The Chris Hedges Report: Hamas: How Israel Created Its Own Nemesis

By shutting the door to any peaceful resolution and leaving no other option for Palestinians, Israel created its own nemesis in Hamas.

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Hamas, like all resistance groups, from the African National Congress to The Irish Republic Army, are as demonized as they are misunderstood. Hamas is a religious, nationalist political movement. It is not, despite what Israel and Washington say, a terrorist organization—although, like most resistance groups (including the Jewish militias that created the state of Israel), it has used terrorism as a tactic. Because those on the outside do not understand what went into making Hamas—the steady drip of humiliation, violence, and impoverishment that define Israel’s Occupation of the Palestinians—Hamas and its ideology appear incomprehensible. But from the Palestinian perspective, Israel has left the Palestinians with no other choice. Journalist and historian Paola Caridi, author of Hamas: From Resistance to Regime, joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the roots and nature of Hamas, and what we miss when we unthinkingly cast Hamas as nothing more than a terrorist organization.

TRANSCRIPT

Chris Hedges: Hamas, like all resistance groups, from the African National Congress to the Irish Republican Army, is demonized and misunderstood. Hamas is not, despite what Israel and Washington say, a terrorist organization, although, like most resistance groups, including the Jewish militias that created the state of Israel, it has used terrorism as a tactic. Hamas is a religious, nationalist, political movement. It does not hold the Palestinians in Gaza hostage. It has broad, popular support among Palestinians, largely because of the failure of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, to deliver the promises made by Israel in the Oslo Accords. But it also has popular support because of its dogged resistance to the Israeli attack on Gaza. Indeed, since the Israeli attacks it has become lionized throughout the Muslim world. The ferocity of the Israeli violence against Hamas, including the routine assassination and imprisonment of its leadership, has failed to dismantle the organization.

To outsiders, the intransigence of Hamas – In its 1988 charter called for Israel’s destruction, carried out suicide bombings in Israeli cities, as well as firing rockets into Israel, along with the incursion that left some 1,200 Israelis dead – Is dismissed by Israel and Washington as evidence of the group’s fanaticism. Because those on the outside do not understand what went into making Hamas, the steady drip of humiliation, violence, and impoverishment that define Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, Hamas, and its ideology is certified as incomprehensible. But from the Palestinian perspective, Israel has left the Palestinians with no other choice.

The secular Palestinian Authority, which nominally governs the occupied West Bank, has devolved into little more than a hated colonial police force….

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