Many leftists are extremely idealist and get swayed by Western opinion a lot. They dont support Hamas because Hamas are not the perfect MLs freedom fighters. This is childish and just gives ammunition to the liberals to discredit Hamas’ stance. This criticism of Hamas goes against the global decolonization cause. Every time a decolonial group fights against their oppressor, they are criticized even by leftists. Is this what Lenin referred to as left-com?
It sucks that people who one thought were comrades end up doing this. Like are we even on the same team or are you just a closeted liberal? It is crazy, unscientific and unmaterialistic to not consider Palestinian material conditions, and to not consider who they made their champions for this cause, but instead to apply your idealism to the situation.
Hamas is not ML and isn’t ISIS, hamas is hamas
Why do people who materially benefit from the military occupation of Palestine not support the decolonization of Palestine?
Because most western “leftists” are socdem coloured liberals.
They misunderstand or ignore key concepts like critical support, primary and secondary contradictions, materialism, and dialectics. Therefore it’s no wonder that, even after a run of potentially good takes, they ultimately end up on the side of reaction.
For the actual MLs, some are outspoken but others are careful. I can only speak for myself in saying that I am genuinely concerned for my immigration status if I were to publicly speak out in favour of even the Palestinian cause in general, let alone Hamas and other decolonial forces.
I can’t speak for the Westerners as I am a Vietnamese living in Vietnam.
As a Vietnamese, I don’t worry about the establishment punishing me for opinions regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, so my opinion is only a matter of principal.
If it is true that Hamas harmed Israeli civilians, then it reveals the lack of discipline amongst their troops. To be fair, it could be projection on my part: During the struggle against the United States, we still recognize that the American people and journalists as potential friends and allies and it is the US government and its puppet regime that are our enemy.
In any case, if Hamas wants to improve its international image (as it is necessary to gather international support both when fighting a war and rebuilding the nation after the war), they should work to strengthen discipline. We cannot expect the Western governments to change their positions, of course, but the world is bigger than the West.
I suspect we’ll never know the truth about how many were killed by Israel in the cross-fire and perhaps even intentional fire to maximize loss to create a narrative of victimization to steel their people and others around the world for slaughter.
I suspect the amount of un-armed, non-resisting civilians killed in cold blood by Hamas bullets (not aimed at IOF forces nearby) to be exceptionally low but we’ll likely never know. What has come out so far is plenty damning of the zionist narrative that it was just a frenzied bloodthirsty slaughter and shows the IOF forces themselves slaughtered many of their people, perhaps hoping to prevent captives which could be used to free prisoners.
In a lot of the free-speech-west, opposite-of-totalitarian-west, supporting Hamas is illegal. So sometimes people are lying to protect themselves. Just to be charitable to a group that does exist, don’t know how large.
But the main reason is just that they don’t genuinely understand the condition in Palestine. They don’t understand that Gaza is a concentration camp, that the houses Israel is bombing belongs to people and isn’t just capital.
Find me an Auschwitz survivor who wept for Hitler when he committed suicide, and I’ll find you a Gaza resident who wept for the soldiers killed on Oct 7. But the talking heads would not dare ask that of the Auschwitz survivors, because they have understood the conditions at Auschwitz.
