An ‘anarchist’ apology for Hamas

Submitted by ICConline on

The escalation of imperialist conflicts around the globe, product of capitalism’s accelerating decomposition, pose a severe test for all those who claim to defend the international interests of the working class. The organisations of the communist left, faced with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, have in general maintained the defence of internationalism, refusing to support one camp against the other and calling on workers in all countries to defend their own class interests against the war machine of capital.

This has not been the case with the anarchist milieu, always a very heterogeneous one. Some of the anarchists – in continuity with Kropotkin’s stance on World War and the CNT’s position on the war in Spain in the 1930s - have adopted openly pro-war positions, notably in the war in Ukraine where anarchists have formed their own units in the Ukrainian army, supported by anarchist groups outside the immediate battle zones who have raised the banner of national self-defence and have slandered other anarchists who denounced both sides in the war as “anarcho-Putinists”[1].

The Ukraine war, clearly a war between states, was perhaps less of a challenge for anarchists whose opposition to capitalist war is generally based on the abstract anarchist rejection of the state as such. The war in the Middle East has posed a far trickier problem. The 2024 Prague Week of Action and conferences [2] tended to avoid the issue, while an organisation like the Anarchist Communist Group in the UK, which had been rather clear on the Ukraine war, has slid towards increasingly ambiguous positions in the face of Israel’s devastation of Gaza, where the ‘inequality’ of the main protagonists is clear to see[3]. And recently, on the libcom.org forum, we have seen an anarchist viciously attacking the ICC for insisting that the bloody spiral of war in the Middle East is imperialist on all sides[4]. We will take this up here because it shows the degree to which this conflict has become a conduit for new versions of nationalism which are entirely hostile to the interests of the working class.

An explicit defence of Palestinian nationalism

In June, the ICC advertised an open discussion meeting to be held in London, using, among other outlets, the ‘Discussions’ feature of libcom.org. It drew the following response from an individual using the name Drakula13Masr.

“Here's a discussion point about your politics and how crap they are:

https://en.internationalism.org/content/17814/capitalism-right-and-left-...

This article is Israeli propaganda. Aside from validating the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt with literally 0 evidence like an article from the Torygraph -- no stats, no evidence, no nothing -- your shit group decided that normal protest slogans like ‘Globalize the Intifada’ are calls for terrorism and other cheap anti-Muslim stereotyping and caricatures. Similarly, you described Hamas' violence on 10/7 as a plot to kill as many Jews as possible rather than the obvious -- to attack or capture settlers on their land, irrespective of their religion -- and went back decades through their takes to find some anti-Semitic materials as a ‘gotcha’.

And what can we make of this tidbit: ‘This is a true ideological maze and no exit can be found by following the mystifications of the pro-Zionist right or the anti-Zionist left. The only way out of the maze is the uncompromising defence of the internationalist proletarian outlook, founded on the rejection of all forms of nationalism and all imperialist camps’.

There's no maze. You guys are anti-Muslim redbaiters mixing some crass, low-effort disclaimers about how Israel is officially bad while claiming their victims and those who support them are terrorists and anti-Semites with no evidence other than fearmongering and cheap caricatures. That way you can say the victims and their allies are as bad as those in power. Gross. Hope your meeting was terrible and everyone got herpes”.

We assume that wishing herpes on those who attend the meetings of a revolutionary organisation is an infringement of libcom’s “no flaming” rule, but in the event only one person reacted to Drakula’s unsavoury post - a close sympathiser of the ICC, Baboon, who wrote:

“The article quoted by Drakula13Masr, is a defence of the internationalism of the working class that is a prerequisite for any successful revolution against capitalism. There is no room here for ambiguity. The article clearly denounces both sides in the conflict in the Middle East. It denounces Israeli imperialism (Zionism) and its supporters and Hamas, a proxy of the theocratic leaders of Iran (Iranian imperialism). There’s no ‘lesser evil’ here, no ‘progressive bourgeoisie’ but just the totally reactionary forces of capitalism engaged in imperialist war...”

Drakula’s reply to Baboon was the last in the thread:

“Baboon's comment is a total strawman: even accepting that Hamas, Iran, etc. are not ‘good’ the criticisms aimed at both them and ‘the anti-Zionist left’ are not criticisms from the left: they are Israeli propaganda criticisms in support of Zionism.

Specifically, they claim -- without any basis -- that Hamas' attacks are motivated by anti-Semitism, which, even accepting that Hamas is reactionary, is simply an absurdity: Hamas is attacking the people who displaced their population and there is no basis other than a witch-hunt through their materials going back decades to find "gotcha" proof. That is not an left-wing criticism of Hamas; it is a right-wing criticism of Palestinian armed resistance. Even accepting that the attacks were bloody, barbaric, etc. -- the kinds of criticisms that are normally brushed aside in left spaces generally -- it simply isn't ‘anti-Semitism’ and cannot be viewed as such without accepting Zionist chauvinism.

Additionally, the comment claims that ‘Globalize the Intifada’ AKA Globalize the Struggle and other standard left-wing slogans in defence of the oppressed are somehow related to Islamic theocracy, etc.

So insofar as Baboon is trying to defend this vulgar, reductionistic propaganda as ‘internationalism,’ he not only fails to meaningfully criticize Hamas or the Left at all for any allegedly bourgeois tendencies, but also reaffirms core Israeli propaganda arguments: opposition to Zionism is to be conflated with alleged excesses on the ‘other side’. Baboon and ICC's argument is to pass off ‘both sides-ism’ as ‘internationalism’ by reading racially motivated violence -- Israel's sin against the Palestinians -- into opposition to Israel, even when it is not there.

