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Hamas no, human rights yes |
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Why are the left and the anti-war movement ignoring Hamas's repression of the Palestinian people?
By Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner and Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East
The Guardian - Comment is Free - London - 18 February 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/18/hamas-palestine-israel-human-rights?commentpage=4&commentposted=1
Hamas
is intensifying its repression of the Palestinian citizens of Gaza,
according to recent reports by Amnesty International and the
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. This repression includes beatings,
kneecappings, executions, detention without trial, torture,
restrictions on civic organisations and violent attacks on critics and
protesters, as
reported in The Guardian on Friday 13 February 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/13/hamas-gaza-murders-abduction-torture
Amnesty
International is highly critical of the Hamas "campaign of abductions,
deliberate and unlawful killings, torture and death threats."
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/hamas-waged-deadly-campaign-war-devastated-gaza-20090212
Referring to Palestinians who were beaten or murdered by Hamas, Amnesty notes:
"Most
of the victims were abducted from their homes; they were later dumped -
dead or injured - in isolated areas...Some were shot dead in the
hospitals."
In a media briefing, Amnesty International added:
"There
is incontrovertible evidence that Hamas security forces and armed
militias have been responsible for grave human rights abuses and that
the victims of such abuses and many others are being intimidated and
discouraged from testifying about their ordeal. The Hamas de-facto
administration has displayed a flagrant disregard for the most
fundamental human rights norms, not only allowing such abuses to be
perpetrated, but actually facilitating and encouraging the abuses by
justifying them and by granting absolute impunity to the perpetrators."
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE21/001/2009/en/9f210586-f762-11dd-8fd7-f57af21896e1/mde210012009en.html
A dossier by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights independently corroborates Amnesty's allegations:
"The
human rights violations perpetrated....have included killings of
fugitives, prisoners and detainees, injuries caused by severe physical
violence, torture and misuse of weapons, the imposition of house
arrest, and other restrictions that have been imposed on civil society
organisations."
http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Reports/English/pdf_spec/Increase_rep.pdf
These
abuses, which are part of a long-standing pattern of human rights
violations, reveal Hamas's totalitarian agenda and are a portent of the
Iranian-style theocratic tyranny they would impose on the Palestinian
people if they ever secured absolute power. It is an anti-Semitic,
misogynistic, homophobic, anti-trade union, authoritarian, clericalist
movement.
Nevertheless, none of Hamas's crimes excuse Israel's
disproportionate, reckless and indiscriminate attacks on Gaza. The
Israeli armed forces wantonly targeted civilian areas and caused
thousands of civilian casualties, including the deaths of over 400
children. Under international law, such as the Geneva Conventions,
Israel's actions are war crimes and its political and military leaders
should be taken to The Hague and put on trial.
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/middle-east/there-is-no-lens-wide-enough-to-embrace-the-sheer-dimensions-of-the-devastation/
This
is the broad consensus among much of liberal and left opinion in
western countries like the UK and US. I agree. But while progressive
opinion is justifiably quick to condemn Israel, it is oddly silent when
Palestinians are being persecuted by fellow Palestinians. Why the
double standards?
Hamas styles itself as a resistance
movement. In fact, it is as much a repression movement and the victims
of its repression are fellow Palestinians who don't toe the Hamas line.
In the future, Hamas is potentially as much of a threat to
Palestinian freedom as Israel is today. Hamas shares a similar
religious-political ideology to the tyrants in Tehran - Islamism. More
than a faith, Islamism is a religious-inspired fundamentalist political
movement. The Islamists of Hamas have the ultimate goal of establishing
a religious dictatorship, where every detail of Palestinian life is
governed by its perverse hard-line misinterpretation of the Qu'ran.
If
it ever managed to secure total control of a Palestinian state, Hamas
would begin to impose its own restrictive Islamist version of
democracy, as has happened in Iran under the ayatollahs. It would
eventually ban non-Islamist parties and candidates. Gradually, genuine
democracy and human rights would be dismantled and replaced by Hamas's
own qualified, limited Islamist version, which would not be true
democracy at all.
