Hamas’s Messianic Violence

The videos released by Hamas’s media wing showcasing their murderous acts from this past weekend bear a visible slogan watermarked on their top right corners reading “Revolution of those who resist.” Last month, in my essay for Mosaic, I attempted to place the evolution of the concept of the Nakba and the Palestinian cause within the history of Arab and Muslim revolutionary thought. While that essay was focused on the realm of ideas and mostly on the previous decades, the events now unfolding force us to see the horrifying application of the ideas of the Palestinian revolution on our phone, computer, and television screens.

Two things were immediately noticeable: the attempts of Hamas to portray its massacres as the beginning of the Islamic redemptive battle for Palestine and the quick, enthusiastic response by many pro-Palestinian activists, both in the Middle East and the West, religious and secular. From the comfort of his office in Qatar, Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, gave a fifteen-minute speech—aired on Al Jazeera—in which he praised the actions of the terrorists and asserted, “This battle is not only for the Palestinian people or only for Gaza. Gaza is merely the lever of resistance, . . . but since this is about al-Aqsa mosque, it is the battle of the [Islamic] nation. I call upon all the nation’s children, no matter where they are, to join the fight . . . of the men who are writing history with their blood and their rifles.”

Haniyeh managed to pack into this short speech every moral and political slogan and symbol the Arab and Muslim masses generally associate with the Palestinian cause, drawing on the well-established tradition of legitimizing all forms of violence against Israel. Haniyeh sees Palestine not as a concrete place or a mere geopolitical issue, but as part and parcel of a collective moral identity, deeply ingrained in the minds of many of his coreligionists. As he and his Iranian backers know well, the slogan “Free Palestine!” stirs a fervor that bypasses rational discourse. Because of this emotional resonance, discussions that begin with the plight of the Palestinians often inexorably lead not just to expressions of vicious hatred of Israel, but to straightforward anti-Semitism—especially within Islamist circles.