Written by Omole Ibukun
For every black-or-white false dilemma, there is a grey area; and even at that, there are many shades of grey. There are always nuances. Reality is always too complex to be oversimplified as this or that. The choices are always more than two. That’s the beauty of dialectics. Those who try to perpetuate the dichotomy that the Israel/Palestine situation is a black-and-white situation (where you are either supporting the Hamas offensive or you are an Israeli/Western apologist) are possibly woeful failures at basic polemics, adrenaline junkies seeking action for action’s sake or too lazy for any intellectual rigor. It is therefore never a surprise that these set of people find it easy to divert the blood that should go to their brains into their veins, to fight. They are quick to become bloodthirsty warmongers defending the war from either side with the belief that any revolution or resistance to any oppression is totally impossible without bloodshed. And it’s not always their blood that gets shed, it’s always the blood of the innocent poor, and powerless people on both sides of the war at another end of the world who were given no voice in decision-making.
That said, every analysis of the showdown between Israel and Palestine must be biased. It must be biased in favor of the people of Palestine who face possible genocide. It must be biased against the genocidal apartheid State of Israel, not the people of Israel who were settled in that part of the world after surviving an attempted genocide on them too. We definitely have to be biased even if we propose a ‘two-peoples’ solution (let’s not talk about ‘two-states’ now). But our bias is a practical bias to defend them from Apartheid and genocide. It is not an abstract rubber-stamp bias to approve of everything Palestinian – including Palestinian dictators like Hamas. Our bias is asking the people of Palestine to organize themselves democratically to take back their country while asking Israelis to organize themselves democratically to remove Netanyahu and his far-right pals and to meet the Palestinians as equals in the effort to share a livable space with one another. Our bias is to ask the rest of the world to support this effort.
This is one of the world’s longest conflicts that has persisted, and because of that some Israelis are actively seeking a free Palestine too. Jewish Organizations like the Jewish Voice for Peace in the US, B’Tselem in Jerusalem, Breaking the Silence (a group of veteran Israeli soldiers opposed to the occupation of Palestine), Center for Jewish Nonviolence, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Yesh Din Volunteers. These are active organizations of Jews that are opposed to the occupation. These are important pieces of information that we must always keep in mind for the sake of history to combat this back or white false dichotomies. These Jewish organizations actively oppose the blockade that has made Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison.
This is just the same way some whites and Afrikaners stood with the anti-apartheid struggle of South Africans. Joe Slovo, who directed much of the armed struggle carried out by the famous Umkhonto we Sizwe – the armed wing of the ANC during the anti-apartheid struggle, was Jewish-Lithuanian. George Bizos, who represented anti-apartheid activists including Nelson Mandela in court, was Greek. Breyten Breytenbach, a poet and writer who was imprisoned for nine years for his anti-apartheid activism in 1975 was an Afrikaner. In fact, his brother, Jan Breytenbach was co-founder of the 1st Reconnaissance Commando of the South African Special Forces which was meant to fight the anti-apartheid activists who were then labeled counterinsurgents. So, oppression has never been a consensus of a tribe or race of people.
That said, we can then analyze the latest offensive by Hamas with a clear head. The latest Hamas Offensive is not the only case against Hamas. But let’s start there. Violence in any resistance aims to protect lives while minimizing harm. Practically, a limited and justifiable use of force should only be considered if all peaceful measures fail and the threat to innocent lives persists. This is not even pacifism. It’s the common Just War theory. The surprise offensive by Hamas on October 7 was very unnecessary on this basis. It was just a demonstration of destructive power at the expense of innocent lives. But this is not to say the people of Palestine do not have the right to fight back. In fact, they have been fighting back.
Between January and July, refugees in the Palestinian Jenin refugee camp organized brigades and resisted the Israeli army in many instances successfully. In April, the Palestinians successfully resisted the Israeli Police in their numbers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and they were successful. The people of Palestine have been defending themselves successfully since the beginning of this year. During the October 7 offensive by Hamas militants on the ground, at least 260 Israeli civilians were killed at the Re’im music festival massacre and hundreds of other Israeli civilians were killed at Netiv HaAsara, Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, and Holit. That’s no longer a fight for justice. That’s oppressive anger directed at the nearest weaker person.
