[OPINION] What the US is getting wrong about Hamas, Israel, and Harvard
Let me be clear: Hamas is responsible for the grotesque murders and hostage-takings of the Israeli citizens in the October 7 attack. But a lot of people, such as billionaire Bill Ackman, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Senator Ted Cruz, and more, are missing the point behind the statement of Harvard Palestine Solidarity groups. And it isn’t just the Harvard Palestine Solidarity groups, with Congresswoman Tlaib being slammed for calling an end to American funding for Israel. Indeed, a culture war is brewing across America’s colleges, workplaces, and civic institutions, exposing deep rifts. What is American discourse missing?
Let’s get a few questions answered first. What is Hamas? Hamas is the governing political authority for the Gaza strip. They gained power in 2007 in the territory from the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella organization meant to represent the Palestinians at the national level, after a civil war with the PLO. The PLO now governs the West Bank. Given this, what are the political goals of Hamas and what have they done so far?
First, Hamas wants a Palestinian state on 1967 borders. Second, they don’t recognize Israeli statehood. And they’ve used violent means to achieve such goals. The Jewish Virtual Library, run by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, has tracked Hamas attacks on Israel since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1994, showing usage of suicide bombings, rockets, and shootings on Israelis, both citizens and soldiers. Given such a terrorist track record, why are Harvard students blaming Israel for the October 7 violence?
Simply put, Palestinian oppression since Israel’s creation. The British sought to create a Jewish state in Palestine, as embodied in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. This despite the fact that 91% of 1922 Palestine’s population was Muslim. When the League of Nations designated Palestine under British control in 1922, the British favored Jewish settlers in terms of immigration, allowing land purchases with absent landlords, institution building, and paramilitary formation, while excluding the Palestinians from the same tools of self-determination. Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population had grown to 27% of the total. By 1947, when the British gave up administering the lands and the UN passed Resolution 181 that recommended separate Muslim and Jewish states, roughly a third of the population was Jewish and the rest Muslim.
While the story could have ended there with each religious group forming separate, proportionate states, Resolution 181 was biased towards Israel as it awarded 53% of the land to the Jewish state, despite Jews only making up a third of the population. Of course, the Palestinians rejected such a proposal and what followed was a bitter conflict. Except, the conflict was far from asymmetric. Years of paramilitary formation and a plan to purge the Muslims gave the better-trained, funded, and equipped Israelis an edge over their disorganized, poor, and untrained Palestinian counterparts.
What followed was the “Nakba,” a systematic expulsion of Palestinians from their lands: 750,000 Palestinians removed from their homes, hundreds of Palestinian villages and cities destroyed, the thousands remaining in Israel becoming internally displaced. Mass murder, rape, looting, and dispossession followed Israeli soldiers. Yes, as Bill Ackman points out, Hamas beheaded babies in the October 7 attacks. Similarly, in 1947, scores of Palestinian villages were found with “babies whose skulls were cracked open.” It was only after British forces left in 1948 that the Arabs fought a united war against Israel to regain Palestinian land, contrary to the belief that the Arabs sought to crush fledgling-state Israel in 1948 after it declared independence.
Such patterns of settler colonialism are still very much alive to this day. An Amnesty International report of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands since 1967 very succinctly captures the impact of Israel’s active policies in confiscation, dispossession, and occupation: 600,000 Jewish settlers living on occupied lands, 100,000 hectares of Palestinian lands taken, 50,000 homes and structures destroyed, and the right to movement of 4.9 million Palestinians constrained. As some Middle Eastern scholars put it, “maximum land with minimum Arabs.”
Dear reader, I reiterate that Hamas is not justified in its brutality. Nor am I suggesting revenge politics. Instead, I’m situating Hamas and its actions in the brutal historical ecosystem of settler colonialism and apartheid that has treacherously taken everything from the Palestinians, with everything that Israel stands for as the symbol and actor of their continued oppression. This is why Harvard students want solidarity with Palestine. Some would like you to believe that being supportive of Palestine or critical of Israel equates to being anti-Semitic, such that they would deny employment opportunities to such students. Yet, this isn’t just about Harvard students’ employment opportunities.
Many are calling the October 7 attacks Israel’s 9/11 moment. What happened after 9/11 in the US? The US crushed Iraq. With Israel leveling Gaza with its rockets, and contemplating a ground invasion as it seeks to exact retribution, we are all gravely missing the point. My heart does go out to the Israeli families who lost their loved ones, but we should be standing with Palestine too. – Rappler.com
Shaharaj Ahmed cares deeply about Southeast Asian and South Asian affairs, having been born in the Philippines and grown up in Bangladesh. He is a recent Economics and Chinese Studies graduate from Yale-NUS College in Singapore.