Mick Hartley

Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator – Why is the LSE hosting a Hamas book launch?

The London School of Economics’ decision to host the launch this week of Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters – a book that attempts to sanitise and fails to properly condemn a terrorist organisation responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – has rightly sparked outrage. It is a shameless attempt to rehabilitate a group that revels in the slaughter of civilians, delights in hostage-taking, and has openly vowed to repeat its crimes.

But while the LSE controversy is unsettling, it is merely a symptom of a much larger problem: the enduring failure of many in the West to grasp the true nature of Hamas. It is not, as some insist, a mere ‘resistance movement’ born out of Israeli policies. Nor is it simply a nationalist organisation with an Islamic flavour. Hamas is, and always has been, a jihadist organisation deeply rooted in the ideological soil of the Muslim Brotherhood, driven by an uncompromising religious mission to erase Israel and murder Jews. Indeed, even the broader Palestinian political identity has maximalist, antisemitic origins and aims….

If there were any lingering doubts about Hamas’ true nature, they should have been put to rest on 7 October, 2023. The group’s mass butchery of civilians – beheadings, rapes, kidnapping of babies – was not a spontaneous act of desperation. It was a calculated, ideological jihad. The hostages taken into Gaza were not merely bargaining chips; Hamas deliberately humiliated, tortured, and paraded them as trophies, demonstrating the same medieval barbarism that Isis once displayed. Yet there are those – like the authors of Understanding Hamas – who still seek to portray this organisation as a misunderstood political entity. Hamas has repeatedly stated that 7 October was not an aberration, but a blueprint. Its leaders have boasted that they will repeat such attacks again and again….

The West’s intellectual and academic class has indulged the illusion that Islamic terror groups like Hamas are products of oppression rather than theocratic, totalitarian movements. This naïveté –whether driven by ideological bias, cowardice, or wilful ignorance – has allowed jihadist ideology to flourish under the guise of “resistance.”

The simple truth is this: Hamas is not a liberation movement. It is not a political party. It is a genocidal jihadist organisation that exists solely to destroy Israel and kill Jews. It says so itself, acts on it, and has proven time and again that it will never stop until it is utterly dismantled.

And, as I've said, this refusal to see Hamas for what they are – a genocidal jihadist organisation – rather than some kind of heroic resistance movement, also governs the BBC's lamentable coverage of Gaza.