Rashmi Varma

For a Palestinian, criticizing Hamas means entering dangerous territory. The global Palestine solidarity movement has drawn its lines quite clearly. Criticize Hamas too loudly, and you risk being pushed outside those lines, accused of betraying your people, serving Israel, or being a “collaborator” or a “traitor.” Hamas has used the same tactic throughout nearly two decades of ruling Gaza: if you oppose its agenda, you must be working for the enemy. Many Palestinian and Western activists, even those who privately oppose Hamas, have chosen to stay in the safe zone. They focus almost entirely on Israel’s crimes. And I have no problem with exposing Israel’s crimes. They must be exposed. My problem begins when solidarity with Palestinians requires ignoring what Palestinians themselves are saying. When Gazans took to the streets in the middle of this devastating war to protest Hamas, something revealing happened. Many of the people who had spent months amplifying voices from Gaza suddenly went quiet. Cameras that documented almost everything else were turned away. Pens that wrote endlessly about Gaza had very little to say. For me, that was a moral test. If your mission is to amplify Palestinian voices, but you silence those voices the moment they criticize Hamas, then you are not really amplifying Palestinians. You are amplifying only the Palestinians who fit your narrative. And too many people failed that test. As @KhalilJeries wrote today: "Hamas is the worst thing to ever happen to the Palestinians after the occupation." My criticism of Hamas has nothing to do with their Islamism, although I am critical of that, but rather with their authoritarianism, war crimes, and complete failure on the Palestinian national level. That being said, if Hamas disappears tomorrow, Israel will not change, nor will the occupation end. This is not just a prediction; Israeli leaders themselves say it out in the open." Hamas can be disastrous for Palestinians, and Israel can still be responsible for its occupation and its actions against Palestinians. Condemning one does not require excusing the other.