hurley is a St. Thomas University student completing her final term in Msida, Malta.