The second case against Hamas is that Hamas has a history of usurping the rights of the Palestinians to democratically organize themselves and respond to this oppression. Hamas is known for restricting political freedoms in the Gaza Strip while attacking Palestinian oppositions within the territory as betrayers and supporters of Israel. There are records of Hamas using political violence to win the June 14, 2006 elections that gave them control over Gaza. They are known for human rights abuses, the use of child soldiers, the use of human shields, and the use of children’s schools as shields to store weapons. These kids are not Israeli kids but Palestinian kids. Since the start of the war, the main casualties on the Gazan side have been the Palestinian people. So it is outright laziness to even think that Hamas represents the democratic will of the people of Palestine. Just the same way it is lazy to think all of the Jews have a consensus to occupy Palestine and perpetuate an apartheid regime. The war effort is just the final gasps of the Netanyahu government which almost lost the last election and is facing protest action from the people of Israel.
Hamas has a clear manifesto for an Islamic theocracy just like the Israeli Zionist agenda causing trouble in the region. They share the same dictatorial political religionization as the far-right Zionists. Judaists and Islamists have their freedom of belief, but I am opposed to political religion. I am opposed to Zionism, but the religion of Judaism is free from my opposition. I oppose the political Islamism of Hamas and Northern Nigerian states, but I believe the religion of Islam is free from my opposition. People have the freedom to believe whatever they want to believe. They have their rights. What I am opposed to is the use of religion to formulate social policies, and that is the third case against Hamas.
As for me, I stand with the international working class of every country. I will always stand with the common people of every country. I think the common people of every country will always choose peace and justice if it were left to them and not the dictators usurping their democratic rights across the world. I will not judge anyone by the virtue of what land they were born into. I will defend the right of everyone to comfortable land, shelter, and housing. I will not fan the flames of war so that Capitalist Military-Industrial Complex like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman can make money from the bloodshed of innocent people who have no say in how war offensives are being declared. I will stand against dictators of every color and every tongue. I will not let war emotions make me into a war-mongering nationalist hoping to become a dictator. I stand with the international working class. I will believe and hope in the goodness of the humanity of the common people of every country to choose peace and justice if it were left to them.
One should be able to state all of these without getting blackmailed as a pacifist. What is activism? What is resistance? What is revolution? When you hear resistance to oppression or revolution, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Guns? Wars? Tanks? Does your adrenaline pump with moving pictures from all the action films you’ve watched running through your brain? Do you feel like Falz in the music video of the Shayo song by Chinko Ekun, where he said “Don’t hold me, I want to shed blood”? No! Revolution is an opposition to narrowness. It is the 360-degree view. A revolutionary worldview is an empathy that allows you to visualize the experiences of all sides in the conflict and help all of them see the same in the hope of reaching an understanding.
Our support for the people of Palestine should, therefore, not be too spineless to the point that we forget to state that Hamas is only fighting for itself, hardly fighting for the people, and definitely not fighting alongside the people. They do not have the revolutionary patience, human will, or intellectual capacity to organize their people towards a solution. Hamas is not an anti-imperialist resistance. The people really fighting the empire are the militant common people of Palestine and they do not have a voice in Hamas. Oppression damages the psyche of the common people and violence continues that damage – and we must relate with violence with the consciousness that it damages even its own masters. We should not encourage the damage to the psyche of the common people by putting them in war mode just because some freedom fighters hold the ambition to become dictators.
That said, the effort of this article is not to decide for the people of Palestine how to respond in their struggle against oppression – violence or non-violence. The effort is to ensure that nothing is imposed on the people of Palestine – whether the violence of Hamas or the nonviolence of the West. The effort of this article is to demystify the Hamas dictators and demiurge so that the people can take that decision for themselves, armed with all the mental and democratic resources needed for those decisions. Like Frantz Fanon concluded in Wretched of the Earth, “To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people.”
The priority should be the democratic will of the people of Palestine. Whatever methods or mix of methods they choose in prosecuting their struggle against the oppression of the Israeli State, they can then see it through. The revolution will not be led by a vanguard. It will be led by the people. The vanguard can only come in with experience to engage the people intellectually on methods, tactics, and philosophy. The vanguard should not leave their primary assignment to fetishize war as action. Resistance and revolution is not a game. It’s not an action movie. It’s not something you put in the hands of dictators like Hamas. It’s real lives and real people, and they should always remain the priority.
Omole Ibukun writes from Abuja and can be contacted on 09167636201