That is simply not a ‘left’ or ‘internationalist’ criticism of Hamas or the pro-Palestine Left. It is a criticism of Hamas and the pro-Palestine Left, from the right, while reaffirming Israeli propaganda tropes.

A left criticism might actually analyze how these various groups have failed to meaningfully challenge the role of capitalism in continuing barbaric destruction of their country, the nation-state system's role in continuing to deprive displaced Palestinians of their land, or otherwise undermined the geopolitical struggle against Israel, the Western powers, and the dominant system of capital extraction as a whole. But such criticisms (and any evidence to back them) are totally missing from this piece, which is simply trying to conflate right-wing, fear-mongering criticisms based on Zionist ideology with left-wing ones. That is not ‘internationalism’, it is infiltration (and illiteracy).”

According to Drakula, Baboon’s response is a “straw man argument”. In fact, he goes to the heart of the question: that we live in an epoch in which struggles for national liberation have no progressive content, and are entirely bound up in the world-wide struggle between imperialist powers large and small. This was true in World War One, as Rosa Luxemburg so powerfully argued, and it has remained true for all of capitalism’s wars ever since. Drakuka’s resort to attacking the idea of “both-sideism” is nothing but a rejection of this fundamental premise for an internationalist response to war. Yes, we are against both sides -and increasingly, in a world dominated by the tendency towards ‘every man for himself’, all sides – in every imperialist war.

Drakula has clearly chosen his side in the barbaric conflicts ravaging the Middle East. He mounts an apology for Hamas, which Baboon rightly designates as the proxy of Iranian imperialism, alongside Hizbollah, the Houthis and other gangs. Drakula may be ready to accept that “Hamas, Iran, etc are not ‘good’. “, even “reactionary”. But the issue is not whether they are “good” but whether they are integral actors in an imperialist war; and since this is most certainly the case, this will be reflected in their barbaric methods, which necessarily involve mass murder and terror, and primarily against civilians, like the Allied carpet bombing of Germany in World War Two or Israel’s contemporary devastation of Gaza. The only difference is in the military and technological means at the disposal of the competing “sides” of the Middle East conflict. But for Drakuka Hamas is one of the “allies” of the oppressed Palestinians and its only motive for the October 7 slaughter was – “to attack or capture settlers on their land, irrespective of their religion”, brushing aside any “alleged excesses” by these (alleged) allies of the oppressed. Meanwhile, in Gaza itself, we have heard Palestinian voices denouncing Hamas for carrying out the October 7 attack in the full knowledge that this would bring catastrophic consequences for the Gaza population. 

Regarding the resurgence of anti-Semitism, for Drakula this is another “allegation” for which we are accused of supplying no evidence, even though we cited very concrete examples like the attack on the Manchester synagogue and the fire-bombing of Jewish charity ambulances in Golders Green. It would not be hard to provide further statistical evidence of an increase in anti-Semitic attacks since October 7. But the point of our article was to show that in a decomposing capitalist environment, which is spewing out an endless variety of hatreds and violence against minorities, it would be naïve indeed to think that hatred of Jews, which has very deep roots in the history of capitalism, would not be one of the expressions of this generalised rot.

And far from echoing “Israeli propaganda” the article in question clearly points to Israel and Zionism as active factors in the spread of modern anti-Semitism: “The Israeli state generates anti-Semitism by presenting its own mass killings and ethnic cleansing as a heroic defence of Jewish people everywhere, thus strengthening the false idea that all Jews are accomplices to its brutal wars. At the same time, it helps to destroy any understanding of the actual reality of anti-Semitism by branding all criticism of its crimes as anti-Semitic”.

For his part, Drakula also helps to destroy any such understanding by fervently denying that there any anti-Semitic motivation behind the programme or action of Hamas. When our article points out that the 1988 Hamas Charter refers approvingly to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Drakula replies that is merely trawling “back decades through their takes to find some anti-Semitic materials as a ‘gotcha’”. But while in 2017 Hamas published a new charter which expunges the more overtly anti-Jewish passages in the original[5], and argues that its dispute is with Zionism and not Jews as such, it has refused to renounce the original document which it refers to as part of its history. Drakula’s attitude towards Hamas is typical of the approach of the capitalist left towards radical Islam, which, for the criticisms it makes of it, is quite willing to present as an “anti-imperialist” force and to downplay the degree to which it is infected by anti-Jewish prejudices.

Drakula seem to be particularly offended by our insistence that, faced with the ideological maze jointly constructed by Israel, Zionism, Palestinian nationalists and the right and left wings of the bourgeoisie, a consistent application of proletarian internationalism is the only compass that leads to the exit. Drakula’s apology for Hamas and the left wing of capital can only make the walls of the maze higher and higher. And we repeat: militant opposition to all imperialist wars, defence of the international class struggle, is the only way to break down those walls.

Amos

 

[1] This was the term used by the Czech Anarchist Federation against those attending the Prague anti-war conference in 2024.

[5] This passage in article 7 of the 1988 Charter – supposedly a ‘Hadith’ spoken by Muhammed – was perhaps a doctrinal guide to the Islamists taking part in the October 7 massacre: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him’."

Rubric: 

War in the Middle East