The London School of Economics’ decision to host the launch this week of Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters – a book that attempts to sanitise and fails to properly condemn a terrorist organisation responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – has rightly sparked outrage. It is a shameless attempt to rehabilitate a group that revels in the slaughter of civilians, delights in hostage-taking, and has openly vowed to repeat its crimes.
If there were any doubts about Hamas’ true nature, they should have been put to rest on 7 October
But while the LSE controversy is unsettling, it is merely a symptom of a much larger problem: the enduring failure of many in the West to grasp the true nature of Hamas. It is not, as some insist, a mere ‘resistance movement’ born out of Israeli policies. Nor is it simply a nationalist organisation with an Islamic flavour. Hamas is, and always has been, a jihadist organisation deeply rooted in the ideological soil of the Muslim Brotherhood, driven by an uncompromising religious mission to erase Israel and murder Jews. Indeed, even the broader Palestinian political identity has maximalist, antisemitic origins and aims.
Hamas did not emerge in a vacuum. Its origins trace back to the Muslim Brotherhood, the sinister Islamic movement founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. The Brotherhood’s ideology was clear: Islamic governance must be restored through jihad, and no political borders could override the ultimate goal of establishing a pan-Islamic state under Sharia law. Eventually outlawed in Egypt, the group found fertile ground in Gaza. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a radical cleric, formed Mujama al-Islamiyya there in the 1970s – a social, religious, and political network designed to Islamise Palestinian society by establishing Gaza University, mosques, schools, kindergartens, health clinics, and other key civil society organisations. But just like the Brotherhood, its true aim was to lay the groundwork for armed jihad.
For a time, Israel misguidedly tolerated Mujama as a counterweight to the more secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). But by the late 1980s, this ‘civil society’ network inevitably spawned its military wing, Hamas, officially founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The new group had a singular purpose: waging ‘holy war’ against Israel. Its 1988 charter leaves no room for ambiguity – explicitly calling for the obliteration of Israel and the killing of Jews, citing Islamic scripture as justification. The document does not distinguish between “Zionists” and “Jews”; rather, it describes Jews as orchestrators of global conspiracies and enemies of Islam itself.
When Sheikh Ahmed Yassin met Yahya Sinwar while the two were both in an Israeli prison, Yassin personally selected him to establish Hamas’ internal security apparatus, entrusting him with rooting out dissent and enforcing the group’s brutal rule in Gaza. Sinwar, known for his ruthlessness, played a key role in executing suspected collaborators and consolidating Hamas’ grip on power.
It is a convenient fiction that broader Palestinian nationalism has been a purely secular movement hijacked by Hamas. In truth, the entire framework of Palestinian identity, even under Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA), has been defined by one overriding principle: ‘resistance’ to Israel, with antisemitism embedded at its core.
Yasser Arafat, the supposedly secular leader of the PLO, frequently employed Islamic rhetoric, referring to the Oslo Accords as a modern-day Hudaybiyyah Treaty: a deceptive truce to be broken once the balance of power shifted.
Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades carried out suicide bombings, explicitly framing their attacks in jihadist terms. The Palestinian Authority continues to glorify ‘martyrs’ who kill Jews, names streets after terrorists, and promotes Islamic supremacist narratives that portray Jews as colonial invaders on Islamic land.
Even beyond Hamas, the broader Palestinian political landscape has always been steeped in Islamic ideology. The concept of ‘Palestine’ as a Waqf (an Islamic religious endowment) has long been used to justify the belief that no Jewish sovereignty can ever exist in the region. The persistent refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state is not about borders – it is about religious dogma.
If there were any lingering doubts about Hamas’ true nature, they should have been put to rest on 7 October, 2023. The group’s mass butchery of civilians – beheadings, rapes, kidnapping of babies – was not a spontaneous act of desperation. It was a calculated, ideological jihad. The hostages taken into Gaza were not merely bargaining chips; Hamas deliberately humiliated, tortured, and paraded them as trophies, demonstrating the same medieval barbarism that Isis once displayed. Yet there are those – like the authors of Understanding Hamas – who still seek to portray this organisation as a misunderstood political entity. Hamas has repeatedly stated that 7 October was not an aberration, but a blueprint. Its leaders have boasted that they will repeat such attacks again and again.
It is against this backdrop that the LSE’s decision to host the Hamas book launch must be judged. Academic institutions claim to champion free speech, but free speech does not require giving a platform to books such as this one. The book suggests Hamas has evolved beyond its anti-Jewish ideology – conveniently glossing over the group’s continued threats of genocide. They rely on sources like Azzam Tamimi. And they frame Hamas as a reaction to Israeli policy, rather than properly acknowledging its fundamental and unwavering commitment to jihad.
The West’s intellectual and academic class has indulged the illusion that Islamic terror groups like Hamas are products of oppression rather than theocratic, totalitarian movements. This naïveté –whether driven by ideological bias, cowardice, or wilful ignorance – has allowed jihadist ideology to flourish under the guise of “resistance.”
The simple truth is this: Hamas is not a liberation movement. It is not a political party. It is a genocidal jihadist organisation that exists solely to destroy Israel and kill Jews. It says so itself, acts on it, and has proven time and again that it will never stop until it is utterly dismantled.
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