This is obvious to anyone with knowledge of
Hamas's founding documents and guiding principles. These set out its
plan to create not a Muslim state, but an Islamist one, where harsh
religious edicts become the law of the land. Many Palestinians -
probably most - reject theocracy. They do not wish to live under
religious tyranny. Their desire is a democratic, secular state where
people of all faiths are free to practice their beliefs but where
religion does not dictate legislation and control government policy.
It
is therefore disturbing that significant sections (not all) of the left
are flirting with Hamas. During the January protests in the UK against
Israel's barbaric bombardment of Gaza, there were frequent pro-Hamas
chants and placards. "We are all Hamas now!" some marchers yelled. At
one rally in Hyde Park, speakers on the main stage urged "Victory to
Hamas!" and received tumultuous cheers of approval (with only a few
boos).
I am tired of hearing left-wingers defend Hamas on the
grounds that it was democratically elected. So what? The Israeli
leaders are democratically elected but that does not make their war in
Gaza right. A democratic mandate is not, by itself, sufficient to
secure legitimacy for the government in Gaza - or anywhere else. If
democratically elected governments violate human rights they forfeit
their legitimacy, as in the case of Britain when it was torturing and
assassinating Irish republican suspects in the 1970s and 80s.
Besides,
support for Hamas has declined dramatically as people have experienced
the consequences of its administration in Gaza. If a genuinely free and
fair election were held today, Hamas would not win.
Another
favourite left and liberal justification of Hamas is that it is less
corrupt than its Palestinian rivals in Fatah and that it organises
social programmes for the poor. You could say the same about the Nazis,
compared to the indulgence and incompetence of some Weimar Republic
leaders. No, a few good works do not exonerate Hamas. Yes, their
critique of Fatah nepotism, pocket-lining and thuggism has some truth.
But the alternative they are offering is far worse.
Some of
the left seem to see Hamas as a Palestinian equivalent of the African
National Congress of South Africa - a heroic national liberation
movement that is resisting the iniquities of Israeli occupation. Sorry,
this analogy does not wash, as Brett Lock argued on the Harry's Place
blog a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/01/29/why-the-anc-deserved-support/
He
pointed out that Hamas is offering nothing akin to the political and
ethical stature of the ANC's Freedom Charter. In fact, Hamas's charter
is a charter for discrimination and religious tyranny - the exact
opposite of what the ANC stood for.
Moreover, Hamas's macho
posturing mirrors that of the Israeli extreme right. It has a juvenile
tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye war mentality. To supposedly prove its
resistance credentials and outdo Fatah, it fires rockets into Israel
against non-military targets, with no concern for the civilian
casualties caused there and no regard for the effects on Palestinian
civilians of Israeli retaliatory attacks.
Far from advancing
the Palestinian cause, Hamas's strategy is constantly weakening and
undermining it. The people of Gaza are worse off in every way since
Hamas took control.
The Gazan people are lions led by Hamas
donkeys. These donkeys keep giving Israel an excuse to attack the
Palestinian people and to frustrate the urgent task of creating a
viable, independent Palestinian state.
I have some sympathy
for a one-state solution - a unified democratic, secular state of
Palestine-Israel, based on a confederation of autonomous,
self-governing Jewish, Arab and mixed towns and cities, where all
Israelis and Palestinians can live together in peace, security, harmony
and equality.
As well as the intransigence of short-sighted
Israelis, one of the major obstacles to this dream is Hamas. It demands
an Islamist state governed by sharia law. It won't accept equal
co-existence or secularism, democracy and human rights.
If I
did not know better, I would suspect that the leaders of Hamas are
Mossad agents, who were long ago planted in the Islamist movement by
the Israelis to frustrate Palestinian national ambitions.
Despite
my many criticisms of Hamas, I also believe that Israel and the West
should negotiate with them, just as the British negotiated with the
Irish Republican Army, the US negotiated with North Korea and
Pakistanis are now negotiating with the Taliban. The ideology that
Hamas represents has a sizable, if shrinking, minority following among
Palestinians. You cannot defeat an ideology by military means;
especially not an ideology that is fuelled by the fundamental injustice
of Israel's dispossession of the Palestinian people from their land.
Even with the opponents of freedom, talk, talk is better than war, war.
ENDS
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--
Peter Tatchell is the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East
www.greenoxford.com/peter and www.petertatchell.net
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